BioPOD

The parasite Trypanosoma brucei is transmitted via tsetse flies. It causes a disease known as trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness in humans, but in cows, it's known as nagana or animal African trypanosomiasis. In this episode, Joan Cortada García interviews Maria Contreras-Garcia from The Roslin Institute on her work to validate and characterize the use of a small RNA as a diagnostic test for trypanosomiasis. Media by Hanna Peach. 

Here is a link to the event mentioned by Ruby White in our episode coda.  The event is a joint University of Edinburgh and University of Sydney Workshop Series on sustainable food production, antimicrobial resistance and One Health https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/university-of-sydney-and-university-of-edinburgh-joint-workshop-series-2021-tickets-142438833385?utm_campaign=2889898_UoE-UoSyd%20OH%20workshops%20EID&utm_medium=email&utm_source=College%20of%20Science%20%26%20Engineering%2C%20The%20University%20of%20Edinburgh&dm_i=2MP0,1PXUY,9QQ8JI,5VOLI,1

How can we produce useful materials from Bacteria? Today we have PhD Student Jack Suitor to tell us how we can modify bacteria against their own nature to act as mini-factories to convert guaiacol, a paper industry byproduct, to adipic acid, a key component of Nylon production that is otherwise produced from oil!

Our CODA is a special dive into microbiology with our resident microbiologist Hanna Peach. 

Join us for this interesting installment of BioPod featuring Associate Professor Kyle Dexter, interviewed by Hazel Huang. from the department of Geosciences here at the University of Edinburgh. The episode is about monitoring the carbon dynamics of the dry tropics and climate change. 

A lot of people know about vegetation, biodiversity, and the abundance of wet tropics such as the Amazonian Rainforest, but let us take you on a journey through the dry tropics and the way climate change will affect habitats for vegetation, animals, and humans over time. This research is important, to understand the dynamics between carbon cycling, vegetation, and the interplay of factors that are both driving and affected by climate change. 

Three PhD students, a genomic epidemiologist studying Ebola virus, a molecular epidemiologist  studying Polio virus, and an infectious disease modeller studying anti-microbial resistance dynamics between humans and livestock.

So, what do these three researchers have in common, you might wonder? Well, they all lent their expertise to study the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In this episode, we will be learning about how COVID-19 shaped their year in research and learn some interesting facts about epidemiology related to our current pandemic. 

As always, tune in, with your morning cuppa, and enjoy. 

#SciencePodcast #UniversityofEdinburgh #AcademicChatter 

A special 1-hour feature episode with two inspiring and highly successful academics from the University of Edinburgh: Prof Lynne J. Regan, the Head of the Institute of Quantitative Biology, Biochemistry and Biotechnology.  Lynne is also the Chair in Interdisciplinary Science at the Center for Synthetic & Systems Biology and Prof Meriem el Karoui the Director of SynthSys, and Systems Biology Chair for Equality and Diversity.

Ep 7: Crops, Robots and Rolling Pins featuring PhD student  @TaraCanelaWight interviewed by @donohoho has dropped! Happy weekend curious beings! 

Stay tuned until the end to hear our resident microbiologist Hanna Peach's story of the rich history of whisky in Scotland + zero waste uses for whisky waste: MiAlgae, Celtic Renewables.

Have you ever wondered what a fulfilling scientific life is like? A life full of dreams, failures, success, fame? Professor Jean Beggs has retired from the Wellcome Centre for Cell Biology after a long career. She is a trailblazer, who became an independent researcher, PI and was awarded professorship. In this episode, she talks about her successful career in science, alongside important issues such as imposter syndrome. As a researcher, she is interested in understanding how genes are expressed, the mechanisms that determines how they are expressed, and how the expression is regulated.  

Professor Beggs was the first researcher to develop two eukaryotic (yeast, specifically) cloning vectors. This is commonly referred to as cloning, in which yeast which is transformed will take up exogenous DNA, as a vector to study the expression of genes. 

Episode 5: Dr Alex Makarov

In this episode, Chris sits down with Dr Alex Makarov who recently completed a PhD in Eric Schirmer's lab in the Wellcome Centre for Cell Biology at the University of Edinburgh.  His research focused on Lamin A proteins, an important structural protein which gives cells their flexibility and shape.  Dr Makarov recently published his novel work on the alternative methods to characterise the structure of flexible Lamin A proteins, namely SILAC cross-linking mass spectrometry.
Lamin-A function is so important that mutations leading to alterations of this protein's structure are linked to 13 distinct human syndromes ranging from cardiomyopathy to lipodystrophy and progeria.

Here is the publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11063-6

Listen until the end to hear our end segment on Veganuary and the future of food. 

Have you ever wondered how plant scientists discover new species in a genus? In this interview, we sit down with Dr Mark Hughes, a begonia researcher from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, who tells us some fantastic stories about wild begonia. Mark is a plant biologist, focusing on the taxonomy and biogeography of the mega-diverse flowering-plant genus Begonia. He has traveled across Southeast Asia in search of exotic begonia, and in this episode we discuss how this globetrotting translates into tangible biodiversity discoveries. 

Later, in the coda piece, we also discuss the milestone of the century: 100 years of genetics research here at the University of Edinburgh