Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to write anything for Inspiring Science this week, so instead I decided to link to a few of my recent posts on Accumulating Glitches instead. I wrote two posts, Tracking the Evolution of a Virus and Antibiotics and Applied Evolution, about evolutionary sories which might affect our day-to-day lives; I introducted them saying:

Most of the articles on this blog have talked about evolution as though it were somehow distant, something that happens to unfamiliar organisms and doesn’t really affect our daily lives. Nothing could be further from the truth. Evolution didn’t just shape the world around us; it continues to mold that world, casting and recasting it as creatures thrive and perish in turn. Some of these stories may seem strange and foreign, but others strike closer to home. In that spirit, I’m planning to write a few posts about evolutionary stories that might affect our day-to-day lives. The first centers around research by an international team of scientists trying to understand where the H7N9 influenza virus came from.

You might also be interested in my most recent post, which is about Epigenetics and Evolution in the great apes. Sorry for being too busy to keep up; hopefully these Accumulating Glitches will give you something to read!

Refs
Lam TT, Wang J, Shen Y, Zhou B, Duan L, Cheung CL, Ma C, Lycett SJ, Leung CY, Chen X, Li L, Hong W, Chai Y, Zhou L, Liang H, Ou Z, Liu Y, Farooqui A, Kelvin DJ, Poon LL, Smith DK, Pybus OG, Leung GM, Shu Y, Webster RG, Webby RJ, Peiris JS, Rambaut A, Zhu H, & Guan Y (2013). The genesis and source of the H7N9 influenza viruses causing human infections in China. Nature PMID: 23965623

Pena-Miller R, Laehnemann D, Jansen G, Fuentes-Hernandez A, Rosenstiel P, Schulenburg H, & Beardmore R (2013). When the most potent combination of antibiotics selects for the greatest bacterial load: the smile-frown transition. PLoS biology, 11 (4) PMID: 23630452

Shulha HP, Crisci JL, Reshetov D, Tushir JS, Cheung I, Bharadwaj R, Chou HJ, Houston IB, Peter CJ, Mitchell AC, Yao WD, Myers RH, Chen JF, Preuss TM, Rogaev EI, Jensen JD, Weng Z, & Akbarian S (2012). Human-specific histone methylation signatures at transcription start sites in prefrontal neurons. PLoS biology, 10 (11) PMID: 23185133

Hernando-Herraez I, Prado-Martinez J, Garg P, Fernandez-Callejo M, Heyn H, Hvilsom C, Navarro A, Esteller M, Sharp AJ, & Marques-Bonet T (2013). Dynamics of DNA methylation in recent human and great ape evolution. PLoS genetics, 9 (9) PMID: 24039605