Andy Ellington's Blog

One of the last, great taboos. And for good biological reasons. In the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea the locals, known as the Fore, practiced what was politely called ‘transumption,’ which led during the late 1950s to the person-to-person transmission of a debilitating disease, kuru, in epidemic proportions. The ‘laughing disease’ led to massive neural degeneration, eventually resulting in death (although sometimes with long latency periods), and was the result of the transmission of prions. (more…)

Hooray, it’s the end of the term. And what better way to relax than to jet off to a conference filled with physicists and historians and philosophers of science. What? Isn’t that what you’d do? Well, being here at the Seven Pines Symposium on the Origins of Life has nonetheless been both relaxing and intellectually stimulating. And it’s been a chance for me to think a bit about ribozymes, which I haven’t done in awhile. For those of you who may have read my previous entry “On Technological Surprise,” ribozymes are of course RNA enzymes. (more…)