Mysterious smiles and single-cell dogs: a double-header in tomorrow's New York Times

ByCarl Zimmer
January 24, 2011

I’ve got two stories in the New York Times tomorrow, at two ends of life’s scales.

In the cover story, I write about smiles. Faces have long fascinated me (see this Discover column on Darwin and Botoxthis Discover column on Darwin and Botoxthis Discover column on Darwin and Botox), and so I was intrigued to come across this recent paper focusing on smiles in particular. I talked to David Corcoran about the story for the first twelve minutes of the latest  Science Times podcast.

Elsewhere in the Science Times, I keep up with the creepiest form of life out there: infectious cancer. Two species–Tasmanian devils and dogs–have given rise to cancer cells that can hop from host to host. I wrote about Tasmanian devils in the Times, and about dogs here at the Loom. Now there’s news that the dog cancer (which I want to call Canis cancer after talking to the scientists who study it) rejuvenates itself from time to time by stealing its host’s mitochondria. This is a story that just keeps going and going…like the cancer themselves.

FREE BONUS ISSUE

Related Topics

Go Further