I was recently interviewed by a BBC reporter about viruses and their potential to devastate or help us in years to come. The video is now posted, and you can watch it here.
Originally published December 6, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.
Author: Matt Kristoffersen
Slate, December 6, 2012
To understand what it means to be human, you have to understand koalas. Or, to be more precise, you have to understand how they are dying from a bizarre viral outbreak that has been raging for the past 150 years or so. The koalas are now going through something our ancestors experienced 31 times over the past 60 million years. And those ancient viral outbreaks have helped to make us who we are today.
Australian biologists discovered the koala outbreak in 1988. They were examining the blood of a koala dying of leukemia when they came across a virus infecting its white blood cells. The koala retrovirus, as it is now known, made its hosts sick in much the same way the feline leukemia virus sickens cats. It inserted its genes into host immune cells, which then produced new viruses. The infection also caused the cells to replicate at a frenzied rate. Once the scientists had found the koala retrovirus in one koala, they looked for it in others, and they soon found it all over the koala’s range—the entire eastern side of Australia.
Slate is running a “pandemics” series, and I’m offering up the view from deep time. Koalas are getting hammered by a viral epidemic right now, and we’d do well to understand their woes. Because over the past 60 million years, we’ve experienced much the same thing, and it’s helped make us who we are today. Check it out.
Originally published December 6, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.
As you may be aware, I have a thing for parasites. So it was with great pleasure that I read through the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology, which is entirely dedicated to the ways in which parasites turn hosts into zombies. What’s particularly newsworthy is that scientists are finally getting down to the biochemistry that allows them to pull the marionette strings. I’ve written a piece for the New York Times on the state of “neuroparasitology,” which will appear in print in next Tuesday’s Science Times. But you can read it now online.
Originally published December 5, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.
Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich have a new episode of Radiolab airing this week. The theme of the show is heredity and its attendant mysteries. I had great fun telling the strange and tragic story of the early twentieth century biologist Paul Kammerer, who thought he could change the human race with the help of a midwife toad. (Some of my favorite sources about this tale and its present-day reverberations are here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
Science writer Sam Kean joins the Radiolab crew as well, along with some scientists doing fascinating work on mother rats licking baby rats, Swedes surviving harsh winters, and more.
Added bonus: my daughters Charlotte and Veronica helped read the program credits. They get their ability to pronounce “Jad Abumrad” from me.
I’ve embedded the show below–
Originally published November 20, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.