Life in Our Phage World

by Forest Rohwer, Merry Youle, Heather Maughan

We share the Earth with more than 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 phages. Everywhere they thrive, from well-fed guts to near-boiling acidic springs, from cryoconite holes to endolithic fissures. They travel from one microbial host to the next as virions, their genetic weapons packaged inside a protective protein shell. If you could lay all of these nanoscopic phage virions side-by-side, the line-up would stretch over 42 million light years. Through their daily shenanigans they kill or collaborate with their microbial hosts to spur microbial evolution and maintain ecosystem functioning. We have learned much about them since their discovery by Frederick Twort a century ago. They also taught us that DNA, not protein, is the hereditary material, unraveled the triplet genetic code, and offered their enzymes as indispensible tools for the molecular biology revolution. More contributions will be forthcoming since the vast majority of phages await discovery. Phage genomes harbor the world's largest cache of unexplored genetic diversity, and we now have the equipment needed to go prospecting. Although there are field guides to birds, insects, wild flowers, even Bacteria, there was no such handbook to guide the phage explorer. Forest Rohwer decided to correct this oversight, for novice and expert alike, and thus was born Life in Our Phage World. A diverse collection of 30 phages are featured. Each phage is characterized by its distinctive traits, including details about its genome, habitat, lifestyle, global range, and close relatives. The beauty of its intricate virion is captured in a pen-and-ink portrait by artist Benjamin Darby. Each phage also stars in a carefully researched action story relating how that phage encounters, exploits, kills, or otherwise manipulates its host. These behaviors are imaginatively illustrated by fine artist Leah L. Pantéa. Eight researchers that work closely with phages also relate their experiences as inhabitants of the phage world. Rohwer has years of first-hand experience with the phage multitudes in ecosystems ranging from coral reefs to the human lung to arctic waters. He pioneered the key metagenomic methods now widely used to catalog and characterize Earth's microbial and viral life. Despite research advances, most people, many scientists included, remain unaware of the ongoing drama in our phage world. In anticipation of 2015, the centennial of phage discovery, Forest assembled a cadre of writers, artists, scientists, and a cartographer and set them to work. The result? This alluring field guide-a feast for the imagination and a celebration of phage diversity. Please see Forest Rohwer's website for additional information about this book.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Biology

408 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2014

Reviews

[Gwern · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moved to gwern.net.

[Valerie Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book after reading The Perfect Predator. It is gorgeous and fascinating. Not a book you sit down and read from cover to cover, but like a great field guide, you can open it up and spend some time learning about this earth’s diversity.

[Michiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! The beautiful drawing, the interesting vignettes, the genome maps. A biology book without an equal!

[Carlos · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading this as research for some fiction I was writing, but I gotta say: as a software programmer by profession, I am amazed and astounded by these phages that reprogram other organism to repurpose it to a desired effect, all with a such small amount of "words". Absolutely amazing. 

I'm firmly in the TE of STEM, so it's taking me a bit to get through this Field Guide.... but it's so well done a clear that I am enjoying the ride. For those reading the free version online and are curious about the print edition: it is nicely bound with beautiful muted color illustrations (though as a color blind lad, I wish they'd avoid either red or green in the same diagram, but it's not really a problem).

[Sergio]

Más técnico y específico de lo que esperaba antes de empezar a leerlo; terminé salteándome algunas partes o leyéndolas en diagonal.
De todos modos, me resultó bastante instructivo. Lleno de datos interesantes bonitamente presentados.