From an entomologist. More information here.
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Originally published February 16, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.
Jessica Pikul writes:
I am a Chemistry PhD student at University of Washington. My research is in bioinorganic chemistry, specifically modeling non-heme iron-sulfur metalloenzymes. I am also a Celiac (autoimmune disorder triggered by ingesting gluten). The tattoo on my leg is one of the segments of the gluten protein that I can not digest. The ball and stick molecule is of a Proline-Serine-Glutamine-Glutamine peptide that I can’t break down which then stimulates T-cells to start the fun chain reaction that ends in my small intestine villi being attacked by antibodies.
This is how the Emporium was born. Last summer I was at a pool party where a friend, Bob Datta, was bobbing around in the water with his kids. Datta is a post-doc at Columbia, where he studies genes in Drosophila flies. I noticed that Bob had a tattoo of DNA on his shoulder. At first I thought it was a generic snippet of the molecule, but then Bob told me that it actually represents, in the genetic code, his wife’s initials: EEE. Geek love in its noblest form.
After a lot of writing and a lot of waiting, the first review of my next book, Microcosm, has just come out. Actually, it’s coming out on Monday in Publisher’s Weekly, but they apparently couldn’t wait, sending out a link to it today in their weekly newsletter:
When most readers hear the words E. coli, they think tainted hamburger or toxic spinach. Noted science writer Zimmer says there are in fact many different strains of E. coli, some coexisting quite happily with us in our digestive tracts.
Continue reading “Microcosm’s First Review: You Are Required to Buy This Book”
I guess it’s only appropriate that the week of Darwin’s birthday is seeing a bunch of new reports about evolutionary transitions. On Monday there was news about how ancient whales with teeth turned into whales with baleen–thanks to the discovery of a fossil of an ancient whale that appears to have had both teeth and baleen. Today’s news takes us from the sea to the trees–the fossil of a primitive bat. The transition that the ancestors of bats made from scampering shrew-like mammals to masterful flyers has remained particularly mysterious. Today’s new fossil lets us look back further than ever into this transition.