Microbe Talk

Dengue is one of the world's most devastating infectious diseases.

Around half of the entire planet's population is at risk from dengue infection, which can lead to excruciating joint pain, haemorrhaging and, eventually, death.

There is no vaccine for dengue, so current efforts to stop its spread involve trying to control the mosquito that transmits it, Aedes aegypti. But this is by no means easy – Aedes aeygpti is notoriously resilient and extremely well adapted to urban environments.

Which is why scientists in Australia are currently testing a new method of preventing dengue that could be revolutionary – using a strange group of bacteria called Wolbachia.

We spoke to Professor Scott O'Neill, leader of the Eliminate Dengue programme, to find out more.

Music: Karl Yates (Precog18 on SoundCloud)

Image credit: Penn State

In 2010, a medical case report was published about a man with inflammatory bowel disease. The man had a serious case of a condition called ulcerative colitis, and was facing the prospect of having a section of his intestine completely removed.

But remarkably, the man was able to cure himself and achieve almost complete remission – by infecting himself with parasitic worms.

This month's episode is about new research which may shed light on how a parasite can end up curing disease, rather than causing it.

Music:

Ryan Cross – Inso

Keinzweiter – Mircoobee

Asthmatic Astronaut – Body Language

Jahazzar – sketch (vlad)

Asthmatic Astronaut – UP

This week has seen the Society decamp to Liverpool for our Annual Conference 2016. It’s been a fantastic event with over 1,400 delegates in attendance and more than 300 scientific presentations and posters.

For this month’s edition of Microbe Talk, Anand and I got to speak to a few researchers about the work they were presenting at the Conference.

Up first is Dr Lucy Gilbert from the James Hutton Institute, who told Anand about her work investigating how climate change will affect tick distribution and disease risk.

Next up is an excerpt from an on-stage interview I did with Professor Philippe Sansonetti, this year’s Prize Medal winner. Philippe has had a long and distinguished career, and has published hundreds of research papers. I asked him to describe a key experiment that stood out to him throughout his work.

Finally in this month’s edition of the podcast, I spoke with Professor George Weinstock, one of the first researchers to use genomic sequencing to better understand microbial processes. We talked about the early days of modern DNA technology, and the direction that current microbiome research is taking.

In the modern world, the spread of diseases like MERS, SARS, avian flu, Ebola, and Zika virus seems almost unavoidable.

But to stop outbreaks spiralling out of control into global disasters, researchers, doctors and public health professionals need to know what’s happening and where in real time.

That’s where ProMED comes in. PROMED is an online early warning system for emerging diseases that can be used by anyone in the world.

People in the field report on disease outbreaks that are happening close to them, so that information about new threats can be rapidly disseminated online, and people at all levels can start to take the steps that could ultimately save lives.

Ben spoke to the editor of ProMed, Dr Larry Madoff, about how the system is used, why disease outbreaks seem to be happening more frequently, and what we can do to stop them.

Music:

VYVCH – On And On

Little Glass Men – Kelp Grooves

It’s a well-known fact that the number of bacteria in, and on, a person outnumber the actual human cells present by 10:1, right? While this ratio often appears on presentation slides across the world, is it actually true? In this month’s podcast, Anand spoke to Professor Ron Milo from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, who has recently co-authored a Cell paper that is examining this well-used estimate to see if it holds up…

Image credit: Antti-pekka Lehtinen/Thinkstock

Music credit: The Bread Is Hard As Crackers by Velella Velella and Springtime by Podington Bear, both under a CC BY-NC 3.0 license

Nature is full of patterns that follow fundamental mathematical rules – from nautilus shells to spiral galaxies, lightning bolts to blood vessels.

In the first podcast of 2016, Anand spoke to Prof Raymond Goldstein from the University of Cambridge about the mathematical principles that describe both bacteria and electrons.

Raymond is an author on a recent paper in Nature Physics, which explores the patterns of swimming in bacteria, and how they might be related to the spin of electrons in magnetic materials.

Music:

Chris Zabriskie - I am running down the long hallway of Viewmont Elementary

Poddington Bear - Bright White

The Fish Who Saved The Planet - Marimbo

Little Glass Men - Biolumina

Lee Rosevere - Illuminations

Ropewalk - Worm and Parcel with the Lay

Little Glass Men - Play Pelagic (imported)

Image credit: Courtesy of the researchers

In a festive edition of our podcast, we hear from Dr Arnoud van Vliet from the Institute of Food Research.

Arnoud tells us about his group's research into food borne pathogens like campylobacter, and gives us his top tips for avoiding food poisoning this Christmas.

Image credit: circlePS/iStock/Thinkstock

Music: DKSTR - Have Yourself a Merry Funky Christmas

How could you convert the dust, leaves and cigarettes that litter the side of the road into something useful and valuable?

In this month's podcast, we spoke to Dr Angela Murray from the University of Birmingham about using microbes to turn waste into high-end products.

We hear about a patented technology to convert road dust into precious metal catalysts, and how cleaning up heavy metal pollution can be used to make powerful crystals called quantum dots (pictured).

Image credit: Antipoff on Wikimedia under CC BY-SA 3.0

Music: Kosmiche Slop by Anenon, Day Bird by Broke For Free, Mells by Broke for Free, Lights - And Counting by Action Davis

Sound Effects: Traffic by malupeeters, Car Engine by Pogotron, purr Tims by aivaaroo

Baleen whales are some of the largest creatures on Earth, but they feed on some of the smallest – tiny ocean-dwelling crustaceans called krill and copepods.

Smaller still are the microscopic organisms that help the whales to digest this vast quantity of prey.

The diversity and function of the gut microbes living inside baleen whales has never been studied before. But new research has begun to shed light on these bacterial communities, and their role in shaping the natural history of their leviathan hosts.

We spoke to Annabel Beichman (UCLA) and Jon Sanders (Harvard University) about the surprising discovery they made when they looked inside the whale.

Image credit: Christopher Michel on Flickr under CC BY 2.0

This month’s podcast is all about microbes in remote and hostile environments.

Ben spoke to Dr Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist from the University of Leicester, about NASA’s recent announcement that there is liquid water on Mars. Lewis told us more about the discovery, and how microbes might be able to survive in this extremely salty Martian environment.

We also hear from Dr Kevin Newsham of the British Antarctic Survey. Kevin spoke to us about his expeditions to the maritime Antarctic, and the impact of climate change on soil fungi and the ecosystems found there.

Image credit: Kevin Gill on Flickr under CC BY SA 2.0