How do biologists study the influence of heat on organisms and how can this be applied to the study of climate change? What impacts mountaineer survival at high altitudes? On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with Professor Emeritus at University of Washington and recently elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, Ray Huey. Ray is well known for his work on the thermal physiology of lizards, but has also worked broadly in physiology, ecology, and evolution. In our conversation with Ray, we first discuss his paper, an “Acynical Guide to Graduate School,” and it ongoing relevance to ..read more

We have finished Season 6 of Big Biology. Learn more about the future of the podcast ..read more

Can we predict evolutionary outcomes if we know starting conditions? Do the products of evolution in nature differ from those studied in well-controlled lab experiments? On this episode, we talk to Katie Peichel, head of the Division of Evolutionary Ecology at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and Andrew Hendry, professor in the Department of Biology at McGill University, Canada. Katie and Andrew are part of a massive research team working on the evolution of threespine sticklebacks as they are reintroduced into lakes in Alaska. Sticklebacks have been a favorite species for evolutionary bio ..read more

Can we study evolution in the wild? Are some species “super-evolvers”? On the episode, we talk with Alison Derry, a professor of biology at the University of Quebec in Montreal, and Andrew Hendry, a professor in the Department of Biology at McGill University, Canada. This episode is the second we’ve done on the team’s work, and Andrew was also a guest on our first episode in the series. This conversation was recorded live in front of an audience at Kenai Peninsula College, in Soldotna, Alaska.  The college is just a few miles from the lakes where Alison, Andrew, and many of their colleagu ..read more

What is mutation bias and how can scientists study it? How does changing a population’s mutation bias influence its evolutionary trajectory? In this episode, we talk with Deepa Agashe, an Associate Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India. We first talk with Deepa about mutation bias and how she uses  E. coli to understand it. We then focus on a 2023 PNAS paper about the fitness effects of experimentally changing the mutation bias in E. coli. In this research, Deepa and her team used a strain (MutY) of bacteria containing a mutation that knocks out an i ..read more

This week on Big Biology we're sharing an episode from The Naked Scientists Podcast about how humans lost their tails. Humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans do not have tails. It sets us apart from other primates, but suggests that our shared evolutionary ancestors had them. So why did we lose them, and how? Speaking with Chris Smith, from The Naked Scientists Podcast, NYU Grossman School of Medicine's Itai Yanai explains that the way this study began was literally a pain in the "tail" for one of his colleagues... Credit: The Naked Scientists Podcast --- Support this podcast: https ..read more

At what levels does causation happen in biology? Are metaphors useful for understanding biology? In this episode, we talk with Phil Ball, a science writer who was also an editor for the journal Nature for over 20 years. Phil has written over 25 books, but our conversation focuses on his most recent: “How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology.” In the book, Phil covers a wide-range of topics from cells to proteins to biological agency, and makes the argument that traditional ideas and simplified metaphors in biology often don’t hold up. We talk with Phil about the concept of the selfish ..read more

How should biologists deal with the massive amounts of population genetic data that are now routinely available? Will AIs make biologists obsolete? In this episode, we talk with Andy Kern, an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Oregon. Andy has spent much of his career applying machine learning methods in population genetics. We talk with him about the fundamental questions that population genetics aims to answer and about older theoretical and empirical approaches  We then turn to the promise of machine learning methods, which are increasingly being used to estimate popul ..read more

How should we study complex biological networks? How do cells keep time and stay in sync? What does it mean for a network to be resilient? In this episode, we talk with Rosemary Braun, Associate Professor at Northwestern University in the Department of Molecular Biosciences and a member of the NSF-Simons Center for Quantitative Biology. Rosemary is broadly interested in learning whether “more is different” when it comes to complex molecular networks operating across different temporal and spatial scales. We talk with her about systems approaches to uncovering the “Rules of Life” and about circ ..read more

How do biologists strike a productive balance between descriptive natural history and manipulative experiments in the lab or field? Should we bring back species to areas where they’ve gone extinct and what values do we use to make these decisions? What is wildness and how do we cultivate it? On this episode, we talk with Harry Greene, a herpetologist and adjunct professor of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin, whose distinguished career has spanned decades. Harry is an E.O. Wilson Award recipient and also received the PEN Literary award for his book, Snakes: The Evolution ..read more