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Trial By Error: After Last Year’s Tub Talk, Here’s an Interview–Clothed–for #MEAction’s Podcast

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By David Tuller, DrPH

The last time I was interviewed about my work, I was sitting in a bubble bath with the guy tossing questions at me. That was, of course, my appearance last April on Tub Talks with Damon, a web series in which my friend Damon Jacobs, a gay, sex-positive psychotherapist in New York City, conducts interviews from a unique vantage point. Being interviewed by Damon is a disarming experience, and a disrobing one.

It was fun! But once was enough–if not for me then for the viewing public.

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An inordinate fondness for viruses

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Doucleff and Racaniello 1I sat in the green room, 15 minutes before the start of the event, more nervous than I had been for a presentation in recent years. The occasion was the keynote address, which I was about to present before 1500 attendees at the 2018 annual meeting of the American Society for Virology.

I was nervous for two reasons. First, I was trying something completely different for the keynote, and I was not sure if it would be welcomed.

The other reason for my nerves was that my companion for the keynote had not yet arrived.

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Thirty-five years later

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Thirty-five years ago this month, in September 1982, I arrived at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons to open my virology laboratory. I brought with me an infectious DNA copy of the poliovirus RNA genome, the first of its kind, and a lot of enthusiasm. Over the years we used this infectious DNA to study poliovirus neurovirulence, pathogenesis, and translation, among other topics; I wrote grant applications, published papers, and trained new scientists. In short, I was a typical academic scientist.

My career forked in 2000 with the publication by the American Society for Microbiology of the textbook Principles of Virology. Because this book was written by process, not by virus, each of the authors learned far more virology than ever before. As a consequence of writing this book, I became interested in disseminating virology to the public. Beginning with virology blog in 2004, I began to use social media to communicate science. This interest has lead to a collection of blogs, podcasts, lectures, and videos, in addition to four editions of Principles of Virology.

Recently virologist Islam Hussein, founder of Virolvlog and an avid science communicator, decided to summarize my modest scicomm career with an infographic. I’m grateful to Islam for this lovely chart, which was produced by Mohamed Gaawan. Here’s to the next 35 years.

Dr.-Vincent-Racaniello

I have always marched for science

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vrrThis Saturday I will be participating in the March for Science in Washginton, DC. It’s all about celebrating science and the role it plays in each of our lives. Frankly, I could have participated in a March for Science one, two, three, or any number of years ago, because these issues have always been important.

Over ten years ago, well into my science career, I recognized the need for scientists to come off the sidelines (to quote March for Science) and start telling the world what it is that we do. It’s why I wrote a virology textbook; started virology blog; produce five science podcasts; teach a virology course and record all the lectures for YouTube, and much more. These activities have been my March for Science.

Whenever I visit a university to give a science talk, I spend the last 15 minutes telling the audience (mainly scientists) why they need to tell the public what we do. I tell them to let the world know that our lives are long and prosperous because of science. I emphasize that every scientist needs to communicate, so that the public sees us all together championing the way science benefits the planet.

The March for Science, held in many different cities, will give the world a view of scientists together defending the roles that science plays in our lives. It’s a large scale view of what I have done myself over the years, and what I have encouraged other scientists to do.

It is unfortunate that the March for Science had to be triggered by an administration that shows disdain for science and facts. I bet we could have organized a similar march years ago. But the march is happening now, and whether or not we are branded as left or right doesn’t matter – science doesn’t care about your political party. Neil de Grasse Tyson put it perfectly: “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it”.

More important than the March for Science is what happens afterwards. Does it build a “global movement to defend the vital role science plays in our health, safety, economies, and governments” as envisioned by its organizers, or is it back to business as usual for most scientists?

I don’t know the answer, but I do know that there are many scientists who do engage the public, and their work will continue. The work that me and my co-hosts do to bring science and scientists to everyone will go on, as it has before the March.

That’s why I will be wearing a This Week in Virology t-shirt to the March in Washington DC. It’s the way I’ve been communicating science, making a difference by reaching as many people as I can. That’s the spirit of the March for Science, which will go beyond one Saturday in April.

TWiEVO: This Week in Evolution

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TWiEVOTo a molecular biologist, the word ‘evolution’ evokes images of fossils, dusty rocks, and phylogenetic trees covering eons. The fields of molecular biology and evolutionary biology diverged during the twentieth century, but new experimental technologies have lead to a fusion of the two disciplines. The result is that evolutionary biologists have the unprecedented ability to evaluate how genetic change produces novel phenotypes that allow adaptation. It’s a great time to start a new podcast on evolution!

Molecular biology is an experimental approach that was born in 1953 with the discovery of the structure of DNA. Its goal is to understand how cells and organisms work at the level of biological molecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins. Some of the experimental tools of molecular biology include recombinant DNA, nucleotide sequencing, mutagenesis, and DNA-mediated transformation. The experiments of molecular biology often involve simplified, or reductionist systems in which much of the complexity of nature is ignored. Variation in individuals, populations, and the environment are set aside. Data produced by the techniques of molecular biology can lead to decisive conclusions about cause and effect.

Evolutionary biology embraces variation, and in fact attempts to explain it. The basis for variation in organisms is usually inferred by associating phenotypes, sequences, and alleles. The problem with this approach is that alternative explanations are often plausible, and conclusions are rarely as decisive as those achieved with molecular biology. We can turn to Darwin’s finches as a good illustration of the difference between fields. Darwin hypothesized that variation in the beaks of finches was a consequence of diet, but how such variation occurred was unknown. It was not until 2004 that it was shown that beak shape and size could be controlled by two different genes.

The techniques of DNA sequencing, mutagenesis, and the ability to introduce altered DNA into cells and organisms have been the catalyst for the fusion of molecular biology and evolutionary biology into a new and far more powerful science, which Dean and Thornton call a ‘functional synthesis’. As a consequence, genotype can be definitively connected with phenotype, allowing resolution of fundamental questions in evolution that have been puzzles for many years.

Microbes are perfect subjects for study by evolutionary biologists, as they are readily manipulable and rapidly reproduce. However no organism is now very far from the eye of this new science. Subjects as diverse as insecticide resistance, coat color in mice, evolution of color vision, and much more are all amenable to scrutiny by the ‘functional synthesis’.

This Week in Evolution will cover all aspects of the functional synthesis, irrespective of organism. My co-host is Nels Elde, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Utah. Nels has appeared on This Week in Virology to discuss the evolution of virus-host conflict, and his lab’s story on the evolutionary battle for iron between mammalian transferrin and bacterial transferrin-binding protein was covered on This Week in Microbiology.

You can find This Week in Evolution at iTunes and at MicrobeTV.