Nels and Vincent provide an update on cases of monkeypox, and summarize a biochemical view of three changes in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that may balance positive and negative selection.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels – Science on the Side podcast by Morgan Nelson and Ty Chiaro
Vincent – Richard Ernst Lecture 2022
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Nels and Vincent review three aspects of SARS-CoV-2: phylogenetics of Omicron, a two-step fitness selection for variants, and putative RNA insertions from host genomes.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels – Plant virus satellite accelerates wing formation in insect
Vincent – A plant virus that switched to vertebrates
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Nels and Vincent discuss evolutionary evidence for an epidemic of coronavirus infection over 20,000 years ago in East Asia, and reconstruction of the membrane differences between bacteria and Archaea reveals unexpected differences in permeability.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels – Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science
Vincent – Virology Live
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Carl Zimmer joins Nels to talk about science writing, science communication, viruses, and his new book, On Life’s Edge.
Host: Nels Elde
Guest: Carl Zimmer
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Nels – Remembrance of Dick Lewontin
Carl – From telomere to telomere: the transcriptional and epigenetic state of human repeat elements
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Nels and Vincent discuss the identification of novel bat coronaviruses that shed light on the evolution of SARS-CoV-2, dating the first cases of COVID-19 to mid-November 2019, and recovery of deleted genome sequences from early in the Wuhan outbreak.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels – The Last—And Only—Foreign Scientist in the Wuhan Lab Speaks Out
Vincent – Human Behavior During the Pandemic Is More Important Than Any Covid Variant
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Nels and Vincent explain a new method for calculating the most recent common ancestor of SARS-CoV-2, which concludes that the ancestral virus was circulating in October/November 2019, before its first detection in China.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels – Ed Yong pandemic trauma and We’re Not Ready for the Next Pandemic
Vincent – Furin cleavage site is not a smoking gun
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Nels and Vincent review a preprint demonstrating that changes in the genomes of the SARS-CoV-2 variants B1.351 and P.1 allow the viruses to reproduce in mouse cells in culture and in laboratory mice.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels – Billion years of plate tectonics
Vincent – Sapiens a Graphic History by Yuval Noah Harari
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Nels and Vincent review evidence that a single amino acid change in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein has driven adaptation to humans, followed by an update on the status of variants of concern.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels – Radio Garden
Vincent – Our World in Data – Coronavirus
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Nels and Vincent consider evolution of antibody immunity to SARS-CoV-2, and update the situation on novel virus variants of concern with potentially altered fitness and reactivity with antibodies.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels – Biden Administration PCAST and The Hill We Climb
Vincent – Four inaugural quotations – Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Biden
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Daniel joins Nels and Vincent to discuss his new book on army ants, the wickedest insects ever to roam the planet, and his research on them and clonal raider ants.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Guest: Daniel Kronauer
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Daniel – Desert Navigator by Rüdiger Wehner and Insects of Suriname by Maria Sibylla Merian
Nels – NPR Scicommers
Vincent – The Vintage Beauty Of Soviet Control Rooms
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Nels and Vincent discuss an opinion piece on 12 evolutionary insights into how the COVID-19 pandemic is shaping human nature, and prolonged SARS-CoV-2 reproduction in an immunosuppressed patient.
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Nels – Scott Edwards bikes across US; support diversity in evolution
Vincent – 30 computers sculpture project
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On the fifth anniversary of TWiEVO, Nels and Vincent invite 12 evolutionary biologists to describe exciting future directions for the field and their laboratory in the next five years.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Guests: Lillian Fritz Laylin, Talia Karasov, Andrew Kern, Sarah Tishkoff, Dmitri Petrov, Nancy Chen, Amanda Larracuente, John McCutcheon, Ambika Kamath, Chip Aquadro, Rebekah Rogers, Yaniv Braindvain, and Harmit Malik
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Science Picks
Nels - Science Mill Virtual Tour and Benefit
Vincent - Das Coronavirus summaries
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Nels and Vincent answer listener questions and discuss a newly discovered virus of amoeba with a nearly complete ORFan genome: none of the proteins encoded in the viral genome look like any other proteins.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Links for this episode
Science Picks
Nels - Blog by Ambika Kamath
Vincent - TWiVerse
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Simon and Heather join TWiEVO to discuss their analysis of the evolutionary history of ACE2 usage by coronaviruses in the Sarbecovirus genus.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Guests: Simon Anthony and Heather Wells
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Jessie, Allie and Tyler join Nels and Vincent to describe their work on deep mutational scanning of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Guests: Jesse Bloom, Allie Greaney, and Tyler Starr
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Nels and Vincent continue their discussion of SARS-CoV-2 evolution, with a report that the coronavirus proofreading enzyme stimulates RNA recombination, and debunking the conclusion that a change in the viral spike glycoprotein is associated with increased human to human transmission.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels - In Memoriam: Gordon Lark
Vincent - John Oliver Discussion of Antibody Tests
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Nels and Vincent continue their discussion of SARS-CoV-2 from an evolutionary viewpoint, including function of the furin cleavage site, whether Vervet cells are an informative system, another bat isolate, and a nomenclature to assist genomic epidemiology.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels - EvoEco seminars
Vincent - Coronavirus book for children
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Nels and Vincent dive deep into evolution and consider how new proteins emerged billions of years ago, when there were no other proteins to serve as starting material.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels - Universal principled review
Vincent - Hostile Planet by National Geographic
Courtney - Nightwish Endless Forms Most Beautiful and Shudder Before The Beautiful
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Nels and Vincent trace the origins of Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains used to make beer, and find that ales and lagers are made with yeasts that were derived from those used to make European grape wine and Asian rice wine.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels - Population fluctuations in 10 biggest cities
Vincent - 1.7 million year old rhino tooth (original Nature paper)
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At ASM Microbe in San Francisco, Nels and Vincent meet up with Talia Karasov who reveals that in contrast to agriculture, wild plants are colonized by multiple lineages of pathogenic bacteria.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Guest: Talia Karasov
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Dustin Rubinstein joins Nels and Vincent to discuss coevolution of genome architecture and social behavior, and studying social transitions in sponge-dwelling snapping shrimp.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Guest: Dustin Rubinstein
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Dustin- Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies 1 by E.O. Wilson, and The Human Swarm by Mark O. Moffett
Nels- For Love of Insects by Thomas Eisner
Vincent- Quacks blamed for Pakistan HIV-1 outbreak
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Nels and Vincent explore the evolution of new protein-coding genes de novo from nocoding DNA sequences, using the antifreeze protein of northern codfish as a model.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels- Science at Sundance reviews
Vincent- The Rise and Fall of Scientific Authority
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Nels and Vincent move back to reproductive isolation - this time, pre-zygotic, in the charismatic orchid bee where the males make chemically distinct perfumes to attract mates of the same species.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels- Nature Zen: Orchid Bees Are Shiny
Vincent- What You Believe About Science Denial May Be All Wrong
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Nels and Vincent look at the intracellular bacteria Legionella from an evolutionary perspective: the role of gene acquisition and reshuffling from plants, animals, fungi, and archaea in the emergence of human pathogens.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels - Science in Film (twitter)
Vincent - Lunar Eclipse 101
Nels and Vincent reveal a highly conserved protein that acts as an evolvability factor, increasing mutation and the ability of bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
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Nels- Science/nature illustrator/artist Rachel Ignotofsky (website, Etsy shop)
Vincent- Life Ascending by Nick Lane
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