Mark Stoneking

Education

Stoneking studied an undergraduate course in anthropology from 1974 at the University of Oregon, United States, from where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in 1977. He shifted to the Pennsylvania State University to obtain MS in genetics in 1979, and subsequently a similar master's degree from University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1981. His master's degree was on evolutionary genetics of salmonid fish. Captivated by the emerging research on mitochondrial DNA, in 1981 he joined Allan Wilson, a renowned biochemist at the Department of Biochemistry, University of California, Berkeley, under whose supervision he got a PhD in 1986. His research was on human mtDNA variation, a follow-up of the work of Rebecca Cann, who was just completing her doctoral thesis from the same supervisor. He continued as Postdoctoral Fellow in 1986 at Berkeley and completed it in 1988.

Professional career and contributions

In 1989 he joined the Human Genome Center at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, as a Staff Scientist. Then he worked as an Associate Research Scientist at the Department of Human Genetics, Cetus Corporation, Emeryville, California for a year. In 1990 he entered the faculty of Assistant Professor the Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University as Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1994 and to a full professor in 1998. During 1996-1997 he served as a Visiting Professor at the Zoology Institute, University of Munich, Germany. In 1999 he got an appointment in the Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, as the Group Leader. He concurrently serves as an Honorary Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of Leipzig.

He has been an Associate Editor of the Journal of Human Evolution (from 1990 to 1993), Human Biology (1993–1997), BioEssays (2004 to present), Anthropological Science, (2004 to present), Evolutionary Biology (2007 to present), BMC Genetics (2008 to present), Gene (2009–2010), Investigative Genetics (2009 to present), EMBO Reports (2010 to present), and Language Dynamics and Change (2010 to present). He is also Senior Editor of the Annals of Human Genetics from 2008 to present. He has been in the Technical Working Group, DNA Analysis Methods of FBI between 1993 and 1998, Defense Science Board Task Force on DNA Technology for Identification of Ancient Remains (1994–1995), Wellcome Trust Bioarchaeology Panel (2001–2005), Steering Committee for National Energy Research Council (NERC) Program on Environmental Factors and the Chronology of Human Evolution and Dispersal (EFCHED) (2001–2006). He is also a member of the Advisory Committee, The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans, Heidelberg Academy of Sciences since 2008; Advisory Board, US National Evolutionary Synthesis Center since 2011; and Chair, Scientific Advisory Committee of the Program on Forensics and Ethnicity, Philippine Genome Center, since 2011.

Mitochondrial Eve

Stoneking came to prominence both in the academic and media circles with his work on mitochondrial DNA variation among different human populations. He started under the supervision of Allan Wilson and following the pioneering work of his senior graduate student, Rebecca Cann. Cann had collected data from different human populations, including those of Asians, Africans, and Europeans. Then Stoneking added data from aboriginal Australians and New Guineans. In 1987, after a year of pending, their paper was published in Nature in which their findings indicated that all living humans were descended through a single mother, who lived ~200,000 years ago in Africa. The common hypothetical mother is dubbed Mitochondrial Eve, and the concept directly implies recent African origin of modern humans, hence, the underpinning of the so-called "Recent Out of Africa" theory. In spite of criticisms, and religious antagonisms, even after two decades he still holds this view to be as valid as any scientific theory since a number independent research also corroborates their original human mtDNA phylogenetic tree.

Other aspects of human evolution

Origin of clothing and lice. Stoneking and his team announced an interesting discovery in 2003 on the evolution of lice, and its relation to the origin of wearing cloth. Their comparison of two mtDNA and two nuclear DNA from human head lice and body lice, along with a chimpanzee louse revealed that human started to wear clothes some 72,000 years ago (give or take 42,000 years). This could be inferred because the age is when the body lice evolved from the head lice according to the molecular clock. Human hair. Stoneking has also pioneered the genetic basis of different hair colours and baldness in men. His team had found that human androgen receptor gene is the major factor associated with baldness in men. They also identified tyrosinase-related protein 1 (TYRP1) as a major determinant of blond hair among the Melanesian of Solomon Islands. Culture as a factor of human evolution. Stoneking believes that culture has a massive influence on human evolution, and may actually increase the rate of human evolution. He argues that cultural differences are a major signal of selection in genomes, which have been accumulating recently and indicate that humans continue to evolve.

Awards and honours

National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, 1977-1978, 1979-1981

Pennsylvania State University Graduate Fellowship, 1978-1979

Ernest Brown Babcock Scholarship, University of California, Berkeley, 1985-1986

John Belling Prize in Genetics, University of California, Berkeley, 1990

University of Oregon Outstanding Young Alumnus Award, 1990

Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship, 1995

FBI Award for Service to the Forensic DNA Community, 1998

Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2000

Filmography

Stoneking has appeared in

Becoming Human: First Steps (NOVA) 2009

Becoming Human: Birth of Humanity (NOVA) 2009

Where did we come from? (Nova) 2011