This Week in Evolution

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Nicole King

Nicole joins Nels and Vincent to discuss the finding of her laboratory that multicellular development of choanoflagellates, the closest living relatives of animals, is regulated by bacterial lipids.

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• Nicole King on Twitter
• Choanoflagellate workshop
• Bacterial lipids regulate Salpingoeca development (PNAS)
• Image credit
• Letters read on TWiEVO 11

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Nels - I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong (Fresh Air interview) Vincent - Viral Infections of Leisure by David Schlossberg

Justin - Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Sean B. Carroll

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Nels and Vincent review experiments showing that the replacement of a pale moth with a black one during the industrial revolution was caused by a transposable element.

• Last experiment of Michael Majerus (Biol Lett)
• Moth melanism mutation is transposon (Nature)
• Image credit
• Letters read on TWiEVO 10

Nels - Is Pokémon Go good for science? (one, two, three) Vincent - Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Jim Bull

Nels and Vincent speak with Jim Bull about the results of genetic models which suggest that the evolution of inbreeding in response to lethal gene drive might make population control difficult to achieve.

• Lethal gene drive selects inbreeding (bioRxiv)
• Panel endorses gene drive technology (NY Times)
• Genes in Conflict by Austin Burt
• Letters read on TWiEVO 9

Nels - Fertilization with parasitic sperm Vincent - Undark

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Nels visits Vincent in the MicrobeTV studio in New York and talks about how key genes of the Homo sapiens innate immune response were acquired from Neanderthals.

• Introgressed Neanderthal haplotype at OAS locus (biorXiv)
• Genetic time travel (Genetics)
• Genetic history of Ice Age Europe (Nature)
• Letters read on TWiEVO 8

Nels - DNA Clues to our Inner Neanderthal Vincent - Blockhead

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Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Mike Shapiro

Mike joins Nels and Vincent to talk about his work on what controls whether pigeons have scaly or feathered feet, and reveals that the hindlimbs of domestic birds with feathery feet are more like wings at the molecular level. 

Mike - Pigeon exhibit, Natural History Museum of Utah; Pigeonetics (App store); Darwin's PigeonsNels - National Parasite CollectionVincent - The Story Collider

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Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Nels and Vincent continue with an emerging sub-theme of TWiEVO - organisms with wings - as they reveal how enhancer shuffling produces diverse butterfly wing patterns.

Nels - Hill Country Science MillVincent - The Butterfly Conservatory

Stephen - Darwin Legacy

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: Kartik Chandran and Sara Sawyer

Sara and Kartik join Nels and Vincent to talk about the filovirus receptor NPC1 regulates Ebolavirus susceptibility in bats.

Nels - Sundance Film Festival and MeruVincent - Quanta podcast (iTunes)Sara - Isolation of Marburg viruses from fruit bats

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Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Nitin Phadnis

Nitin joins Nels and Vincent to explain how he identified a gene that is responsible for male inviability in hybrids from a cross between two species of fruit flies.

• Cell cycle regulation gene causes hybrid inviability in fruit fly (Science)
• Phadnis laboratory
• Phadnis laboratory on Facebook
• Gene for new species discovered (UNews)
• Tardigrade HGT disputed (bioRxiv)
• Photo credit: Lee J. Siegel, University of Utah

Nels - Watercolor of Darwin and crewVincent - SpaceX rocket landing (Verge and ArsTechnica) Nitin - 120th anniversary of Roentgen's first X-ray

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Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Nels and Vincent discuss the evolution of recombination in the genomes of birds and yeast.

• Stable recombination hotspots in birds (Science)
• Putting the breaks on meiosis (Science)
• Evolutionary stability of recombination in yeast (Science)
• Image credit

Nels - Tardigrade horizontal gene transfer (The Atlantic article)Vincent - Einstein's theory of relativity changed everything

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Send your evolution questions and comments to [email protected]

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Nels and Vincent talk about how a cellular enzyme contributes to the very high mutation rate of human immunodeficiency virus type 1.

• Cell defense enzyme drives high HIV mutation rate (PLoS Biol)
• High mutation rate of HIV in vivo (PLoS Biol)
• High viral mutation rates are beneficial (virology blog)
• Image credit

Nels - Antelope Island State Park (Bison herders wanted)
Vincent - Processed meats cause cancer

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to [email protected]