Harvard Book Store, the Harvard University Division of Science, the Harvard Library, and the Cambridge Public Library welcome Shahir S. Rizk—Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Indiana University South Bend and the Indiana University School of Medicine—and Maggie M. Fink—Adjunct Professor at Indiana University South Bend and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Notre Dame—for a discussion of their new book The Color of North: The Molecular Language of Proteins and the Future of Life. 

Have you ever wondered how bacteria communicate, cooperate, and even compete in ways that impact our health, environment, and beyond? More than just making us sick, bacteria form alliances, wage wars, and orchestrate remarkable feats on a scale so small, yet so influential. In this Our Universe Revealed talk, we unravel some of the microbial mysteries that shape our lives, and gain a new appreciation for the invisible hidden dramas unfolding all around us.

Indiana University South Bend professor Shahir Rizk uses art and stories to explain how we see, taste, and smell our world. (He also introduces some superhuman senses found in animals!)

Taking us beyond the confines of our own experiences, in their upcoming book, The Color of North, Shahir Rizk and Maggie Fink traverse the kingdom of life to uncover the myriad ways that proteins shape us and all organisms on the planet. Inside every cell, a tight-knit community of millions of proteins skillfully contorts into unique shapes to give fireflies their ghostly glow, to enable the octopus to see predators with its skin, and to make humans fall in love. Collectively, proteins orchestrate the intricate relationships within ecosystems and forge the trajectory of life. And yet, nature has exploited just a fraction of their immense potential.