biology

Nicole King

Nicole King is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Nicole King rather than just read about it. In short: Nicole King (born 1970) is an American biologist and faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley in molecular and cell biology and integrative biology. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005.

Key takeaways

Nicole King belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Nicole King to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Nicole King from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Nicole King (born 1970) is an American biologist and faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley in molecular and cell biology and integrative biology. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005. She has been an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) since 2013. In 2023 she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. King studies the evolution of multicellularity and choanoflagellates. The goal of her work is to reconstruct how multicellular animals evolved from single-cell organisms.

Professional contributions King identified choanoflagellates as key organisms to answer questions about the origin of multicellularity. Prior to her work, it was unclear whether choanoflagellates or fungi were the closest outgroup to multicellular animals (also called "metazoans"). King's comparative genomics work in collaboration with Sean Carroll helped to elucidate the evolutionary "tree of life." In addition, work by King and colleagues showed that choanoflagellates possess several protein-coding genes that are highly related to protein-coding genes in animals at the base of the metazoan tree, such as sponges, cnidarians, and ctenophores. More recent work by King demonstrates that molecules thought to underpin the transition to multicellarity also exist in choanoflagellates and therefore were present in the single-celled and colonial ancestors of animals. For example, one of the most abundant and important cell adhesion molecules in the animal kingdom, cadherin, exists in choanoflagellates. In animals, cadherins are required to keep cells attached to their neighbors, so it was surprising to discover that cadherins predate the evolution of animals. In addition, King found that choanoflagellates possess genes for molecules such as receptor tyrosine kinase which are used in signaling in animal cells. King continues her studies on choanoflagellates and multicellularity as an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley. King received her B.S. from Indiana University Bloomington in 1992, in the lab of Thom Kaufman, working on the fruitfly, Drosophila melanogaster. She did her graduate work at Harvard University (A.M., 1996, and PhD, 1999), studying the spore formation in Bacillus subtilis. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2003, she accepted the position of assistant professor of genetics and development at the University of California, Berkeley. King's lab developed and maintained ChoanoBase, a genetic library of choanoflagellates.

Awards and recognitions Nicole King received the MacArthur Foundation's "genius" award (2005). She received the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences (2004). King also received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Lehigh University on 18 May 2015, at the commencement ceremony. In 2022 King was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. King was elected a 2023 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

References Gill, Aman Singh. "United we stand: The origins of multicellular animals," Berkeley Science Review #10 (2005). King, N. "The unicellular ancestry of animal development." Developmental Cell volume 7, pp. 313–325 (2004). King, N., Hittinger, C.T., and Carroll, S.B. "Evolution of key cell signaling and adhesion protein families predates the origin of animals." Science v. 301 (5631), pp. 361–363 (2003). Whitehouse, D. "Ancient ancestor's legacy of life." BBC News 22 July 2003.

Notes

External links Berkeley Profile King Lab website MacArthur Fellows Overview of King's work Tree of Life web project

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Nicole King

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Nicole King claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Nicole King before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Nicole King ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Nicole King

In research: Nicole King appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Nicole King in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Nicole King is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1970 births, 21st-century American women, American evolutionary biologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Nicole King outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Nicole King in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Nicole King means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Nicole King out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Nicole King in simple terms?

Why does Nicole King matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Nicole King?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Nicole King.