TWiEVO 93: Faster than a speeding bacteria

Nels and Vincent review a collision of synthetic biology and experimental evolution, using a minimal synthetic bacterial cell with only 473 genes, the smallest genome of any known organism that can be grown in lab culture.

 

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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• Evolution of a minimal cell (Nature) 6:10, 20:51

Science Picks 1:24:18

Nels – Life magnified stamp collection

Vincent – Matters Microbial

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TWiEVO 92: There’s algae in the jar

Nels and Vincent explain a study of how interspecies competition between two algae influences evolution of metabolism and size.

 

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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• Metabolic evolution during competition (Curr Biol) 7:56

Science Picks 1:26:59

Nels – How amino acids got their names (Source)

Vincent – EVs Fix One Pollution Problem—And Worsen Another

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TWiEVO 91: Meet your very distant cousins

Nels and Vincent discuss new findings using phylogenetic approaches about how complex eukaryotic cells emerged from prokaryotic ancestors, which firmly place eukaryotes as a clade nested within the Asgard archaea.

 

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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Download TWiEVO 91  (61 MB .mp3, 101 min)
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•Heimdallarchaeial ancestry of eukaryotes (Nature) 7:43

Science Picks 1:23:25

Nels – Juneteenth issue of Cell – collection of essays from black and brown scientists

Vincent – Tara Oceans

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TWiEVO 90: The mystery of the mouse mummies

Nels and Vincent provide insights into the mystery of mouse mummies on the summits of >6000 m Andean volcanoes, including whether they were living there and if so why?

 

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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Download TWiEVO 90  (61 MB .mp3, 101 min)
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•Mystery of mouse mummies (bioRxiv) 10:16

Science Picks 1:19:04

Nels – Zoonomia
Vincent – SeaPhages

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TWiEVO 89: On the outer rim of tumor evolution

Nels and Vincent discuss the observation that cells on a boundary of a solid tumor have higher growth rates compared to those in the center and how to model this difference using genome sequencing data.

 

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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•Evolutionary models of solid tumor growth (Nat Ecol Evol) 10:36

Science Picks 1:31:16

Nels – TWiV 1000
Vincent – The dream of wiping out polio might need a rethink

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TWiEVO 88: Dog days of evolution in the shadows of Chernobyl

Nels and Vincent review a study of the dogs of Chernobyl which reveals that genetically distinct populations with different amounts of western breed contributions to their genomes, the first step in assessing the effects of exposure to long-term ionizing radiation.

 

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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•The dogs of Chernobyl (Science Adv) 8:20
•What the dogs of Chernobyl can teach us (Stat) 8:42
•Letters read on TWiEVO 88 57:20

Science Picks 1:06:39

Nels – Hellbent documentary and Insufficient evidence for natural selection associated with the Black Death
Vincent – BioRender

Listener Pick

Walter – Oded Rechavi and interview

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TWiEVO 87: Nathan Clark’s revolutionary hair care advice

Nathan joins Nels and Vincent to discuss his approach to understanding how species adopt novel traits to overcome challenges, and its application to identifying coding and noncoding sequence changes that underlie mammalian hairlessness.

 

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Nathan Clark

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•Gene loss in marine mammals (TWiEVO 34) 
•Gene change underlying mammalian hair loss (eLife) 32:57
•Letters read on TWiEVO 87 1:25:01

Science Picks 1:15:57

Nels – Local news coverage of Amanda, Maria, and Nathan’s paper
Vincent – Discovering Retroviruses by Anna Marie Skalka
Nathan – Genomics of Secondarily Temperate Adaptation in the Only Non-Antarctic Icefish

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TWiEVO 86: Pulling out the stops in genetic code evolution

Nels and Vincent discuss how evolution of changes in stop codon assignment might occur, and a novel mechanism for altering the meaning of translation stop codons discovered in a trypanosomatid with the apropos name, Blastocrithidia nonstop.

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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•Join the MicrobeTV Discord server 1:41:59
•Novel stop codon reassignment mechanisms (Nature) 9:15

Science Picks 1:31:02

Nels – Protein Synthesis: An epic on the cellular level 

Vincent – Widespread stop-codon recoding in bacteriophages may regulate translation of lytic genes discussed on TWiM 277

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TWiEVO 85: Teaching old dogs new genetic tricks

Nels and Vincent discuss the use of genome sequence data for over 4,000 domestic, semi-feral, and wild canids to understand the genetic drivers of canine behavior.

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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Science Picks 1:28:05

Nels – Ghosts of Science Past Still Haunt Us by C. Brandon Ogbunu
Vincent – The Biggest Ideas in the Universe by Sean Carroll

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TWiEVO 84: Decoding our defenses to the Black Death

Nels and Vincent review the use of ancient DNA to identify loci that may have been under selection during the Black Death by studying populations before, during, and after the pandemic.

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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Science Picks 1:17:28

Nels – Interview with Paul Turner in Current Biology and Map of the World if you are a fish
Vincent – Smallpox and its eradication

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