Greetings–
In previous issues of Friday’s Elk, I’ve shared a number of stories about ancient DNA and what it’s telling us about our history. This week, I wrote a long profile for the New York Times about one of the most intriguing figures in this exploding discipline, a geneticist named Eske Willerslev. His story conveys not only the excitement of this field, but the powerful, complex resonance that ancient DNA has for today’s world. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, May 20, 2016”
The New York Times, May 16, 2016
COPENHAGEN — As a boy growing up in Denmark, Eske Willerslev could not wait to leave Gentofte, his suburban hometown. As soon as he was old enough, he would strike out for the Arctic wilderness.
His twin brother, Rane, shared his obsession. On vacations, they retreated to the woods to teach themselves survival skills. Their first journey would be to Siberia, the Willerslev twins decided. They would make contact with a mysterious group of people called the Yukaghir, who supposedly lived on nothing but elk and moose.
When the Willerslev twins reached 18, they made good on their promise. They were soon paddling a canoe up remote Siberian rivers.
Continue reading “Eske Willerslev Is Rewriting History With DNA”
Greetings–
I’ve got a new video out in my Science Happens series for Stat. This time, I paid a visit to the lab of Chris Mason in New York, where he and his colleagues are studying blood and other samples from astronaut Scott Kelly. They’re examining his DNA to see if life in space brings about any changes in how his genes work. Check it out. (GIF from NASA) Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, May 13, 2016”
The New York Times, May 12, 2016
Animal migrations combine staggering endurance and exquisite timing.
Consider the odyssey of a bird known as the red knot. Each spring, flocks of the intrepid shorebirds fly up to 9,300 miles from the tropics to the Arctic. As the snow melts, they mate and produce a new generation of chicks. The chicks gorge themselves on insects, and then all the red knots head back south.
“They are there less than two months,” said Jan A. van Gils, an ecologist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. “It’s a very tight schedule.”
Continue reading “Climate Change and the Case of the Shrinking Red Knots”
Greetings–
I’m back, with some further reading for your enjoyment and edification (I hope!).
Have you ever heard of Wolbachia? If not, you have a wonderful surprise in store. It’s arguably the most successful symbiont on Earth, a species of bacteria that lives inside several million species of invertebrates. And it thrives in those hosts with weird manipulations of their reproduction. I’ve written about Wolbachia a few times in the past (here for example), and this week in the New York Times I revisit it to explore an exciting possibility: that Wolbachia could block mosquito-borne diseases including Zika and dengue fever. Check it out. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, May 6, 2016”