Evolving Viruses To Death

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

This fall, I gave a number of lectures about the evolution of swine flu. By the time I got to the end of the talk, I could tell that a lot of people in the audience were feeling a bit resigned, given the way evolution allows viruses like the flu to evade our best attacks. (Here’s the full video of my lecture at the University of British Columbia.)

To try to cheer up the crowd, I’d offer a note of hope–the notion that we could turn the evolution of viruses against them, by pushing them into mutation overdrive. (This slide gets across the basic idea–the flu virus is like a sports car. Going fast is cool. Going too fast–not so cool.)

In tomorrow’s New York Times, I lay out this intriguing idea, that goes by the profoundly cool name of lethal mutagenesis. Check it out.

Originally published January 4, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

Using a Virus’s Knack for Mutating to Wipe It Out

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The New York Times, January 4, 2010

Link

Evolution is a virus’s secret weapon. The virus can rapidly slip on new disguises to evade our immune systems, and it can become resistant to antiviral drugs.

But some scientists are turning the virus’s secret weapon against it. They hope to cure infections by forcing viruses to evolve their way to extinction.

Viruses can evolve because of the mistakes they make when they replicate. All living things can mutate, but viruses are especially prone to these genetic errors. In fact, some species of viruses mutate hundreds of thousands of times faster than we do.

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Calvin and the Cosmos [Science Tattoo]

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

Emily writes, “Ever since I was a kid, I have had a love for astronomy. I studied Earth and Planetary Sciences in college and am now in graduate school, studying to be a middle school science teacher. Another love I had as a kid was reading Calvin and Hobbes. My science tattoo combines these two childhood loves — with Calvin and Hobbes looking up at the 8 planetary symbols and the symbols for a star and water. Just like Calvin and Hobbes, I will always be gazing up at the sky with wonder and awe.”

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.

Originally published January 2, 2010. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.

The Singularity

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

Playboy, January-February 2010

Let’s say you transfer your mind into a computer—not all at once but gradually, having electrodes inserted into your brain and then wirelessly out- sourcing your faculties. Your vision is rerouted through cameras, your memories are stored in a net of microprocessors and so on, until at last the transfer is complete. As neuro-engineers get to work boosting the performance of your uploaded brain so you can now think as a god, your fleshy brain is heaved into a bag of medical waste. As you—for now let’s just call it “you”—start a new chapter of existence exclusively within a machine, an existence that will last as long as there are server farms and hard-disk space and the solar power to run them, are “you” still actually you?

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