![]() In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. MICROCOSM CARL ZIMMER FULLA taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. Provides plenty of gee-whiz moments, but Zimmer needn’t have used every single index card from his formidable research.Ī Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence. He ends with an excursion into astrobiology and what forms life might take Out There. He rehashes the controversies over recombinant DNA and philosophizes about current concerns regarding genetically modified crops and cross-species hybridization. coli became the darling of the biotech industry when geneticists realized that they could splice human genes into the bacteria and generate useful products like insulin. In somewhat confusing order, the author piles on descriptions and digressions into feedback circuitry, bacterial sensors, bacterial and human evolution, specialization of bacteria within colonies and cooperation across species in aggregates of bacteria in “biofilms.” He explains how E. Only lactose and not glucose for food? Switch on genes that make lactose-digesting enzymes. Too hot an environment? Make heat-shock proteins. Zimmer goes on at length to describe how E. Ingenious experiments by a constellation of Nobelists including Salvador Luria, Max Delbrück and Joshua Lederberg established the startling fact that bacteria have sex that’s how they exchange genes and spread useful mutations such as resistance to antibiotics. coli and the viruses (bacteriophages) that infect it. The bug’s main claim to fame, however, is the debt owed by genetics and the biotech industry to E. coli from birth, and after settling in the gut, the bacteria forms an ecosystem with other bugs that helps us digest foods, make useful proteins and fend off pathogens. coli is the one that makes news-usually thanks to contaminated food-many strains are weak, harmless and/or helpful, notes seasoned science writer Zimmer ( Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins, 2005, etc.). It's also a story of life itself-of its rules, its mysteries, and its future.From the Hardcover edition.The author explains why that bug that lives in your intestine has been a bonanza for biologists. Microcosm is the story of the one species on Earth that science knows best of all. coli grab headlines by causing deadly diseases, scientists are retooling the bacteria to produce everything from human insulin to jet fuel. coli's remarkable history, showing how scientists used it to discover how genes work and then to launch the entire biotechnology industry. coli from the ground up, redefining our understanding of life on Earth.In the tradition of classics like Lewis Thomas's Lives of a Cell, Carl Zimmer has written a fascinating and utterly accessible investigation of what it means to be alive. coli is notorious for making people gravely ill, but engineered strains of the bacteria save millions of lives each year.-Despite its microscopic size, E.coli contains more than four thousand genes that operate a staggeringly sophisticated network of millions of molecules. They will inhabit each and every one of us until we die. Within days of being born, we are infected with billions of E. ![]()
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