Category: Articles
STAT, July 11, 2016
A scientist recently pointed me out to his colleagues. “That is not Carl Zimmer,” he declared.
The scientist was Mark Gerstein. He was sitting at a table in his office at Yale University, flanked by two members of his lab. “Really,” Gerstein said, pointing to a slim hard drive on the table, “this is Carl Zimmer.”
By “this,” he meant the sequence of my genome, which was being transferred from the drive onto a MacBook.
The New York Times, July 1, 2016
Our genes are not just naked stretches of DNA.
They’re coiled into intricate three-dimensional tangles, their lengths decorated with tiny molecular “caps.” These so-called epigenetic marks are crucial to the workings of the genome: They can silence some genes and activate others.
Epigenetic marks are crucial for our development. Among other functions, they direct a single egg to produce the many cell types, including blood and brain cells, in our bodies. But some high-profile studies have recently suggested something more: that the environment can change your epigenetic marks later in life, and that those changes can have long-lasting effects on health.
Continue reading “Growing Pains for Field of Epigenetics as Some Call for Overhaul”
STAT, June 23, 2016
NEW YORK — Andre Fenton got to design his lab when he joined the Center for Neural Science at New York University a few years ago, and he made sure that he had a lot of closet space. But his closets do not contain brooms or shoes.
Each one is lined with black curtains and has wires and cameras hanging from the ceiling. In the middle of each closet is a disk where Fenton places mice or rats. As the rodents explore the arena, they soon discover that one section delivers a shock. It’s a lesson they don’t soon forget.
Continue reading “Memory researchers were rebuffed by science, and came roaring back”
The New York Times, June 22, 2016
The ocean contains a vast number of living things, including many, many pathogens — from bacteria that thrive on coral to fungi that infect lobsters. A drop of seawater may hold 10 million viruses.
Recently, a team of scientists revealed a frightening member of this menagerie: free-floating cancer cells that cause contagious tumors in shellfish. Last year, they found one such cancer in a species of clam. On Wednesday, they reported that three more species were plagued with contagious cancers.
The cancers are specific to shellfish and do not appear to pose a danger to humans who eat them.
Continue reading “Cancer Is Contagious Among Clams. What About Us?”
The New York Times, June 20, 2016
A reader asks: Scientists seem to be calling members of a 3-foot-tall species whose fossils were recently found in Indonesia “hobbits” conversationally. When did this term come into existence? Before or after Tolkien? And how might the “real” hobbits have been similar to or different from the ones Tolkien created?
Carl Zimmer, who writes the Matter column for The Times’s Science section, considers the question.