Biopedia

Moving away from previous topics somewhat, we're going to dive back into ecological theory and discuss the concept of sibling species. What is a sibling species? Well, they're species which appear broadly very similar, but do have some differences when you get up close. As we'll see in today's episode, sibling species are essentially part of the process of speciation..

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Today, we're going to be discussing the Ediacaran fauna. This is a faunal assemblage that came before the Cambrian Explosion (535-525 Mya) but is less well known. Unlike the Cambrian Explosion- which saw the creation of most of the phyla we know today- the Ediacaran biota is much less familiar. It also appears to be quite confusing in terms of what category its constituent organisms fall under...

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Almost no French king is more famous than Louis XVI, reigning during the turbulent times of the French Revolution at the tail-end of the eighteenth century. Previous studies have attempted to characterise his Y-chromosomal single tandem repeat (STR) profile, but were ultimately unsuccessful due to contradictions. So, today, let's explore a 2016 study which analysed a loyalist-owned lock of hair and compared it to three living male-line relatives.

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Point mutations can have a huge impact on the genome depending on where in the genetic code they occur. To illustrate this, we're going to be looking at a case study in the form of almonds- formerly poisonous nuts which had their metaphorical fangs taken out by a single base change...

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Bacteria are far simpler in molecular terms than eukaryotes. However, they still need to be able to sense and respond to their environment. How do they do this? Enter the two-component system; a two-protein system which allows stimuli to be detected and gene expression altered using phosphate transfer.

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No, the episode name isn't a typo. Rather, it's the name of a subspecies of zebra we're going to be discussing today. Along the way, we will explore  clines, the purpose of zebra stripes and an attempt to breed back the quagga from its zebra cousins. Why don't we hear more about it? Well, because it no longer exists...

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Biological warfare has been around for centuries. However, it itself isn't the topic of today's episode. Rather, today we're going to talk about experiments conducted with anthrax on Gruinard Island in the United Kingdom.

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Today is more of a follow-up episode building on episode 39. Specifically, we're going to examine two different schools of thought about plant succession, known as the Gleasonian and Clementsian models...

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Our discussion this week is going to head back into ecology and focus on succession- a change in the species composition of a community across space or time.

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Haemophilia is a genetic condition which is characterised by one of the blood clotting factors, usually encoded for on the X chromosome, not being encoded for properly for various reasons- whether it's a mobile genetic element inserting itself into the gene or a simple mutation. On the show today, we describe the cause and symptoms of haemophilia, as well as using the case study of Queen Victoria to show that new mutations are a surprisingly common root cause...

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