I’ve got some more talks coming up that I want to let you know about–especially those of you around Lincoln, Nebraska or Sarasota, Florida–as well as those of you who like to go to meetings about parasites…

1. DARWIN DAY: I’ll be doing my part to celebrate, at the University of Nebraska. My talk will be this Friday. I’ll be talking about what bacteria could have taught Darwin about evolution–drawing in part from my upcoming book, Microcsom. Here’s the UNL link with details (Facebook event).

Continue reading “Darwin, Microbes, Whales, and Pop Parasites: More Talks!” →

A quick favor from anyone who has read any of my books. If there’s a passage–sentence to paragraph range–that you’re fond of, can you let me know? I’m working on a project that requires a bunch of them. You can leave them in this post’s comment thread or over on a discussion thread I set up on my Facebook writer’s page, or–if you’d prefer not to air such things in public–you can email me. Thanks! 

Originally published February 2, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward and I are talking again on bloggingheads–this time about aliens. Ward explains why science fiction writers hate him, and why we need to breed tiny astronauts if we ever want to get out of our solar system. Check it out.

Poster from Wikimedia Commons, Headline Defiled From Shelley 

Originally published February 2, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

I’m always learning something from the readers of the Loom. Yesterday, I wrote about how scientists had inserted their names into a synthetic genome, and how such signatures would erode away like graffiti inside real organisms. But how about the opposite case–what if evolution has produced sequences of DNA that happen to form words?

In the comment thread, Peter Ellis asked,

What actually is the longest word (in any language) encoded by the reference human genome? If I had the time and computer power I’d have a look…

Continue reading “The Genome As Word Puzzle: Who’s Ready to Play?” →

Earlier today, I took a walk in the blustery winds of Washington DC with Drew Endy, a synthetic biologist from MIT. We had just been talking with Congressional staffers about the promise and perils of being able to manipulate life. There was too much to fit into the ninety minute session, and so our conversation spilled out on the street. And one of the things we talked about was the question of whether you can put your signature on a living thing.

Continue reading “‘Frankenstein Was Here’: Synthetic Biology as Graffiti” →