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This Week in Evolution

This Week in Evolution is a podcast on the biology behind what makes us tick.
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Now displaying: 2016
Dec 22, 2016

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guests: Jessica BrownMichael KayWayne PottsJune Round, and Janis Weis

From the Microbial Pathogenesis Retreat of the University of Utah School of Medicine, held at the Utah Museum of Natural History, Nels and Vincent speak with faculty members about their work on bacteria, fungi, viruses, and mirror-image biochemistry.

Watch video of this episode at YouTube

 

Become a patron of TWiEVO

This episode is sponsored by CuriosityStream, a subscription streaming service that offers over 1,400 documentaries and non­fiction series from the world’s best filmmakers. Get unlimited access starting at just $2.99 a month, and for our audience, the first two months are completely free if you sign up at curiositystream.com/microbe and use the promo code MICROBE.

Science Picks

Nels - An Open Letter to My Class
Vincent - The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv

Nov 16, 2016

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Corrie Moreau

Corrie joins Nels and Vincent to talk about her comparative analysis of the genomes of mutualist ants that nest in plants, and non-symbiotic species.

 

Become a patron of TWiEVO

Links for this episode

This episode is sponsored by CuriosityStream, a subscription streaming service that offers over 1,400 documentaries and non­fiction series from the world’s best filmmakers. Get unlimited access starting at just $2.99 a month, and for our audience, the first two months are completely free if you sign up at curiositystream.com/microbe and use the promo code MICROBE.

Science Picks

Nels - Mind-melting animated gifs
Vincent - Parasites Without Borders
Corrie - Brain Scoop with Emily Graslie

Listener Pick

Chris - Shark weapons

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv

Oct 19, 2016

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Josh Drew

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.

Become a patron of TWiEVO

Links for this episode

This episode is sponsored by CuriosityStream, a subscription streaming service that offers over 1,400 documentaries and non­fiction series from the world’s best filmmakers. Get unlimited access starting at just $2.99 a month, and for our audience, the first two months are completely free if you sign up at curiositystream.com/microbe and use the promo code MICROBE.

This episode is also sponsored by Drobo, a family of safe, expandable, yet simple to use storage arrays. Drobos are designed to protect your important data forever. Visit www.drobo.com to learn more.

Science Picks

Nels - Dr. Mary-Claire King at World Science Festival
Vincent - Contagious Thinking
Josh - Diversify EEB

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv

Sep 27, 2016

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Nicole King

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.

 

Become a patron of TWiEVO

Links for this episode

This episode is sponsored by CuriosityStream, a subscription streaming service that offers over 1,400 documentaries and non­fiction series from the world’s best filmmakers. Get unlimited access starting at just $2.99 a month, and for our audience, the first two months are completely free if you sign up at curiositystream.com/microbe and use the promo code MICROBE.

This episode is also sponsored by Drobo, a family of safe, expandable, yet simple to use storage arrays. Drobos are designed to protect your important data forever. Visit www.drobo.com to learn more.

Science Picks

Nels - I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong (Fresh Air interview)
Vincent - Viral Infections of Leisure by David Schlossberg

Listener Pick

Justin - Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Sean B. Carroll

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv

Aug 13, 2016

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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.

 

Links for this episode

Science Picks

Nels - Is Pokémon Go good for science? (one, two, three)
Vincent - Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv

Become a patron of TWiEVO

Jul 5, 2016

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Jim Bull

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.

 

Links for this episode

Science Picks

Nels - Fertilization with parasitic sperm
Vincent - Undark

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv

Become a patron of TWiEVO

Jun 8, 2016

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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.

 

Links for this episode

Science Picks

Nels - DNA Clues to our Inner Neanderthal
Vincent - Blockhead

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv

Become a patron of TWiEVO

Apr 23, 2016

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Mike Shapiro

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. 

 

Links for this episode

Science Picks

Mike - Pigeon exhibit, Natural History Museum of UtahPigeonetics (App store); Darwin's Pigeons
Nels - 
National Parasite Collection
Vincent - The Story Collider

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv

Mar 19, 2016

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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.

 

Links for this episode

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

Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv

Feb 20, 2016

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guests: Kartik Chandran and Sara Sawyer

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

 

Links for this episode

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

Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv

Jan 23, 2016

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.

Links for this episode

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

Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv

Jan 9, 2016

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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

Links for this episode

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

Send your evolution questions and comments to twievo@microbe.tv

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