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Bruce Jackson: DNA Scientist SCUBA Diver

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  • A DNA Mystery [2:21] A DNA Mystery
  • 30 Second Science: Bruce Jackson [0:45] 30 Second Science: Bruce Jackson
  • 10 Questions for Bruce [1:47] 10 Questions for Bruce

Q&A with Bruce
DNA is a powerful tool, but genetics is not a stand-alone discipline.
His Science:
DNA Scientist

What he studies: The coolest of all molecules, DNA

One of the coolest things he does with it: Trace the ancestry of African-Americans

What he thinks about the science on shows like “CSI”: It’s undiluted baloney

His Secret:
SCUBA Diver

Where he’d rather be: Under the sea

What he loves about the ocean: It’s in his blood (and the blood of his ancestors)

Why he teaches kids to dive: So they’ll learn about science, experience awe and get mentored, too

About Bruce Jackson

Bruce Jackson is Professor and Head of the Biotechnology Programs at Massachusetts Bay Community College. His work focuses on how DNA - in conjunction with other tools - can help solve mysteries of ancestry, forensics and evolution. Bruce is also an expert scuba diver and the founder of the Diving Buddies program, where he shares his love of diving with young children.

Posts about Bruce Jackson

Carl Zimmer

Science Ink #8 - “Joshua Drew”

Posted by Carl Zimmer | 13 December 2012

Bruce Jackson has us thinking about how DNA can help human beings trace their roots, but what about animals? Don’t they have DNA that chronicles their past as well? Carl Zimmer looks to Joshua Drew’s shoulder for answers.

“Joshua Drew” - Photos and Text Courtesy of “Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed” by Carl Zimmer

There is no one kind of DNA. Every individual human, earthworm, liverwort, and bacterium carries a version of the molecule with a unique sequence. As living things reproduce and pass down their genes to their descendants, their DNA chronicles their genealogy. Joshua Drew, a conservation biologist at the University of Chicago, dives into the waters around the islands of Indonesia, trawling for DNA. The DNA happens to be in fishes, such as the checkerboard wrasse he had drawn on his shoulder, along with a segment of its DNA. The fishes can swim wherever they are so inclined; their larvae can drift for hundreds of miles in the currents. Yet their DNA, Drew Finds, reveals that they don’t travel far. It sheds light on one of the reasons for the ocean’s biodiversity: homebodiness.

Check out more tattoos in “Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed” by Carl Zimmer.

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Seandor Szeles

WATCH: “The Picture” - Bruce Jackson & President Obama’s Kodak Moment

Posted by Seandor Szeles | 12 December 2012

Bruce Jackson’s mother grew up in the segregated south. Bruce tells us how giving her the photo of he and President Barack Obama shaking hands felt like the “ultimate universal justice.”


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Carl Zimmer

Science Ink #7 - “Lucy”

Posted by Carl Zimmer | 11 December 2012

As we learn about Bruce Jackson’s work tracing people’s roots, it feels like an appropriate time to explore a tattoo that gets to the heart of all of our roots. And besides which, we can’t help but love Lucy.

“Lucy” - Photos and Text Courtesy of “Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed” by Carl Zimmer

“Here she is in all her 3.2 million year old glory,” he [James Chapel] says.

In 1974, a team of scientists digging in a remote corner of Ethiopia discovered the skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis. They nicknamed her Lucy, after the song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which they had been listening to.

Lucy was far older than any hominin fossil found up until then, which made the fact that forty percent of her skeleton was still intact all the more remarkable. Instead of an isolated tooth or toe, the researchers could analyze a sizeable chunk of her body. Subsequent expeditions have discovered even more A. afarensis bones.

Lucy had legs and feet suited for walking on the ground, albeit slowly and inefficiently. She still had long hooked hands, which may have been useful for leaping into trees to escape leopards. And her brain was still tiny, measuring a third our own. In Lucy, we see how our ancestors stood upright long before they had our mental fire power.

For decades, Lucy stood at the outer edge of our understanding of human evolution. But in the 1990s, paleoanthropologists found several fossils of hominins that date back as far as 6.5 million years. Now Lucy stands midway along the journey from our common ancestor with chimpanzees to the six billion people on Earth today, a small, shuffling two-legged ape.

Check out more tattoos in “Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed” by Carl Zimmer.

Comments
Seandor Szeles

WATCH: “10 Questions for Bruce Jackson”

Posted by Seandor Szeles | 10 December 2012

Bruce Jackson opens up to us about what he looks for in a diving partner, the scariest thing he’s encountered underwater and how he really feels about the science on CSI. Check it out in the player above and on his Secret Life homepage.

Comments
Tom Miller

Opportunities

Posted by Tom Miller | 06 December 2012

Unlike most of the people we profile, Bruce Jackson doesn’t teach at a high-powered four-year college/university, but instead at a community college – MassBay Community College in Wellesley, MA. Bruce works with one of his students at MassBay CC And it was there that Bruce created – and still runs – the school’s nationally renowned Biotechnology Department. Many of Bruce’s students are non-traditional students – students who had previously had fairly limited opportunities in their lives. But now, as Bruce likes to say, those same students are making him famous:

“The Barry Goldwater Scholarship is the highest science award for undergraduates in the United States. And our program has produced 18 winners of the Goldwater Scholarship. So we produce more Goldwater Scholars than all the same-tier colleges in the United States combined, and more than most four-year institutions. And I tell my colleagues at MIT, ‘Well, your students are supposed to win the Goldwater, mine aren’t.’ That’s because half of our Goldwater scholars were high school drop-outs and a third of them are single moms. But it isn’t like we confer any magical greatness on these students that they didn’t already have – they just didn’t know they had it.”

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Tom Miller

Ask Bruce Your Questions

Posted by Tom Miller | 06 December 2012

The great thing about Bruce’s secret life is that if he’s wearing goggles in the lab, he can just keep them on when he goes diving!

Ask Bruce your questions in the comments, people.

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Seandor Szeles

WATCH: Cue the Jaws Soundtrack: Bruce’s Secret Involves Sharks

Posted by Seandor Szeles | 05 December 2012

We know about Bruce Jackson’s life as a DNA detective from his “30 Seconds” video. But now it’s time for you, dear readers, to do some sleuthing of your own. Using the clues in this video, can you guess Bruce’s secret life? Send us your theories in the comments section below. We’ll retweet our favorite guesses.


Comments
Seandor Szeles

The DNA Detective

Posted by Seandor Szeles | 04 December 2012

When someone mentions a molecule like DNA, what comes to mind? CSI detectives? Evidence? Nailing the bad guy? Bruce Jackson has a different angle. He may use DNA to catch the bad guys, but he also uses the “coolest of all molecules” to free the unjustly imprisoned, to study how humans have changed over billions of years and to trace people’s ancestries.


There’s more to this molecule than meets the eye, ya see?

We got a lot of science out of Bruce in just 30-Seconds, but there’s a piece of the puzzle still missing. Stay tuned in the next two days for clues to Bruce’s secret life, which we’ll uncover this Thursday, December 6th.

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