Darwinian

Recently a new paper by Richard Lenski and colleagues (Meyer et al 2012) appeared in Science with, as usual, commentary in the New York Times. (Lenski’s lab must own a red phone with a direct line to The Gray Lady.) The gist of the paper is that a certain bacteriophage (a virus that infects bacteria) called “lambda” gained the ability to bind a different protein on the surface of its host, the bacterium E. coli, than the protein it usually binds. The virus has to bind to the cell’s surface as a prelude to invading it. The protein it normally binds is called LamB. Lenski’s lab, however, used a bacterial strain that had turned off the production of LamB in 99% of E. coli cells but, Read More ›

The May 1st issue of Science contains a “News Focus” article entitled “On the Origin of the Immune System.” While describing some current work in the area the author, John Travis, makes liberal use of myself as an unreasonably-skeptical foil. I wrote a letter to the editor of Science pointing out inaccuracies in the story but, gee whiz, they didn’t think the letter would be of sufficient interest to their readers to print it. Below I reproduce the unpublished letter for those who might be interested in my reaction to the article. To the editor:  In his article “On the Origin of the Immune System” (Science, May 1, 2009) John Travis makes the same mistake as did the judge in the 2005 Dover trial Read More ›