Koalas, Chlamydia, Microbiomania, Katie Dahlhausen, John Oliver, Russell Crowe, and me.

I love Chlamydia.  Really I do.  It was in a paper analyzing two Chlamydial genomes that I first noticed a very strange pattern of genome evolution.



This in turn led to our discovery that large genome inversions in bacteria and archaea are most common when they are symmetric around the origin of replication.



This may be my favorite paper from my entire career and I owe it all to Chlamydia.

Plus, there are all sorts of jokes one can make with the Giant Microbe Chlamydias like

Ironic I know but putting Chlamydia near my special place makes it awkward to go #ucdmicroboome pic.twitter.com/DR8eEJdDOA

— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics) October 27, 2017

and

It reminds me of when we all kept giving each other chlamydia with @phylogenomics 's 'Gut Check' game at #scifoo :D who doesn't love a free set of crabs lol! https://t.co/ltuxAbKFFC

— Carin Anne Bondar (@carinbondar) February 14, 2018

True Must See TV: John Oliver on Science, Hype, and Science Reporting

This is really really really worth watching. I was pointed to it by dozens of people. And they were all right about it. Thanks people.
 

Also see these stories about it

• John Oliver’s rant about science reporting should be taken seriously by John Timmer in Ars Technica
• When Science Reporting Goes Horribly, Horribly Wrong - Phil Plait in Slate
• John Oliver explains why so much ‘science’ you read about is bogus - Rachel Feltman in the Washington Post
• Megan Thielking in Stat