E. coli is, arguably, the one species that scientists know best. If you type the name “Escherichia coli” into PubMed, the database of the National Library of Medicine, you’ll get over a quarter of a million titles of scientific papers. Scientists have sequenced about 30 genomes of different strains of E. coli. It’s the microbe of choice for those who want to figure out how to tinker with life. There’s one problem with all this attention–how are scientists supposed to make sense of all this data? Scientists have created sites to aggregate E. coli data in one place. The newest and broadest site is now up: E. coli Hub. To put the site in historical context, the scientists who set it up asked me to write an essay. It’s now online here.
Author: Lori Jia
I would love to introduce him to a certain resident of his gut. (Hat tip: Tree of Life)
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Originally published May 30, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.
I have been meaning for some days now to point your attention to my new article in the June issue of Scientific American called, “What Is A Species?” The hard copy is worth tracking down because it’s got a lot of excellent illustrations and sidebars. SciAm has the full article online for subscribers, and I’ve posted the text over at carlzimmer.com.
There’s so much I could say on the topic–pointing out how the recent news on polar bear extinction raises the question of how distinct polar bears are, for example–but I am scurrying in the shadow of a rising wave. (Attention people of Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle: please look at my book tour schedule!)
Continue reading “It’s Come to This: I’m Outsourcing Blogging to Australia”
Jaana writes, “I am a chemist and work on the legislative side of science. I also have a bit of a temper, so when choosing this tattoo, the choice was obvious. It’s a modified version of the chemical hazard sign for ‘explosive’ and while hidden under a lab coat most of the time, depicts my personality quite well.”
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Originally published May 28, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.
Lea writes:
“I am an evolutionary biology graduate student working with some of the world’s earliest known HIV samples, trying to clarify the early evolutionary history of the virus. I was inspired by an elegant circle tree phylogeny my PI put together for a publication submission and I decided I had finally found something I connected with enough to get permanently put on my body.”
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Originally published May 27, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.