There are many weird viruses on this planet, but none weirder–in a fundamentally important way–than a group known as the giant viruses.

For years, they were hiding in plain sight. They were so big–about a hundred times bigger than typical viruses–that scientists mistook them for bacteria. But a close look revealed that they infected amoebae and built new copies of themselves, as all viruses do. And yet, as I point out in A Planet of Viruses, giant viruses certainly straddle the boundary between viruses and cellular life. Flu viruses may only have ten genes, but giant viruses may have 1,000 or more. When giant viruses invade a host cell, they don’t burst open like other viruses, so that their genes and proteins can disperse to do their different jobs. Instead, they assemble into a “virus factory” that sucks in building blocks and spits out large pieces of future giant viruses. Giant viruses even get infected with their own viruses. People often ask me if I think viruses are alive. If giant viruses aren’t alive, they sure are close.

Continue reading “Please welcome Megavirus, the world’s most ginormous virus” →

I appreciated this start to the week: a starred review of Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed  in Publisher’s Weekly:

Continue reading “Starred review for #ScienceInk in Publisher’s Weekly: ‘Breathtaking”” →

Once more we are going through the annual ritual of the Nobel Prize announcements. The early morning phone calls, the expressions of shock, the gnashing of teeth in the betting pools. In the midst of the hoopla, I got an annoyed email on Tuesday from an acquaintance of mine, an immunology grad student named Kevin Bonham. Bonham thought there was something wrong with this year’s Prize for Medicine or Physiology. It should have gone to someone else.

Kevin lays out the story in a new post on his blog, We Beasties. The prize, he writes, “was given to a scientist that many feel is undeserving of the honor, while at the same time sullying the legacy of my scientific great-grandfather.” Read the rest of the post to see why he feels this way.

Continue reading “The tedious inevitability of Nobel Prize disputes” →

Story Collider is a monthly performance where people tell stories about science. (Think The Moth in a lab coat.) The organizer, Ben Lillie, invited me to tell a personal story about the place of science writing in my life. I decided to talk about a memorable night in South Sudan, when I wondered what I was living for.

I told the story to a great crowd at Union Hall in Brooklyn last week. And you can hear the podcast at the Story Collider web site. Check it out.

Originally published October 4, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.

My editor at the New York Times called me a few weeks ago and said, “Slime molds! Can you write something about them?” Moments like that fill me with gratitude.

Here’s my story, on the cover of tomorrow’s Science Times. I look at how they solve the evolutionary puzzles of altruism, build highway systems, and turn out to be some of the oldest life forms on land.

(And for more on the ever-expanding worldwide diversity of slime mold, check out the Eumycetezoan Project.]

[Image: myriorama/Flickr via Creative Commons]

Originally published October 3, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.