Congratulations to my colleague across the sea, Ed Yong, for scoring first place in 3 Quark Daily’s science prize. Yours truly snagged second place for my post on the Neanderthal genome. And a toast of the morning coffee to Margaret Morgan for her post on the evolution of chloroplasts.

I see an interesting pattern here. My piece focused on signs of interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals. Ed wrote about gut bacteria picking up genes from marine bacteria as an adaptation for eating sushi. And Morgan wrote about how protozoans gobbled up photosynthetic bacteria and gave rise to plants and green slugs and other wonders. I wonder if the judge, Richard Dawkins, has horizontal gene transfer on his mind? From The Selfish Gene to The Slippery Gene?