chrisdellavedova.com

Great Interview Week continues in a scientific vein today. In last week’s Nature, a paper coming out of Dee Carter’s lab at the University of Sydney described the discovery of a previously unknown marine species. That, in itself, is noteworthy. However, the organism they found – an unremarkable unicellular brown alga – turns out to be an evolutionary “missing link”.

Bob Moore (the lead author on this study), Carter and their colleagues describe Chromera velia, now the closest-known photosynthetic relative to apicomplexan parasites – including the one that causes malaria. The discovery and phylogenetic characterization of Chromera illuminates a murky step in the evolution of photosynthesis. This close evolutionary relationship also means that Chromera will be a powerful model system for studying apicomplexan diseases.

Carter took a seat on the virtual couch to discuss her group’s recent discoveries:

CDV: My readers run the gamut from working scientists to lay persons. Can you clearly and concisely explain to the latter class why they should pay attention? More on Great Interview Week: Scientific Serendipity in Sydney

“Your oldest brother was away at a home
and you didn’t meet him ’til you was nineteen years old
Old enough to know better, old enough to know better
but you took to his jaw line and long sandy hair…”

The Drive-By Truckers – “The Deeper In”

Geneticists love nothing more than a good inbred organism with which to work – yep, we’re fun people. When you’re trying to determine the genetic source of a particular trait, the less genetic variability the better. With a nicely inbred genetic model organism, the researcher can assume that when a interesting heritable trait is found that everything else is the same except for the mutation that causes that trait. So, the laboratory strains of model genetic organisms that most researchers work with tend to be highly inbred.

That’s fine for your average laboratory fruit fly, but inbreeding tends not to work so well in the wild – just take a look at the guests on the Jerry Springer Show or your average pug. More on Science Tuesday: Keepin’ It In the Family

“Thought of you as my mountain top,
Thought of you as my peak.
Thought of you as everything,
I’ve had but couldn’t keep.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.”

-The Velvet Underground – “Pale Blue Eyes”

The instant that my blue-eyed son Zach was born – to a green-eyed mother and brown-eyed father – I became interested in the genetics of human eye color. I now know, of course, that most Caucasian babies are born with blue eyes and that most of them change color before their first birthday. Nonetheless, an upcoming paper More on Science Tuesday: Pale Blue Eyes

The human genome, and most others for that matter, is a massive and complex template containing the written instructions for life. Those instructions, our complement of protein coding genes, make up only about 1.5 percent of the genome and are nestled among billions of base pairs of so-called junk DNA. This is a misnomer, however, as this “junk” contains not only parasitic DNA elements but repetitive sequences and other information crucial for many cellular processes.

A sizable chunk of the “junk” is made up of transposable elements (or transposons) – genetic elements that can move around the genome. Transposons were first identified by maize geneticist Barbara McClintock More on Science Tuesday: One Cell’s Junk Is Another Cell’s Treasure

The discovery of the New World in the 15th century presented a novel opportunity for exchange of culture, society and biology between two geographically isolated worlds. It did not go particularly well. At the human level, it has been generally accepted that the New Worlders got the short end of the stick as Europeans rained genocide down on the aboriginal cultures of the Americas. This occurred either intentionally (Pizarro’s conquest of the Incas) or unintentionally (the decimation of Mississippian cultures by smallpox). However, it seems as if at least in one case, the American cultures got a little bit of revenge that has lasted for a long time. More on Science Tuesday: Transatlantic STDs

One of my favorite parts of my job is the teaching that I get to do every year around this time. One of Oxford’s many charming idiosyncracies is the tutorial system they use for undergraduate teaching. In addition to lectures and labs, each student gets one-on-one or small group tutorials in their fields of study. Every Hillary Term (January – March) I get a number of first year undergraduates to drill on genetics. It’s a great way for them to learn (and for me to teach) – kind of the Socratic method in action – and often really good fun. Oxford is one of the best universities in the world and often I get to teach undergraduates that are incredibly bright and push me to think while teaching. This kind of intellectual challenge More on Science Tuesday on Thursday: It’s a small RNA world

“The tears on my shoulder
Freeze then boil
I wouldn’t be here
If not for your snake oil…”

-Kristin Hersh – “Snake Oil”

One side-effect of the global warming era is that if you can sell a concept or products as “green” it can go a long way. There is a green alternative for nearly every product that you use on a daily basis – from cars to toilet bowl cleaners. The good thing about this is that it encourages creative thinking to deal with what is certainly a real and dangerous problem. The flip side is that it opens the door for snake oil salesmen, those unprincipled folks that will slap the green label on their product or idea and go out looking for a rube. More on Science Tuesday: Snake Oil?

A group of German scientists published in this week’s Science their discovery of fungus preserved in Cretaceous Period amber that used a unique means of trapping its prey. This fungus used what essentially looks like a hyphal lasso to rope in its prey of choice, a species of roundworm (see the image to the right). Mostly this is just an evolutionary curiosity – and an opportunity to make jokes about moldy cowpokes. More on Science in Brief: Fungal cowboys, King Corn and ant prophylaxis

“You didn’t know how rock-n-roll looked
Until you caught your sister with the guys from the group
Halfway home in the parking lot
By the look in her eye she was giving what she got
My my my, once bitten, twice shy babe…”

Great White – “Once Bitten, Twice Shy”

Somewhere, a science reporter is missing a lead: “Scientists discover the Homer Simpson gene”. The lovable buffoon, infamous for failing to learn from his mistakes is probably More on Science Tuesday: Once bitten… twice bitten… thrice bitten… d’oh!

“All I ask for when I pray,
Steady rollin woman gonna come my way.
Need a woman gonna hold my hand
And tell me no lies, make me a happy man.”

- Led Zeppelin – “Black Dog”

I knew as soon as I saw this paper in Science this week that I wouldn’t be able to resist. More on Science Tuesday: Black Dogs