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
Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
•Join the MicrobeTV Discord server
•The dogs of Chernobyl (Science Adv)
•What the dogs of Chernobyl can teach us (Stat)
•Letters read on TWiEVO 88
Nels – Hellbent documentary and Insufficient evidence for natural selection associated with the Black Death
Vincent – BioRender
Walter – Oded Rechavi and interview
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
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
Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
•Join the MicrobeTV Discord server
•Gene loss in marine mammals (TWiEVO 34)
•Gene change underlying mammalian hair loss (eLife)
•Letters read on TWiEVO 87
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
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
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
Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
•Join the MicrobeTV Discord server
•Novel stop codon reassignment mechanisms (Nature)
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
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
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
Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Ghosts of Science Past Still Haunt Us by C. Brandon Ogbunu
Vincent – The Biggest Ideas in the Universe by Sean Carroll
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
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
Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Interview with Paul Turner in Current Biology and Map of the World if you are a fish
Vincent – Smallpox and its eradication
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
Florian Maderspacher from Current Biology joins Nels and Vincent to discuss a special issue of the journal on birds.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Guest: Florian Maderspacher
Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Florian – Favorite birds of authors/contributors in Birds issue
Nels –Loss of avian intromittent organs as a sperm competition strategy: a race to be last
Vincent – Malaria at the Bronx Zoo (TWiP 110)
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
Nels and Vincent consider evidence that a single amino acid change in the TKTL1 gene might have led to greater neurogenesis in the frontal cortex of modern humans compared with Neanderthals.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Unusual display of elements
Vincent – Sykdomspulsen and summary
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
Nels and Vincent discuss how duplication of a gene encoding a transcription factor led to evolution of a novel cell type in the slime mold Dictyostelium.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Dall-E artificial intelligence meets art
Vincent – John Bonner’s slime mold movies
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
Louise Moncla joins Nels and Vincent to review her use of genomics to understand emergence, evolution, and transmission of respiratory viruses including influenza virus H5N1, mumps virus, and SARS-CoV-2.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Guest: Louise Moncla
Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – JWST Images
Vincent – 3rd International Symposium on Infectious Diseases of Bats and Program
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
Nels and Vincent discuss an analysis of the drivers of evolution of SARS-CoV-2 during chronic infections, indicating that a tradeoff exists between antibody evasion and fitness.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Click arrow to play
Download TWiEVO 79 (103 MB .mp3, 86 min)
Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – NASA scientists say images from the Webb telescope nearly brought them to tears
Vincent – FDA: Don’t rush a move to change the Covid-19 vaccine composition
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
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
Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Science on the Side podcast by Morgan Nelson and Ty Chiaro
Vincent – Richard Ernst Lecture 2022
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
Alex joins Nels and Vincent to discuss his work which demonstrates that somatic mutation rates scale with lifespan in mammals.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Guest: Alex Cagan
Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Alex – Paper.app
Nels – Fifty years since Lewontin’s apportionment of human diversity
Vincent – An Exceptional Village
Martha – Plagues Upon the Earth by Kyle Harper
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
Nels and Vincent describe how a single amino acid change can allow E. coli to replace the essential gut symbiont of the stinkbug Plautia stali.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Click arrow to play
Download TWiEVO 75 (103 MB .mp3, 86 min)
Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Inequality in science and the case for a new agenda
Vincent – Foundations of Virology by Fred Murphy
Sam – Saturday Morning Breakfast – Evolutionist
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
Nels and Vincent review isolation of SARS-CoV-2-like viruses from bats in Laos that can replicate in human cells.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Erich Jarvis on scientists and public engagement
Vincent – Polio type 1 in Africa
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Guest: Joe Graves
Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Where is Webb?
Vincent – Black Microbiologists Association
Joe – Biology versus bias
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
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
Subscribe (free): iTunes, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Plant virus satellite accelerates wing formation in insect
Vincent – A plant virus that switched to vertebrates
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
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
Subscribe (free): iTunes, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science
Vincent – Virology Live
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
Nels and Vincent explain a method to calculate the mutation rate of SARS-CoV-2, and the role of a single amino acid change in spike in enhancing fitness of the delta variant and enabling it to out-compete the alpha variant.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Subscribe (free): iTunes, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Leading Edge Symposium
Vincent – Epidemiological and evolutionary dynamics of SARS-CoV-2
Thomas – The gene’s-eye view of evolution by J. Arvid Ågren
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
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
Subscribe (free): iTunes, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Remembrance of Dick Lewontin
Carl – From telomere to telomere: the transcriptional and epigenetic state of human repeat elements
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
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
Subscribe (free): iTunes, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
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
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
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
Subscribe (free): iTunes, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Ed Yong pandemic trauma and We’re Not Ready for the Next Pandemic
Vincent – Furin cleavage site is not a smoking gun
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
Nels and Vincent review evidence for recombinant SARS-CoV-2 genomes arising in the B.1.1.7 lineage within the United Kingdom.
Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello
Subscribe (free): iTunes, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Mars rover helicopter flight!
Vincent – TWiN 17: Worms see the light with Michael Nitabach
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
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
Subscribe (free): iTunes, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Billion years of plate tectonics
Vincent – Sapiens a Graphic History by Yuval Noah Harari
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
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
Subscribe (free): iTunes, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Radio Garden
Vincent – Our World in Data – Coronavirus
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv
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
Subscribe (free): iTunes, Google Podcasts, RSS, email
Become a patron of TWiEVO
Nels – Biden Administration PCAST and The Hill We Climb
Vincent – Four inaugural quotations – Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Biden
Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles
Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv