Expanded Search for Extraterrestrial Life Urged

Posted on by Lori Jia

The New York Times, July 6, 2007

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The hunt for extraterrestrial life should be dramatically expanded, a panel of scientists convened by the country’s leading scientific advisory group said today, to include what they call “weird life,” organisms that lack DNA or other molecules found in life as we know it.

“The committee’s investigation makes clear that life is possible in forms different from those on Earth,” the scientists concluded. Their report, “The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems,” was published today by the National Research Council of the National Academies of Sciences and posted on the NAS web site, www.nationalacademies.org.

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Hither and Yon

Posted on by Lori Jia

For the past few days I’ve been rushing around, first to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to talk to some people at the Marine Biological Laboratory about the E. coli book, and then on an infinite chain of connecting flights to come out to Aspen to participate in a science-media summit. It’s a relief to be finally sitting down in one place, and the view of the mountains from here making blogging very fine. But until my blood thickens up a little, I probably won’t be writing much.

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Blogging Brothers: Go Read From A to Zimmer!

Posted on by Lori Jia

If you want to know how a new word gets into Oxford dictionaries, or are interested more generally in the bubbling cauldron of modern English, check out the the first post of new blog from Oxford University Press, From A to Zimmer. That’s Zimmer as in Ben Zimmer, lexicographer, editor at Oxford University Press, and brother. 

Originally published June 28, 2007. Copyright 2007 Carl Zimmer.

Aliens Among Us

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Discover, June 27, 2007

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Every living thing on Earth shares a long, colorful history. Our planet was born into a maelstrom 4.5 billion years ago, and for the next 600 million years a steady bombardment of primordial debris made the surface uninhabitable. The blitz finally tapered off 3.8 billion years ago. Then within about 50 million years later–practically an instant in geologic time–life irrevocably established itself. Since then, it has evolved into everything from bacteria to toadstools to mudskippers to humans. Outwardly these species vary wildly, but at the molecular level they are staggeringly uniform.

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Fast-Reproducing Microbes Provide a Window on Natural Selection

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The New York Times, June 26, 2007

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In the corner of a laboratory at Michigan State University, one of the longest-running experiments in evolution is quietly unfolding. A dozen flasks of sugary broth swirl on a gently rocking table. Each is home to hundreds of millions of Escherichia coli, the common gut microbe. These 12 lines of bacteria have been reproducing since 1989, when the biologist Richard E. Lenski bred them from a single E. coli. “I originally thought it might go a couple thousand generations, but it’s kept going and stayed interesting,” Dr. Lenski said. He is up to 40,000 generations now, and counting.

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