For Your Reading Pleasure: Global Warming Evolution and the Origin of Eukaryotes

Posted on August 7, 2009June 30, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

Two of my stories came out this week–one on the near future, and one on the distant past.

1. Global warming is beginning to drive evolution of plants and animals. And soon it will be shifting to high gear. Read more at Yale Environment 360.

2. You, me, and the mushroom over there are all eukaryotes. So are slime molds and Giardia. We all share a number of features that set us apart from prokaryotes like E. coli. The split between eukaryotes and other living things is arguably the deepest in all life. In this week’s issue of Science, I have an essay that looks at how the basic eukaryote cell, complete with nucleus, mitochondria, and all its other bells and whistles came to be. Check it out (here or here). And you can also listen to me talk about the question on this week’s Science podcast here.

On the Origin of Eukaryotes

Posted on August 7, 2009May 13, 2020 by admin

Science, August 7, 2009

Link

You may not feel as though you have much in common with a toadstool, but its cells and ours are strikingly similar. Animals and fungi both keep their DNA coiled up in a nucleus. Their genes are interspersed with chunks of DNA that cells have to edit out to make proteins. Those proteins are shuttled through a maze of membranes before they can float out into the cell. A cell in a toadstool, like your own cells, manufactures fuel in compartments called mitochondria. Both species’ cells contain the same molecular skeleton, which they can break down and reassemble in order to crawl.

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Attention, Bulldogs

Posted on August 6, 2009June 30, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

I’ve been quiet on the blog front for the past week thanks to some cross-country traveling for work and a few deadlines I must wrap up before turning to a new kind of experience–the pedagogical sort.

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First Comes Global Warming, Then an Evolutionary Explosion

Posted on August 3, 2009May 28, 2020 by admin

Yale Environment 360, August 3, 2009

Link

In 1997, Arthur Weis found himself with an extra bucket of seeds. Weis, who was teaching at the University of California at Irvine at the time, had dispatched a student, Sheina Sim, to gather some field mustard seeds for a study. When Sim was done with her research, Weis was left with a lot of leftover seeds. For no particular reason, he decided not to throw the bucket out. “We just tossed it in a cold, dry incubator,” said Weis.

Weis is glad they did. When a severe drought struck southern California, Weis realized that he could use the extra bucket of seeds for an experiment. In 2004 he and his colleagues collected more field mustard seeds from the same sites that Sim had visited seven years earlier.

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Fall talks and other new stuff on carlzimmer.com

Posted on July 29, 2009June 30, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

A while back my web site was hacked and my archive of stories vanished. After switching servers, I left the site frozen in time while I dealt with more pressing matters. I’ve finally gotten a little stretch of free time to refresh my memory of Dreamweaver, and now the site is back up to date. Along with the archive, you can also find an updated list of past and future talks. I’m starting to make plans for talks about The Tangled Bank and the 15th anniversary of The Origin of Species this fall, and appearances are now just starting to fall into place. I expect more talks to pop up in the weeks to come, and I will be much more diligent in getting the information online quickly.