E-coli and The New Science of Life

Microcosm

Acclaimed science writer Carl Zimmer uses the familiar bacterium E coli as a prism to understand what life is, what it was, and what it will become.

elegant and engaging ... if you want to get a clearer idea of the sort of nature that science can now play with, this is the book for you.

It is a powerful account of the dynamic, complicated and social world we share with this ordinary yet remarkable bug.

Carl Zimmer writes about science for the New York Times and is the author of five previous books. He was awarded the 2007 National Academies Communication Award, the highest honour in the US for science writing. He lives in Connecticut

In 1946, a twenty-year-old medical school student called Joshua Lederberg decided to find out whether microbes make love. Lederberg was motivated not by a displaced libido, but by scientific ambition. At the age of seven, he had declared that he hoped to become 'like Einstein' and to 'discover a few things in science.' 
 
The 'few things' Lederberg discovered would revolutionise modern science and earn him a Nobel Prize. He chose to observe the breeding habits of a certain bacterium called Escherichia coli, better known as E coli. His experiments used defective E coli strains lacking the essential molecules to reproduce by cloning which should, by rights, perish in the petri dish. But slowly, a few colonies of survivors began to spread accross the dishes. The only possible explanation for their survival was that they were a product of sex. Not only had Lederberg proved that bacteria have sex, he had also proved they have genes. 
 
Since then, a bacterium that was once nothing more than a humble resident of the human gut has become our best guide to what it means to be alive. Most of us might only know E coli for its lethal strain that causes food poisoning, but Zimmer uses E coli as a prism to understand what life is, what it was, and what it will become. We learn how E coli microbes talk to each other, how studies of their evolution represent the most powerful evidence in support of natural selection, and how they might just explain life on other planets...

The Triumph of an Idea

Evolution

A magnificent and dazzling introduction to the science of evolution and its history from Darwin to the present.

Zimmer takes us on a comprehensive tour of the history and implications of evolution that is hard to fault... Admirable.

Written with crystal clarity, Zimmer uses a broad brush to sweep us through the length and breadth of evolution... We are enthusiastically brought up-to-date.... a stunning and accessible book

Tim Birkhead in the BBC Wildlife Magazine

A former senior editor at Discover magazine, Carl Zimmer is Stephen Jay Gould's successor on the US magazine Natural History. He is the author of two previous books and lives in New York.

Carl Zimmer tells the story of the theory of evolution from Darwin's journey on the Beagle to the controversies of modern evolutionary theory, the understanding of the lethal resurgence of antibiotic resistant diseases and the wave of species extinctions that face us today. The result is a wonderfully accessible account of a remarkable scientific journey, from the emergence to the triumph of an idea.

Carl Zimmer

How The Secrets of the Brain were uncovered in Seventeenth Century England

At the beginning of Europe's turbulent seventeenth century, no one knew how the brain worked. By the century's close, the science of the brain had taken root, helping to overturn many common misconceptions about the human body as well as to unseat centuries-old philosophies of man and God. Presiding over this evolution was the founder of modern neurology, Thomas Willis, a fascinating, sympathetic, even heroic figure who stands at the centre of an extraordinary group of scientists and philosophers known as the 'Oxford circle'. Chronicled here in vivid detail are their groundbreaking revelations and often gory experiments that first enshrined the brain as the chemical engine of reason, emotion, and madness - indeed as the very seat of the human soul.

Carl Zimmer

Books by Carl Zimmer

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