loom | May 9, 2008
At last we come to the fifth winning question about Microcosm, from Ceph. Once again, thanks to the ~240 people who entered the contest. I hope my answers to these five questions give you a sense of what my book's about and why I'm so excited by this little germ. If you want to learn more about it, and about life, pick up a copy.
Ceph asks,
What is your favorite thing that has been done to E. coli (making it glow, smell like bananas, etc)?
My answer below...
E. coli has the odd honor of being the most-hacked organism on Earth. About forty years ago, scientists started figuring out how to…
loom | May 9, 2008Here's the fourth winning question about Microcosm, from Sigmund:
Creationists often point to the bacterial cell and say something to the effect of "the cell is so complicated it is highly improbable that it could have spontaneously formed - therefore God-did-it. Are there any particular features of E.coli that reveal simpler origins?
The answer below the fold...
In Microcosm, I tell the story of how E. coli was embraced by the creationists. In particular, they adore the flagellum, the fast-spinning tail that E. coli and many other bacteria use to zip around. As far back as 1981, people from…
loom | May 9, 2008Now we come to the third winning question about Microcosm. Kenatiod writes,
Long ago, in bacteriology class, the teacher (an ex-nun at an ex-Catholic college) was telling us about the type "F" pili that are used to pass DNA so coli can have sex. One of the students asked "Why do they call them type F?" The teacher started to answer, but stopped, and then she turned bright red. The class start laughing, and then she did as well, and then someone asked, "What other kinds of pili are there?" She pulled herself together, said "Thank you" and class continued.
I would like to know both the answer…
loom | May 9, 2008Here's the second winning question about Microcosm, from Kevin:
E. coli is a bacteria commonly found in the intestines of some animals. What distinguishes the common and harmless strains from those that can cause illness and death?
A lot of people asked this question in the contest. But my sense is that most people think that E. coli is just a nasty germ. When I would tell people I was going to write about E. coli, they thought I was going to pen an expose of the food industry. It came as a surprise to them when I told them that they were carrying billions of E. coli inside them. [More below…
loom | May 9, 2008If you're just tuning in, on Tuesday I offered five free signed copies of my new book Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life to readers if they sent in a question. I was quite stoked to see the huge reaction. I can tell from the quality of the questions that the sheer volume was not just the result of the lust for a free book. While I can only answer five questions today, I think most people who asked one will find that parts of the book touch on it.
So--without further ado, let's dive in. (This is the first of five posts I'll deliver today.)
1. Frank asks:
Why E. coli? From a…
loom | May 8, 2008Thanks to everyone who submitted the 240 or so questions about Microcosm, E. coli, and life in general. I'll pick five of them tonight and answer them tomorrow and start signing copies for the winners. And if you didn't enter, why not considering getting a copy anyway?
loom | May 8, 2008From the blog of Steven Johnson, author of The Ghost Map and Mind Wide Open
Go Buy Microcosm Right Now
Carl Zimmer may be my favorite science writer around today (others seem to agree), so I'm excited to report that his new book Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life hit the shelves yesterday. I had the opportunity to read it in manuscript form, and it's really an exceptional book -- what Carl calls an "(un)natural history of E. coli" -- the world's most famous microbe. Having just published a book that partially starred a bacterium myself, I know how hard it is to make a book about…
loom | May 8, 2008Just a quick reminder--I'll be keeping the contest for a free autographed copy of Microcosm till 5 pm this afternoon. Think of a question about E. coli (and what it can say about life itself), and get in the running for a signed book. I'll post answers to the winning responses tomorrow by noon.
(Thanks to PZ Myers for a link from Pharyngula).
loom | May 8, 2008In case you missed it, there's a great article in Smithsonian about hyena intelligence, focusing on the work of Kay Holekamp, the subject of my recent piece in the New York Times. The author, Steve Kemper, spent time with Holekamp in hyena country in Kenya, seeing just how brutal (and fascinating) life as a spotted hyena can be.
Smithsonian Magazine | Science & Nature | Who's Laughing Now?
update: link fixed.
loom | May 7, 2008by the old man of the blogs, Andrew Sullivan, and even the editorial page of the New York Times. Who knew a few clever flies could win so many friends?
loom | May 6, 2008I'm in a celebratory mood. Microcosm is published today. In my mind, I can see the books moving out of warehouses onto trucks, off to book stores and front door steps. This morning I read a great review from Mykola Bilokonsky at Newsvine. ("What are you waiting for?" he asks.) And tonight I'll be having a little get-together, with the weather cooperating in splendid fashion. To spread the cheer, let me invite you to participate in a contest to win a copy of Microcosm that I will personally sign.
