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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
TWiEVO 7: Pigeon fashion week, feathery boots edition
- April 23, 2016
- Tagged as: chicken, Darwin, evolution, feathered feet, limb development, limb identity, pigeon, scaled feet
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.
Nels and Vincent continue with an emerging sub-theme of TWiEVO – organisms with wings – as they reveal enhancer shuffling as a mechanism for producing diverse butterfly wing patterns.
TWiEVO 5: Looking at straw colored fruit bats through a straw
- February 20, 2016
- Tagged as: bat, Ebolavirus, filovirus, host-virus conflict, NPC1, positive selection, receptor, viral, virology, virus, virus entry, viruses
Sara and Kartik join Nels and Vincent to talk about how the filovirus receptor NPC1 regulates Ebolavirus susceptibility in bats.
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.
TWiEVO 3: Recombination is for the birds
- January 9, 2016
- Tagged as: breakpoint, DNA, evolution, finches, genome, hotspots, meiosis, Molly Przeworski, PRDM9, rearrangment, recombination, SPO11, yeast
Nels and Vincent discuss the evolution of recombination in the genomes of birds and yeast.