You can listen here to a fun talk I had with Robert Pollie at KUSP in Santa Cruz on my recent visit to the Bay. We spoke for an hour about A Planet of Viruses, and so we had the luxury of delving into the fun questions, like whether viruses are alive. Check it out.
Originally published June 21, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
I just got back yesterday from the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution. It took place in a big hotel on the outskirts of Norman, Oklahoma, during a windy heat wave that felt like the Hair Dryer of the Gods. It had been a few years since I had last been to an SSE meeting, and I was struck by how genomic everything has gotten. No matter how obscure the species scientists are studying, they seem to have outrageous heaps of DNA sequence to analyze. A few years ago, they would have been content with a few scraps. Fortunately, SSE hasn’t turned its back on good old natural history. There were lots of fascinating discoveries on offer, about species that I had assumed had been studied to death. My favorite was a talk about the rough-skinned newt, the most ridiculously poisonous animal in America.
Continue reading “A Beautiful Web of Poison Extends A New Strand”
The Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2011
We are part virus. This bizarre yet inescapable fact has been revealed over the past 30 years, as scientists have spelunked their way through the human genome and encountered stretches of DNA with the telltale chemical signatures of viruses. All told, they’ve found 100,000 such segments so far. As Frank Ryan explains in “Virolution,” these pieces of virus DNA ended up in our genome through a peculiar kind of infection. From time to time, viruses slipped their DNA into the eggs and sperm of our ancestors. Parents then passed down the virus DNA to their offspring.
Here, for your viewing pleasure (I hope), is my recent talk about time and viruses, at the Long Now Foundation. I turn up after a short video, and then after the lecture Stewart Brand and I have a fun conversation about how viruses will not infect you with superpowers.
Originally published June 18, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
The Wall Street Journal asked me to review another book. This time around it’s Virolution, by Frank Ryan. It’s about a lot of things that I’m pretty crazy about (like the viruses that make up a lot of our genome). But I wasn’t crazy about the book itself, I’m afraid. Still, the review was a good opportunity to talk about what our inner viruses may mean for our well-being. Check it out.
Originally published June 18, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.