TWiEVO 88: Dog days of evolution in the shadows of Chernobyl

Nels and Vincent discuss how behavioural individuality determines infection risk in clonal ant colonies.

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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Links for this episode

• Join the MicrobeTV Discord server
• Infection risk in clonal ant colonies (Nat Comm)
• Timestamps by Jolene

Science Picks

Nels – Fungi (lichens) in Space
Vincent – Polar bear energetic and behavioral strategies on land with implications for surviving the ice-free period

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Nels and Vincent review a study of the key processes required for the different stages of fungal carnivory by a nematode-trapping fungus.

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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Links for this episode

• Join the MicrobeTV Discord server
• Fungal carnivory by a nematode-trapping fungus (Plos Biol)
• Timestamps by Jolene

Science Picks

Nels – Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity
Vincent – Dana-Farber retractions: meet the blogger who spotted problems in dozens of cancer papers

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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Nels and Vincent discuss how the rewetting of seasonally dried soils, a critical event in Mediterranean grasslands that reactivates dormant soil microorganisms, leading to pulses of carbon and nitrogen mineralization, and is accompanied by a bloom of viral diversity, followed by extensive viral community turnover.

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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• Join the MicrobeTV Discord server
• Viral but not bacterial community successional patterns reflect extreme turnover shortly after rewetting dry soils

Science Picks

Nels - Bluesky
Vincent - Cancer Virus Hunters: A History of Tumor Virology

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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Nels and Vincent take apart an amazing symbiosis consisting of two bacteria, one bacteriophage, and seven different genomes all within a single-celled alga.

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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Links for this episode

•Join the MicrobeTV Discord server
•A single crowded cryptomonad cell (Curr Biol)
•Letters read on TWiEVO 94

Science Picks

Nels – What happened at NIH during the last government shutdown
Vincent – Geneticist J. Craig Venter: ‘I consider retirement tantamount to death’

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Nels and Vincent review a collision of synthetic biology and experimental evolution, using a minimal synthetic bacterial cell with only 473 genes, the smallest genome of any known organism that can be grown in lab culture.

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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•Join the MicrobeTV Discord server
• Evolution of a minimal cell (Nature)

Science Picks

Nels – Life magnified stamp collection

Vincent – Matters Microbial

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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

Nels and Vincent explain a study of how interspecies competition between two algae influences evolution of metabolism and size.

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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•Join the MicrobeTV Discord server
• Metabolic evolution during competition (Curr Biol)

Science Picks

Nels – How amino acids got their names (Source)

Vincent – EVs Fix One Pollution Problem—And Worsen Another

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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Nels and Vincent discuss new findings using phylogenetic approaches about how complex eukaryotic cells emerged from prokaryotic ancestors, which firmly place eukaryotes as a clade nested within the Asgard archaea.

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent RacanielloS

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Links for this episode

•Join the MicrobeTV Discord server
•Heimdallarchaeial ancestry of eukaryotes (Nature)

Science Picks

Nels – Juneteenth issue of Cell – collection of essays from black and brown scientists

Vincent – Tara Oceans

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Nels and Vincent provide insights into the mystery of mouse mummies on the summits of >6000 m Andean volcanoes, including whether they were living there and if so why?

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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Links for this episode

•Join the MicrobeTV Discord server
•Mystery of mouse mummies (bioRxiv)

Science Picks

Nels – Zoonomia
Vincent – SeaPhages

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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Nels and Vincent discuss the observation that cells on a boundary of a solid tumor have higher growth rates compared to those in the center and how to model this difference using genome sequencing data.

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

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Become a patron of TWiEVO

Links for this episode

•Join the MicrobeTV Discord server
•Evolutionary models of solid tumor growth (Nat Ecol Evol)

Science Picks

Nels – TWiV 1000
Vincent – The dream of wiping out polio might need a rethink

Music on TWiEVO is performed by Trampled by Turtles

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