The Ed's Up #54

A Flood of Borrowed Genes at the Origins of Tiny Extremists

This is a wonderful story about one domain of life driving the evolution of another. The archaea are a group of single-celled microbes that excel at growing in extreme and inhospitable places. And the origin of every major archaeal group was marked by the acquisition of bacterial genes—sometimes dozens, sometimes thousands. They borrowed, then they branched out. (Image: Jim Peace, National Park Service)
 

How Jetlag Disrupts The Ticks of Your Microbial Clock

The communities of microbes in out guts vary on a daily cycle. Some species rise to the fore during daylight hours and recede into the background at night, while others show the opposite pattern. And diet is the gear that synchronises the ticks of our clocks with those of our microbes.
 

More good reads

• Carl Zimmer returns to the world of mind-controlling parasites in the new National Geographic. It comes with the most beautiful gallery of parasites I've ever seen.
•  “You need remarkable squared—a system to mass-produce mass production.” Oliver Morton on a system for mass-producing life-saving antibodies.
• Emily Anthes delivers a detailed look at the future of insect cuisine.
• Excellence from Maryn McKenna on why people love the drama of infectious diseases, but not the detail... and why that hurts us. This is the sort of reporting you get from someone who has spent years covering a beat.
• Why some of high tech scientists can’t even microwave their own lunch. A fantastic story from Sasha Ingber.
• These tiny animals live only on driftwood. Elizabeth Preston on some marvellous little creatures.
• A year after her amazing longread on ancestry & genetics, Virginia Hughes finds the story's real end.
• Italian scientists appeal their absurd conviction for earthquake deaths. David Wolman covers the story.  
• "The beaver was screwing with me, making me worry and care about trees." A funny piece about man versus beaver, by Chris Andrade.

More good links will be released in tomorrow's linkfest on Not Exactly Rocket Science.

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And that's it! Thanks for reading.

-Ed