Petri Dish

The first episode on our three part series is on the history of human consumption of coffee (as far as we know) and the several species of plant that can produce those sweet, sweet beans!

As a note, we are going to be taking a hiatus after Pt 2 next week for Nathan and Stacey to take a well-earned break and enjoy some time in Korea! We are going to do re-releases of older episodes, so if you haven't heard some of our older stuff, we hope you enjoy!

References:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/coffee-consumption-by-country

https://perfectdailygrind.com/2017/05/coffee-isnt-worlds-2nd-most-traded-commodity-but-its-important/

https://cafealtura.com/ethiopia-coffee/

https://www.britannica.com/plant/Coffea

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jse.12694

In our second and final episode on viral hepatitis, we discuss Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C! One has a vaccine, the other can be treated with antivirals, but both can be pretty serious and bad if you aren't protected or treated.

Our sponsor is Athletic Greens, a really solid and easy way to get your vitamins if you're like me and are too silly/busy to cook proper meals every day and need to get those nutrients somehow! Check them out and get a free 1 year supply of Vitamin D and 5 travel packs by heading over to athleticgreens.com/emerging

References:

In our first episode of a two parter, we discuss what the liver does, what hepatitis is generally, and which hepatitis viruses cause acute issues!

References:

Last week, we discussed a very big bacterium, one you can see with your naked eye! But back in high school we all learned that bacteria and prokaryotes in general were pretty simple cells and were definitely smaller than our cells. While we've found a lot of examples that push back against this idea, there is a fundamental truth behind it -- a simple cell has definite physical constraints on how big it can grow. What are those constraints? And how do these giant bacteria (and our own cells) get around these problems?

References:

In today's episode, we discuss a recent discovery of a reaaaaaally big bacteria, like way big! Big enough that you can see it without a microscope! Longer than a fruit fly! BIG!

How can a bacteria get so big? What is going on there? Let's discuss it!

References:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abb3634

https://www.science.org/content/article/largest-bacterium-ever-discovered-has-unexpectedly-complex-cells

Sorry about the delay in this release folks! In this episode, we revisit the current unusual Monkeypox outbreak and dive into the DNA of this virus to try to understand why it is so much more global this time. Spoiler alert: the DNA currently doesn't have answers for us, but it seems to be mutating faster than normal!

References:

https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/us-map.html

https://worldhealthorg.shinyapps.io/mpx_global/

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jmv.28036

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.10.495526v1.full

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01907-y

https://virological.org/t/initial-observations-about-putative-apobec3-deaminase-editing-driving-short-term-evolution-of-mpxv-since-2017/830

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6107253/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/12/monkeypox-virus-origins-nigeria-sexual-transmission/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8310219/

In the second and final episode on our series on Caffeine, we dive into what acute caffeine toxicity can look like, along with other ways people can be sensitive to caffeine. We also discuss whether caffeine can be useful for giving you a boost while exercising!

Our sponsor is Athletic Greens, a really solid and easy way to get your vitamins if you're like me and are too silly/busy to cook proper meals every day and need to get those nutrients somehow! Check them out and get a free 1 year supply of Vitamin D and 5 travel packs by heading over to athleticgreens.com/emerging

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK532910/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11419-021-00577-8

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230017302210

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002934310010429

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/95/1/241/4576611

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3200095/

https://bmcneurol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12883-021-02411-5

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028390805000122

https://www.hopkinsallchildrens.org/ACH-News/General-News/Is-Coffee-Bad-for-Kids

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2699625/

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/apnea-of-prematurity

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-021-01521-x

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16423144/

First episode of our two-parter on caffeine! For such a small and unassuming molecule, this drug is really popular, consumed all over the world for millennia! What is caffeine? How does it work? We'll even begin to discuss why some people are more sensitive to caffeine than other people.

References:

The world of Alzheimer's research has recently been rocked by very strong evidence of scientific misconduct and fraud, specifically relating to a historically relevant paper about amyloid beta oligomers as a potential cause of Alzheimer's Disease. There are a lot of nuances and complexities at play here, which we dive into! There are also some... not-nuances, like the fact that this fraud and wholesale fabrication of results was pretty brazen. Listen in and learn more!

References:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04533

https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease

Hi folks! I know most people don't really want to hear it, but we have another disease running around the world besides COVID and the more you know the facts, the better you can do what you can to avoid it! Learn about monkeypox on this week's episode of Petri Dish!

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