This Week in Evolution

Rich Condit joins Nels and Vincent to explain how a vaccinia virus protein customizes ribosomes to favor the translation of viral mRNAs with a stretch of A residues in the 5'-untranslated region.

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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• Rich Condit with Harry Noller (scroll down)
• Trans-Kingdom mimicry? (Nature)
• More on RACK1 (Nat Struct Mol Biol)
• Image credit
• Letters read on TWiEVO 21

This episode is brought to you by Blue Apron. Blue Apron is the #1 fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service in the country. See what's on the menu this week and get your first 3 meals free with your first purchase – WITH FREE SHIPPING – by going to blueapron.com/twie.

Rich - Sniffing out significant "Pee values" Nels - Cuttlefish mimicking a hermit crab (evolutionary context) Vincent - Our first bioRxiv submission!

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Nels and Vincent explore the role of TSR proteins during colonization of cnidarians by dinoflagellates.

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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• TSR domain proteins in cnidarian-dinoflagellate symbiosis
• A. elegantissima image credit
• Letters read on TWiEVO 20

Nels - CRISPR 5 ways Vincent - The Vital Question by Nick Lane

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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Jonathan Weiner, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Beak of the Finch, joins Nels and Vincent to talk about his career and his writing.

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Jonathan Weiner

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• Jonathan's Columbia University page
• Jonathan's author page

Nels - The Gap by Ira Glass Vincent - EPA removes climate science site

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to [email protected]

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guests: Ni-Chen 'Sylvia' Chang, Waring 'Buck' Trible, and Sean K. McKenzie

Buck and Sean join Vincent in New York, while Sylvia is with Nels in Salt Lake City to discuss the first mutant ant ever made: disruption of orco, a gene required for function of odorant receptors, show defects in social behavior and fitness.

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• First ant mutants link odorant receptors and social behavior (bioRxiv)
• Kronauer Lab

This episode is brought to you by Blue Apron. Blue Apron is the #1 fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service in the country. See what’s on the menu this week and get your first 3 meals free with your first purchase – WITH FREE SHIPPING – by going to blueapron.com/twie.

Nels - Urban Nature and What Makes a City Ant? Vincent - Animations from WEHI

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to [email protected]

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Stephen Goff

Nels joins Vincent in New York City to speak with Stephen Goff about transmissible clam cancers and the silencing of integrated retroviral genomes.

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• A sixth modality of infectious disease (PLoS Path)
• Horizontal transmission of clam cancer (Cell)
• Transmissible bivalve cancers (Nature)
• Retrovirus transcriptional silencing (J Virol)
• Histones on retroviral DNA (Cell Host Micr)
• Image credit

This episode is brought to you by Blue Apron. Blue Apron is the #1 fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service in the country. See what’s on the menu this week and get your first 3 meals free with your first purchase – WITH FREE SHIPPING – by going to blueapron.com/twie.

Nels - Mindsuckers Vincent - What is a species?

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Nels and Vincent reveal how introns - the parts of pre-mRNAs that are removed by splicing - were generated by DNA transposons in two different picoeukaryotes.

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• Introns from DNA transposons (Nature)
• Reverse transcription and integration lecture
• Image: Elde Lab Mobile Studios on location in Santa Fe, NM
• Letters read on TWiEVO 16

This episode is brought to you by Blue Apron. Blue Apron is the #1 fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service in the country. See what’s on the menu this week and get your first 3 meals free with your first purchase – WITH FREE SHIPPING – by going to blueapron.com/twie.

Nels - Did eukaryotes invent anything? (TWiM 144) Vincent - Virology course online

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to [email protected]

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Hopi Hoekstra

Nels and Vincent speak with Hopi Hoekstra about her career and the work of her laboratory on developmental mechanisms of stripe patterns in rodents. 

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• Hoekstra Laboratory
• Hopi on Twitter
• Mechanisms of stripe patterns in rodents (Nature)
• Image credit
• Letters read on TWiEVO 15

This episode is brought to you by Blue Apron. Blue Apron is the #1 fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service in the country. See what’s on the menu this week and get your first 3 meals free – WITH FREE SHIPPING – by going to blueapron.com/twie.

Hopi -Diversify EEB, Anne's List Nels - Celebration for Harry Noller Vincent - Biological Warfare, Virus Style (journal article)

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to [email protected]

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guests: Jessica Brown, Michael Kay, Wayne Potts, June Round, and Janis Weis

From the Microbial Pathogenesis Retreat of the University of Utah School of Medicine, held at the Utah Museum of Natural History, Nels and Vincent speak with faculty members about their work on bacteria, fungi, viruses, and mirror-image biochemistry.

Watch video of this episode at YouTube

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This episode is sponsored by CuriosityStream, a subscription streaming service that offers over 1,400 documentaries and non­fiction series from the world’s best filmmakers. Get unlimited access starting at just $2.99 a month, and for our audience, the first two months are completely free if you sign up at curiositystream.com/microbe and use the promo code MICROBE.

Nels - An Open Letter to My Class Vincent - The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to [email protected]

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Corrie Moreau

Corrie joins Nels and Vincent to talk about her comparative analysis of the genomes of mutualist ants that nest in plants, and non-symbiotic species.

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• Moreau Laboratory
• Different rates of evolution in ant-plant mutualisms (Nat Commun)
• Image credit

This episode is sponsored by CuriosityStream, a subscription streaming service that offers over 1,400 documentaries and non­fiction series from the world’s best filmmakers. Get unlimited access starting at just $2.99 a month, and for our audience, the first two months are completely free if you sign up at curiositystream.com/microbe and use the promo code MICROBE.

Nels - Mind-melting animated gifs Vincent - Parasites Without BordersCorrie - Brain Scoop with Emily Graslie

Chris - Shark weapons

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to [email protected]

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Josh Drew

Josh joins Nels and Vincent to talk about his research on the evolution and conservation of aquatic tropical  biodiversity, and the historical ecology of 19th century American Whalers.

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• Drew Laboratory at Columbia University
• American Whalers by Ed Yong
• Karen Bao
• Sea cucumber genome
• Sea cucumber population connectivity (Nature)

This episode is sponsored by CuriosityStream, a subscription streaming service that offers over 1,400 documentaries and non­fiction series from the world’s best filmmakers. Get unlimited access starting at just $2.99 a month, and for our audience, the first two months are completely free if you sign up at curiositystream.com/microbe and use the promo code MICROBE.

This episode is also sponsored by Drobo, a family of safe, expandable, yet simple to use storage arrays. Drobos are designed to protect your important data forever. Visit www.drobo.com to learn more.

Nels - Dr. Mary-Claire King at World Science Festival Vincent - Contagious ThinkingJosh - Diversify EEB

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to [email protected]