Vinny Lynch joins Nels and Vincent to discuss how a zombie gene in elephants protects these large, long lived animals from cancer.
Nels and Vincent discuss a genomic analysis of the passenger pigeon, which shows that species with large and stable populations may be at risk of extinction after a sudden environmental change.
TWiEVO 24: Good viruses visiting bad neighborhoods
- October 26, 2017
- Tagged as: Coxsackievirus, evolution, influenza virus, quasispecies, sequence space, stop codon, Vignuzzi, viral, virology, virus, viruses
Marco Vignuzzi joins Nels and Vincent to discuss recent work from his laboratory on redirecting RNA virus evolution in sequence space.
TWiEVO 23: The Alus are going to be alright
- September 20, 2017
- Tagged as: Alu, DEAD box helicase, DHX9, dsRNA, evolution, genome, LINE, retroelement, retrotransposon, SINE
Nels and Vincent reveal how the protein DHX9 suppresses RNA processing defects caused by invasion of the Alu retroelement into the human genome.
Maitreya Dunham joins Nels and Vincent to explain how her laboratory uses experimental evolution to study yeast flocculation, the community-building cell aggregation trait.
TWiEVO 21: A virus with a green thumb
- July 12, 2017
- Tagged as: evolution, host shutoff, IRES, mimicry, poly(A) enhancer, poxvirus, protein kinase, RACK1, ribosome, vaccinia virus
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.
Nels and Vincent explore the role of TSR proteins during colonization of cnidarians by dinoflagellates.
Jonathan Weiner, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Beak of the Finch, joins Nels and Vincent to talk about his career and his writing.
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, causes defects in social behavior and fitness.
Nels joins Vincent in New York City to speak with Stephen Goff about transmissible clam cancers and the silencing of integrated retroviral genomes.
