337: Lifestyles of the Plasmids

TWiM explains a study that examines pathogen presence in ancient humans and concludes that zoonoses emerged 6500 years ago with the domestication of livestock, and determination of universal rules that govern plasmid copy number. Hosts: Vincent Racaniello , Michael Schmidt , Michele Swanson , and Petra Levin Guests: Mark O. Martin Become a patron of TWiM. Links for this episode: Human pathogens in ancient Eurasia (Nature) What once ailed us (NY Times) Rules of plasmid copy number (Nature Comm) Scaling laws of plasmids (Nature Comm) Music used on TWiM is composed and performed by Ronald Jenkees and used with permission. Send your microbiology questions and comments to twim@microbe.tv

You can listen to 337: Lifestyles of the Plasmids online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

337: Lifestyles of the Plasmids is an episode from This Week in Microbiology by American Society for Microbiology.

This episode is 01:04:44 long.

This episode was published on Jul 31, 2025.

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