{"id":136964,"date":"2010-01-04T16:51:19","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T21:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/loom\/?p=2190"},"modified":"2010-01-04T16:51:19","modified_gmt":"2010-01-04T21:51:19","slug":"evolving-viruses-to-death-the-loom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/136964","title":{"rendered":"Evolving Viruses To Death | The Loom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2191\" title=\"lethal mutagenesis cars.086\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/loom\/files\/2010\/01\/lethal-mutagenesis-cars.086.jpg\" alt=\"lethal mutagenesis cars.086\" width=\"440\" height=\"330\"\/>This fall, I gave a number of lectures about the evolution of swine flu. By the time I got to the end of the talk, I could tell that a lot of people in the audience were feeling a bit resigned, given the way evolution allows viruses like the flu to evade our best attacks. (<a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/loom\/2009\/12\/12\/darwin-gets-swine-flu-the-youtube-edition\/\">Here&#8217;s the full video of my lecture at the University of British Columbia<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>To try to cheer up the crowd, I&#8217;d offer a note of hope&#8211;the notion that we could turn the evolution of viruses against them, by pushing them into mutation overdrive. (This slide gets across the basic idea&#8211;the flu virus is like a sports car. Going fast is cool. Going too fast&#8211;not so cool.)<\/p>\n<p>In tomorrow&#8217;s <em>New York Times<\/em>, I lay out this intriguing idea, that goes by the profoundly cool name of lethal mutagenesis. <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/05\/science\/05lethal.html\">Check it out.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/UdawJjz09My8XsYNrP8H1T-W-Jg\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/UdawJjz09My8XsYNrP8H1T-W-Jg\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><br \/>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/UdawJjz09My8XsYNrP8H1T-W-Jg\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/UdawJjz09My8XsYNrP8H1T-W-Jg\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/Loom\/~4\/xYYxgeExIsQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/DiscoverMag\/~4\/_LAP0bRp8eA\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This fall, I gave a number of lectures about the evolution of swine flu. By the time I got to the end of the talk, I could tell that a lot of people in the audience were feeling a bit resigned, given the way evolution allows viruses like the flu to evade our best attacks. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}