This Week in Evolution

Episode

TWiEVO 6: Butterflies are free to shuffle

March 18, 2016
Tagged as: adaptive radiation, butterfly, dennis-ray pattern, enhancer shuffling, evolution, Heliconus, introgression, species, transcription factor, wing pattern

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.

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Download TWiEVO 6 (75 MB .mp3, 103 min)
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Links for this episode

Enhancer shuffling for butterfly wing patterns (PLoS Biol)
Batesian mimicry (Wikipedia)
Müllerian mimicry (Wikipedia)
Image credit
Letters read on TWiEVO 6

Science Picks

Nels – Hill Country Science Mill
Vincent – The Butterfly Conservatory

Listener Pick

Stephen – Darwin Legacy

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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Episode

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

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guests: Kartik Chandran and Sara Sawyer

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

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Download TWiEVO 5 (73 MB .mp3, 98 min)
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Links for this episode

Sara on TWiV #193
Kartik on TWiV #314
NPC1 and bat susceptibility to Ebolaviruses (eLife)
Molecular spandrels and evolution (Nat Rev Gen)
Letters read on TWiEVO 5

Science Picks

Nels – Sundance Film Festival and Meru
Vincent – Quanta podcast (iTunes)
Sara – Isolation of Marburg viruses from fruit bats

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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Straw colored bat

Maryska Kaczmarek (a first author on the ELife paper), Nick Meyerson (rock god and science god), and Sara Sawyer

Esther Ndungo and Melinda Ng (co-first authors on eLife paper) and Kartik Chandran.

Episode

TWiEVO 4: Taking the mystery out of the mystery of mysteries

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.

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Download TWiEVO 4 (70 MB .mp3, 95 min)
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Links for this episode

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

Science Picks

Nels – Watercolor of Darwin and crew
Vincent – SpaceX rocket landing (Verge and ArsTechnica)
Nitin – 120th anniversary of Roentgen’s first X-ray

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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Episode

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

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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

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Download TWiEVO 3 (61 MB .mp3, 82 min)
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Links for this episode

Stable recombination hotspots in birds (Science)
Putting the breaks on meiosis (Science)
Evolutionary stability of recombination in yeast (Science)
Image credit
Letters read on TWiEVO 3

Science Picks

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

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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Episode

TWiEVO 2: Faster than a speeding virus

December 26, 2015
Tagged as: APOBEC, enzyme, evolution, HIV, human immunodeficiency virus, mutation, mutation rate, viral, virology, virus, viruses

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.

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Links for this episode

Cell defense enzyme drives high HIV mutation rate (PLoS Biol)
High mutation rate of HIV in vivo (PLoS Biol) 8:58, 20:55, 35:24
High viral mutation rates are beneficial (virology blog)
Image credit

Science Picks 57:22

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

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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Episode

TWiEVO 1: When (scientific) worlds collide

December 12, 2015
Tagged as: arms races, biology, Darwin, evo-devo, evolution, evolutionary, genome, genotype, phenotype, species

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Nels and Vincent launch a new podcast on evolution, and start by discussing how the field has changed through recent mergers of evolutionary and experimental biology in the post-genome era.

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Download TWiEVO 1 (55 MB .mp3, 74 min)
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Links for this episode

Elde Laboratory 3:00
Nels on TWiV 234 1:29
Mechanistic approaches to the study of evolution (Nat Rev Gen) 21:20, 28:07, 45:42
Australian sheep blowfly (Wikipedia)
Hopi Hoekstra 56:34

Science Picks 1:06:59

Nels – Your inner fish (video stream, Shubin website)
Vincent – Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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TWiEVO 6: Butterflies are free to shuffle

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TWiEVO 5: Looking at straw colored fruit bats through a straw

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Science Picks

TWiEVO 4: Taking the mystery out of the mystery of mysteries

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TWiEVO 3: Recombination is for the birds

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TWiEVO 2: Faster than a speeding virus

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Science Picks 57:22

TWiEVO 1: When (scientific) worlds collide

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Science Picks 1:06:59

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