Today a comment arrived on the Loom that deserves a post of its own. It concerns a death of a reader of this blog.

But first, some background:

In April, a reader named Abigail sent in this tattoo, with the following description:

My first year of college, I wanted to be an English major, and I took Intro Chemistry to fill the science requirement. The brief unit on thermodynamics made me fall totally in love. Entropy made sense to me – scientifically, philosophically. I became a Chemistry major and love every second of it.

Continue reading “Requiem” →

Denise writes, “I just finished my Ph.D. on microbially-mediated uranium bioremediation and chose to get a new tattoo to commemorate this milestone. The tattoo is a uranium atom with each orbital and all 92 electrons represented. The center is blue with a swirl to represent the ocean where I grew up.”

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium. 

Originally published August 20, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

[Update: You can listen to my talk here.]

I’ve just spent the past 30 hours at the Chautauqua Institution, the lovely village of ideas out in western New York State. Each week they bring in people to talk about a theme, and this week is a celebration of Darwin and Linnaeus.

Many interesting things have transpired over the past 30 hours. I spent some time listening to one speaker, Ken Miller, talking about the amicable intersection of religion and science with a couple skeptical listeners. I had to get up to call my wife while Ken was talking about how God was an explanation for the intelligibility of the universe, and meeting fierce opposition.

Continue reading “Darwin, Linnaeus, and One Sleepy Guy” →

Just a quick follow up to my post a couple weeks ago about a talk by genome pioneer Craig Venter. Venter mentioned a new study comparing the two complete individual human genomes–Venter’s own, and that of James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. I wrote:

Humans, Venter and other researchers are finding, are more genetically variable than the earlier estimates. Our DNA does not just vary letter by letter, but by entire genes–some of us are missing some genes entirely, and others have extra copies.

Continue reading “Jim Watson’s “Asian” Genes: You Read It Here First” →

In today’s Boston Globe, Anthony Doerr praises Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life as “quietly revolutionary.”

As scientists study the genes of more and more strains of E. coli, they’re finding that foreign DNA has been steadily pouring into the genome. Not only is E. coli mutating within itself, it’s also claiming new genes from elsewhere.

A major source of this input is viruses. As Zimmer notes, “Viruses are quickly losing their reputation as insignificant parasites.” Viruses, we now know, pick up genes from one host and plug them like cassette tapes into the genome of a new host.

Continue reading “The Boston Globe reviews Microcosm: “Superb”” →