The Loom

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The Loom

More Stories, Always More Stories

After a long stretch of quiet here on the Loom, I wanted to let you know what I’ve been up to, and what I’m going to be up to over the next couple years. I’ve got some new projects afoot. 1. Each week I’ve continued to write my “Matter” column for the New York Times, […]…
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The Loom

Fighting the Second Skeleton

Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva is an incredibly rare disease, striking just one out of every two million people. It’s also an incredibly astonishing disease. A single mutation to a single gene causes muscles to spontaneously turn into new bones. Over time, people with fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP for short) grow a second skeleton–one that can cut their lives […]…
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The Loom

Of CRISPR and dragons

The good folks of Radiolab and I sat down to talk about the past and future of everyone’s favorite gene-editing tool, CRISPR. Listen here!…
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The Loom

Please Welcome Robert Krulwich to Phenomena!

Robert Krulwich is a host of the show Radiolab, but he’s also a blogger, having written many posts over the years for National Public Radio. I’m delighted to welcome Robert to Phenomena, which is host to his new blog, “Curiously Krulwich.” (Full disclosure: I’ve known Robert for a long time. We first met to hunt for autumn leaves in my […]…
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The Loom

Save the Zombie-Makers!

Parasites may seem too gross or too wicked to be worth saving from extinction. Or they may just seem so skilled in their sinister arts that we don’t have to worry about them, since they’ll always find a new victim. In fact, parasites warrant our concern, right along with their hosts. That’s not to say that […]…
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The Loom

The Mystery of Kangaroo Adoptions

When you spend six years watching kangaroos, you start to see some strange things. From 2008 to 2013, Wendy King, a doctoral student at the University of Queensland, and her colleagues studied wild grey kangaroos in a national park in Victoria, Australia. All told, King and her colleagues studied 615 animals–194 adult females, and 326 juveniles, known as […]…
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The Loom

Bamboo Mathematicians

In the late 1960s, a species of bamboo called Phyllostachys bambusoides–commonly known as the Chinese Mainland Bamboo or Japanese Timber Bamboo–burst into flower. The species originated in China, was introduced to Japan, and later into the United States and other countries. And when I say it flowered, I mean it flowered everywhere. Forests of the […]…
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The Loom

Can Scientists Turn Birds Back Into Dinosaur Ancestors?

We know they evolved from dinosaurs about 150 million years ago, but it remains to be discovered precisely how the DNA of ground-running dinosaurs changed–a transformation that turned arms into wings, produced aerodynamic feathers, and created a beak. It’s possible that some clues to those genetic changes can be found in living birds themselves. By blocking some of […]…
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The Loom

Talking About Editing Human Embryos on the Radio

This morning I went on the NPR show “On Point” to talk about using CRISPR to edit embryos. I’ve embedded it below, and you can also listen to it at this link. It was fascinating to listen to my fellow guests. Nobel-prize winner Craig Mello basically said that if we can make it safe, then […]…
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The Loom

Editing Human Embryos: So This Happened

Earlier this week, Chinese researchers reported that they edited the genes of human embryos using a new technique called CRISPR. While these embryos will not be growing up into genetically modified people, I suspect this week will go down as a pivotal moment in the history of medicine. David Cyranoski and Sara Reardon broke the news today […]…
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The Loom

When Darwin Met Another Ape

On March 28, 1838, Charles Darwin paid a visit to the London Zoo. At age 29, he was far from the scientific celebrity he would eventually become. It had only been two years since his return from his round-the-world voyage on the Beagle, and he was still methodically working his way through the heap of fossils and living […]…
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The Loom

Why Do We Get Allergies?

The more you think about sickness and health, the trickier it gets to draw a clean line between them. We tend to think of ourselves as being prepared by nature for a good life. If we can just keep bacteria and viruses from killing us, and avoid walking into open elevator shafts, we’ll live a long, […]…
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The Loom

Please Welcome Maryn McKenna to Phenomena!

Today, Phenomena gains a phenomenal new member: Maryn McKenna. If you’ve read her books such as Superbug or kept up with her blog of the same name, you know that nobody does a better job of analyzing the threats we face from infectious diseases. To celebrate the launch of “Germination,” her blog here at Phenomena, I asked […]…
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The Loom

Lemon-Scented Malaria

Parasites are life’s great success story, abundant in both species and sheer numbers. One secret to their success is the ability that many parasites have to manipulate their hosts. By pulling strings like a puppet master, they use their hosts to advance towards their own goal of planetary conquest. Creepy is the best word to describe […]…
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The Loom

Whales on the Wrong Side of the World

In May 2010, a whale showed up on the wrong side of the world. A team of marine biologists was conducting a survey off the coast of Israel when they spotted it. At first they thought it was a sperm whale. But each time the animal surfaced, the more clearly they could see that it had […]…
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