Sofie Salama's guest appearances

Sofie Salama

The 7th Avenue Project

Steven Pinker

Allyson Hobbs

Jon Mooallem

Robert Sapolsky

Wes Moore

David Harrington

Laura Kipnis

Rick Doblin

Orson Welles

John Hodgman

Richard Ford

Garry Shandling

Kumail Nanjiani

Nore Davis

Brian Greene

OwlTail

It's not just organisms that compete in nature—molecules do, too. Sofie Salama and colleagues have been exploring an age-old tug-of-war inside our genome, between genes that spread like kudzu and others that perform a kind of weed control. The conflict between jumping genes (aka transposons), and repressors may have a biological payoff, contributing new regulatory elements that drive organismal complexity and new evolutionary possibilities.Among the subjects Sofie and I discussed:    *The pioneering work of Barbara McClintock, discoverer of transposons    *The possible viral origins of jumping genes    *Do transposons hurt us or help us?    *Watching the intragenomic “arms race” in action    *There's so much more to the genome than genes    *Combinatorial complexity: how a modest number of genes give rise to much more complicated systems    *Epigenetics: beyond classical inheritance

It's not just organisms that compete in nature—molecules do, too. Sofie Salama and colleagues have been exploring an age-old tug-of-war inside our genome, between genes that spread like kudzu and others that perform a kind of weed control. The conflict between jumping genes (aka transposons), and repressors may have a biological payoff, contributing new regulatory elements that drive organismal complexity and new evolutionary possibilities. Among the subjects Sofie and I discussed: *The pioneering work of Barbara McClintock, discoverer of transposons *The possible viral origins of jumping genes *Do transposons hurt us or help us? *Watching the intragenomic “arms race” in action *There's so much more to the genome than genes *Combinatorial complexity: how a modest number of genes give rise to much more complicated systems *Epigenetics: beyond classical inheritance

Molecular Biologist Sofie Salama: The Story of Jumping Genes