Today marks the one-year anniversary of the Arsenic Life Affair. On December 2, 2010, NASA-funded scientists announced that they had discovered a microbe in Mono Lake that broke the rules of biology. They claimed it could build DNA from arsenic rather than phosphorus. It was a sensational claim, and it was greeted by a spectacular backlash.

Alan Boyle takes a close look at arsenic life on its first birthday over at MSNBC. Other scientists have yet to report whether they can replicate the results or not (the bet of many experts is on not). Meanwhile, other researchers are studying its biology, sequencing its genome, and otherwise investigating it as they would any new microbe. It seems as if the arsenic life affair is morphing into regular science. Which may be about as good of an ending as one could hope.

Continue reading “Happy Birthday, #arseniclife” →

When it comes to viruses, we humans like to pretend we know much more than we really do. It’s understandable. The influenza virus, for example, has only ten genes. It is just a shell that delivers genes and proteins into a host cell, where it hacks the biochemistry to manufacture more viruses. It seems like such an easy biological problem to solve.

Yet the flu and other viruses hide a complexity which virologists have only partly uncovered. The idea that someone could intentionally design a super-lethal virus from scratch–as plausible as it may seem–is, for now, a delusion.

Continue reading “Making viruses the natural way” →

In January, I’ll be conducting the 2012 edition of my science writing workshop for graduate students. The workshop is hosted by the Yale Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department. It’s a short introduction to the craft of bringing science to the world, tailored for science graduate students. People who attend are typically interested in making science writing part of their work as scientists, or are even thinking about making it their career. Students from other institutions can contact the EEB department to get permission to register.

The syllabus and information about registering are on the workshop web site.

Originally published November 30, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.

The New York Times has launched a series called Profiles in Science. When I was invited to join the undertaking, I proposed writing about the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. I had run into Pinker at the World Science Festival in June, and he had told me about his next book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, which was due out in the fall. In the 800+ page tome, Pinker argues that rates of human violence have been crashing for millennia, and he offers psychological explanations for the fall.

Continue reading “Peace, war, and evolution: My profile of Steven Pinker in tomorrow’s New York Times” →