Discovering my microbiome: “You, my friend, are a wonderland”

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

Some people get a thrill from getting their genome sequenced and poring through the details of their genes. I’m a bit off-kilter, I guess, because I’m more curious about the genomes of the things living in my belly button. And let me tell you: it’s a jungle in there.

I first became curious about my navel in January. I was in Durham, North Carolina, to attend a meeting, and as I walked out of a conference room I noticed a cluster of people in the lobby handing out swabs. They were asking volunteers to stick the swabs in their belly button for the sake of science. Our bodies are covered with microbes, and scientists are discovering weirdly complex patterns to their biodiversity. From fingers to elbows to chin to forehead, different regions of our skin are dominated by different combinations of species. But the bellybutton remained terra incognita.

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Dediscovery: My new essay for a new section of the New York Times

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

In the late 1800s, prominent astronomers declared that Mars was criss-crossed by canals–evidence, they declared, of an advanced civilization. But in the early 1900s, astronomers gazed through more powerful telescopes and discovered that the canals were mirages.

The astronomer Percival Lowell, who had become the leading champion of the canals, scoffed at the new findings. Hedeclared that the criticism came “solely from those who without experience find it hard to believe or from lack of suitable conditions find it impossible to see.”

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It’s Science, but Not Necessarily Right

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The New York Times, June 25, 2011

Link

One of the great strengths of science is that it can fix its own mistakes. “There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong,” the astrophysicist Carl Sagan once said. “That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.”

If only it were that simple. Scientists can certainly point with pride to many self-corrections, but science is not like an iPhone; it does not instantly auto-correct. As a series of controversies over the past few months have demonstrated, science fixes its mistakes more slowly, more fitfully and with more difficulty than Sagan’s words would suggest. Science runs forward better than it does backward.

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A Beautiful Web of Poison Extends A New Strand

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

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.

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