The Left and Right of Life

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

Not long ago, a friend of mine asked me if I had heard of a condition called situs inversus. He had learned about it when his grandson had been born with his internal organs flipped–heart on the right, liver on the left, and so on. Despite that remarkable reversal, the boy was fine. His story got me curious about how the condition happens–and how our bodies, for the most part, figure out which side is which. The result is a story in tomorrow’s New York Times. Check it out.

Originally published June 3, 2013. Copyright 2013 Carl Zimmer.

The Girl Who Turned to Bone

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

The Atlantic, June 2013

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When Jeannie Peeper was born in 1958, there was only one thing amiss: her big toes were short and crooked. Doctors fitted her with toe braces and sent her home. Two months later, a bulbous swelling appeared on the back of Peeper’s head. Her parents didn’t know why: she hadn’t hit her head on the side of her crib; she didn’t have an infected scratch. After a few days, the swelling vanished as quickly as it had arrived.

When Peeper’s mother noticed that the baby couldn’t open her mouth as wide as her sisters and brothers, she took her to the first of various doctors, seeking an explanation for her seemingly random assortment of symptoms. Peeper was 4 when the Mayo Clinic confirmed a diagnosis: she had a disorder known as fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP).

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Apes

Posted on by Lori Jia

The New York Times, May 31, 2013

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The stories of scientists create new scientists. Alexander von Humboldt — the most famous naturalist of the early 19th century — chronicled his epic expeditions, between 1799 and 1804, in his “Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent.” When a nature-loving student at Cambridge named Charles Darwin read the book, it changed his life. He read passages aloud to his professors and learned Spanish so that he could follow in Humboldt’s footsteps.

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Mountain Populations Offer Clues to Human Evolution

Posted on by admin

The New York Times, May 30, 2013

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In the hearts of evolutionary biologists, mountains occupy a special place. It’s not just their physical majesty: mountains also have an unmatched power to drive human evolution. Starting tens of thousands of years ago, people moved to high altitudes, and there they experienced natural selection that has reworked their biology.

“This is the most extreme example in humans that you can find,” said Rasmus Nielsen, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California at Berkeley.

Humans have adapted to mountainous environments just as Charles Darwin predicted. To discover how this occurred, scientists are now examining the DNA of people who scaled mountains in different parts of the world.

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