It’s already end-of-the-year-list time, and I’m delighted to see that Amazon has picked Microcosm for their top ten science books of 2008. I must confess I’ve been slow this year on reading science books. What little free time I’ve got I’ve signed over to trying to finish War and Peace before I die. I’m enjoying it greatly, but at the rate I’m going, it’s a toss-up whether I’ll hit my biological deadline. Of the books on Amazon’s list, I can certainly recommend Your Inner Fish, having reviewed it in Nature. But are there any 2008 science books missing from this list, in your opinion?

Originally published November 3, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

Julia writes, “6 years ago I decided to change my life and go back to uni to study medicine. I decided that if I got through I was going to get a tattoo to celebrate. I wanted a tattoo that said something about me–about where I’d come from. It took a long time to come up with the idea, but I came up with this: the neurone represents my medical degree, which synapses with my first academic passion–the biogeography of plants (so maybe I’m a bit of a freak). To tie these together further, I chose plants that have medical (or at least pseudo-medical) uses: the dog violets can supposedly improve renal function (I want to be a nephrologist–many people think that makes me even more of a freak), and chamomile is known to have a calming effect (I thought it might help with all those stressful on-calls!).

Continue reading “A Career In Ink” →

Sweet review of Microcosm in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine:

All in all, Microcosm is a phantasmagoric read that explains how our understanding of the nature of E. coli has helped to unravel the mysteries of our own nature and evolution. The book is impressive for the information it imparts and even more impressive for the ideas it provokes.

So there you go. 

Originally published October 30, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

We humans spend a lot of time building tools out of pieces of the natural world. We started with sticks and stones, began to mine iron and other metals, and, just recently, learned how to manipulate the genes of living things. To make insulin, for example, biologists in the 1970s inserted human insulin genes into E. coli and turned the bacteria into living chemical factories. These days, scientists are trying to retool bacteria much more dramatically, treating them more like programmable computers than factories. It sounds simple enough, but it most definitely isn’t. All material pose challenges to tool-makers. Wood can rot, metal can buckle. And living things are maddeningly sloppy.

Continue reading “The Clock That Breeds” →

I’ve been quietly watching scientists flip out about Sarah Palin’s recent scoff about the US funding research on fruit flies in Paris–even Christopher Hitchens is now championing those fine insects today in Slate. But, thanks to a little grant-digging by PZ Myers, I discover that, in fact, all this brouhaha comes down to those dear friends of this blog, parasites. Frankly, if you wait long enough, everything comes down to parasites.

A lot of people thought at first that Palin was dismissing basic research on Drosophila melanogaster, which has yielded lots of profound insights about human biology. Palin herself hasn’t cleared up the issue, but on further reflection, the consensus is that she was complaining about research on the olive fruit fly.

Continue reading “Presidential Politics Meet Parasites!” →