The Ed's Up #82

Consider the Sponge

"Even some professional biologists disregard sponges as lowly, primitive proto-animals, sitting at the bottom of an evolutionary ladder with us on the top rung. We treat their biology as an impoverished subset of our biology. We relegate their existence to a checklist of missing traits: no limbs, muscles, nerves, or organs, and none of the tiger’s fearful symmetry. But these creatures, according to Dunn, Leys, and Haddock, are not primitive relics; they are modern animals that excel at their own particular life styles. By ignoring them, we blind ourselves to a wondrous hidden biology and get a misleading view of evolution." (Image: NOAA-OE)

Komodo dragon dissection selfie

 

More good reads

• This piece on the psychology of cuts in movies, by Jeffrey Zacks, features the work of one Professor Cutting. It’s also fascinating.
• Ancient viruses, hidden in the genome, "spring to life in the earliest stages of the development of human embryos". By Carl Zimmer.
• Hidden viruses could act as maps for forensic biologists looking to identify unknown bodies. By Rebecca Kreston.
• The rumours were true: Chinese scientists have begun modifying human embryos using CRISPR. Carl Zimmer explains how we got to here and what the developments mean.
• “Scientists should spend more time analyzing apes’ behavior in precisely those places where humans are disrupting their lives.” We are now part of their world. By Emily Anthes.
• "Technology is making it harder to differentiate between the people we perform and the people we are.” Smart Megan Garber piece on surveillance societies  
• How Philippe Jeandet tasted 170-year-old shipwrecked champagne. “Expert tasters described it as “cheesy”.” By Allie Wilkinson.
• “There’s actually no such thing as big science; we should really be calling it big engineering.” Tim Requarth on the failings of the Human Brain Project
• “A short checklist called the Static-99 weighs facts about a sex offender’s past in order to predict the likelihood of future crimes.” Those ten questions can mean a lifetime behind bars. By Peter Aldhous.
• A unique rendition of Bach’s Prelude No 1
• A volcanic eruption timelapse: "Like a violent sunrise—clouds piling six miles skyward; flecks of lightning—that evokes the creation of a planet." By Adrienne LaFrance
• "Being invisible is “great fun" but it’s an eerie sensation. It’s hard to describe." Welcome Erika Engelhaupt to the Phenomena club!

 

Book recommendation

The Vital Question, by Nick Lane is that rarest of entities: a necessary book. It tackles perhaps the ultimate question in biology--Why is life the way it is?--and puts forward a glorious, coherent argument that unfolds over hundreds of stimulating pages. It's not for the faint of heart. Lane goes deep into the weeds, but his prose is so lively, his metaphors so evocative, and his argument so compelling, that the book is worth the effort.

"There’s a black hole at the heart of biology. We do not know why complex life is the way it is, or, for that matter, how life first began. In The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a solution to conundrums that have puzzled generations of scientists.The answer, Lane argues, lies in energy: all life on Earth lives off a voltage with the strength of a lightning bolt. Building on the pillars of evolutionary theory, Lane’s hypothesis draws on cutting-edge research into the link between energy and cell biology, in order to deliver a compelling account of evolution from the very origins of life to the emergence of multicellular organisms, while offering deep insights into our own lives and deaths."

 

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