Paul Rainey
Evolutionary Geneticist
Distinguished Professor,
Massey University
Paul Rainey Genetic detective
Evolution revolution
Not just little tiny specks - the building blocks of life!
Who’d have thought a humble, tiny test tube would be the tool to provide major insights into how and why life on this planet evolves the way it does?
But that’s exactly what Massey Professor Paul Rainey used, and that’s exactly what he did. When he published the results of his experiment in 1998, he helped reshape the world’s view of evolution.
Using some of the smallest living organisms – bacteria – as a model system, Paul’s experiment showed how evolution works, moment by moment.
His system has spawned a host of follow-up research because its principles can be applied across living systems, from animals (including humans) through plants and microbes.
Since then, Paul has applied the tools of genetics to understand in detail why natural selection favours one variant type over another, helping the world to understand better the very building blocks of life.
Evolution revolution
[caption id="attachment_2530" align="alignright" width="125" caption="Not just little tiny specks - the building blocks of life!"][/caption]
Who’d have thought a humble, tiny test tube would be the tool to provide major insights into how and why life on this planet evolves the way it does?
But that’s exactly what Massey Professor Paul Rainey used, and that’s exactly what he did. When he published the results of his experiment in 1998, he helped reshape the world’s view of evolution.
Using some of the smallest living organisms – bacteria – as a model system, Paul’s experiment showed how evolution works, moment by moment.
His system has spawned a host of follow-up research because its principles can be applied across living systems, from animals (including humans) through plants and microbes.
Since then, Paul has applied the tools of genetics to understand in detail why natural selection favours one variant type over another, helping the world to understand better the very building blocks of life.
Paul Rainey
Evolutionary Geneticist
Distinguished Professor,
Massey University
Fascinated by fungi
Growing up in Christchurch, Paul had always been fascinated by all things biological. Plants, fungi and bacteria (you can only imagine the bacterial experiments his mother discovered under his bed) – he was fascinated by how they grew, and changed.
He went via Canterbury to Cambridge to Oxford University. It was here he was a faculty member when he published his evolution experiment.
He’s had a huge range of accolades from all over the world for his work. In 2009 his evolutionary research looking at how organisms ‘hedge their bets’ featured on the front page of the prestigious magazine Nature. He’s been made a Fellow of the Royal Society, awarded the James Cook Fellowship and appointed a member of Germany’s most prestigious academic institution, the Max Planck Society.
He arrived at Massey’s Albany campus in 2007 and today lectures Massey’s undergraduate and postgraduate genetics students and mentors PhD students here and overseas. Today he is a Distinguished Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at the NZ Institute for Advanced Study.
He is also principal investigator at the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology & Evolution and Co-Director of the Hopkins Microbiology Course at Stanford University.
Find out more about genetics
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If you want to follow in Paul’s footsteps or just want to learn more about what he does all day, check out our Area of Interest page for Genetics.
There you’ll learn more relating to what Genetics is really all about, what kinds of careers you can get in that field, and how Massey University can help you get started down that path – just like Paul.