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Two new videos: where new genes come from and where new biologists come from

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Recently I had the pleasure of working on two videos that are now online. I’ve embedded them under the fold.

First up is an animation from TED-ED. I worked with them on a piece explaining where new genes come from, based on some of my articles (such as this and this).


 Next is a fun conversation I had on Huffington Post Live with a sharp 11-year-old boy named Cody who wanted to talk about Parasite Rex. I’m hoping my book eventually leads him to find a new way to fight malaria. (No pressure!)

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What Slipped Disks Tell Us About 700 Million Years of Evolution

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RAGWORM. SOURCE: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE

There’s a unity to life. Sometimes it’s plain to see, but very often it lurks underneath a distraction of differences. And a new study shows that there’s even a hidden unity between our slipped disks and the muscles in a squirming worm.

Scientists call this unity “homology.” The British anatomist Richard Owen coined the term in 1843, sixteen years before Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species.  Owen defined homology as “the same organ in different animals under every variety of form and function.” For example, a human arm, a seal flipper, and a bat wing all have the same basic skeletal layout. They consist of a single long bone, a bending joint, two more long bones, a cluster of small bones, and a set of five digits. The size and shape of each bone may differ, but the pattern is the same regardless of how mammals use their limbs–to swim, to fly, or to wield a hammer.

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For Trees Under Threat, Flight May Be Best Response

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The New York Times, September 18, 2014

Link

The whitebark pine grows in the high, cold reaches of the Rocky and Sierra Mountains, and some trees, wind-bent and tenacious, manage to thrive for more than a thousand years.

Despite its hardiness, the species may not survive much longer.

A lethal fungus is decimating the pines, as are voracious mountain pine beetles. Making matters worse, forest managers have suppressed the fires that are required to stimulate whitebark pine seedlings.

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Mining for Antibiotics, Right Under Our Noses

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The New York Times, September 11, 2014

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“Microorganisms are the best chemists on the planet,” declared Michael A. Fischbach, a chemist himself at the University of California, San Francisco.

For evidence, Dr. Fischbach points to the many lifesaving drugs that microorganisms produce. In 1928, for example, Alexander Fleming discovered that mold wafting into his lab produced a bacteria-killing chemical that he dubbed penicillin.

Later generations of scientists found drugmaking microorganisms in more exotic locales.

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