To enter, you just need to ask a Microcosm-related question in the comment thread. My book is…
loom | May 5, 2008In tomorrow's New York Times, I take a look at the evolution of intelligence. Or rather, I look at its flip side. Scientists and the rest of us are obsessed with intelligence--not just the intelligence of our own species, but any glimmer of intelligence in other animals. I've written plenty of stories myself on this research, from the social brilliance of hyenas to the foresight of birds. But if these faculties are so great, then why aren't more animals smart? The answer, experiments suggest, is that learning and memory have nasty side-effects. They can even shorten your life (at least if you…
loom | May 5, 2008Tomorrow is the publication date of Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life. I'll be celebrating by sending out some signed copies (details tomorrow), but in the meantime, here's an interview that just came out this morning about the book over at Newsvine, on the nature of life, how to navigate without a brain, and nature's indifference to the "natural."
Newsvine - Interview: Carl Zimmer, Author of Microcosm
Update 1 pm: This is cool. MSNBC (which owns Newsvine) put the interview on their science page.
loom | April 30, 2008In my last post I wrote about how scientists are learning about the origin of animals by studying their genomes. One of the surprising findings of the latest research is that a group of animals called comb jellies (ctenophores) belong to the oldest lineage of living animals. Comb jellies look a bit like jellyfish--soft, tentacled creatures without brains or eyes but with a nervous system. As I wrote in the Boston Globe Monday, earlier studies had generally pointed to sponges as belonging to the oldest lineage. If comb jellies take their place, that may mean that the ancestors of sponges lost…
loom | April 28, 2008Today in the Boston Globe, I write about how scientists are revising their understanding of the evolution of animals, thanks to more DNA and more weird animals. My favorite quote comes from biologist Mark Pallen, who says that the human genome would have been worthless without understanding how humans are related to other animals.
Unfortunately, this research has been subject to some poor reporting, and to some distortions from creationists. Ryan Gregory and Troy Britain set them straight, respectively.
loom | April 24, 2008I recorded a video for my Facebook page about the Microcosm book tour, which I've cloned below. Still fine-tuning my video interfaces...how does YouTube embed, compared to blip.tv?
loom | April 21, 2008
With two weeks to go till Microcosm's publication date, I'm happy to direct your attention to an adapted excerpt that's running in tomorrow's New York Times. In this passage, I discuss what I like to call E. coli's fingerprints.
We like to think that genes equal identity. If that were true, then a colony of genetically identical E. coli should be nothing but a robot army of clones. But diversity rules E. coli's world, because there's more to life than DNA, even when you're just a microbe. Check it out.
I've also set up some pages over at carlzimmer.com with news, reviews, and other…
loom | April 19, 2008
Click here to watch it on blip.tv (you can even watch in full screen, if you dare...)
loom | April 18, 2008 NOTE: I'VE SET UP A FLASH VERSION OF THIS TALK HERE. DON'T BOTHER TRYING TO DOWNLOAD THE QUICKTIME VERSION I DESCRIBED IN THIS POST.
Recently I gave the Discovery Lecture at Carleton University in Ottawa, in which I talked about new developments in evolutionary biology. They sent me a DVD of the talk, and I got a lunatic notion in my head that I would figure out how to get all Web Two-Point-O-Ee and post the lecture online. They told me to go ahead as long as I put a watermark on. Ever eager to waste time, I slowly figured out how to do that on QuickTime. Then I uploaded it to blip.tv,…
loom | April 18, 2008In my new Dissection column over at Wired, I take a look at a remarkable new experiment on E. coli. Scientists randomly rewired the network of genes that control much of the microbe's activity and found that it generally just kept humming along.
One thing worth adding...in an accompanying commentary, Matthew Bennett and Jeff Hasty at UCSD write,
This conclusion also flies in the face of the popular misconception among opponents of the evolutionary theory, who believe that the genetic code is irreducibly complex. For instance, advocates of 'intelligent design' compare the genome to modern…