RadioBio

Have you ever thought about brains? Our brains are seriously important, that's not news, but how do they actually work? There is a delicate balance between order and chaos. RadioBio this week is all about stability in the brain. Hopefully by the end you'll know a little bit more about how your brain works!

CRISPR. You may have heard about it in the news. It's arguably the biggest discovery of the 21st century, and could possibly be a cure for some of the genetic disorders that have plagued humans throughout our history. It was initially identified in the early 1990s and more recently it was discovered to be the immune system used by bacteria to fight off viral infections. Until recently there were no known mechanism for inhibiting the infections caused by these bacteria-infecting viruses. Dr. Joe Bondy-Denomy is a leader in the CRISPR field and discovered anti-CRISPRS, the system used by viruses to hide out from the bacterial CRISPR system. We talk with him about his discoveries in the field and the ethics of gene editing in humans.

Have you ever been curious about how our brains "learn" and why only somethings seem to "stick" and others seem to fade away as time goes on? I know I have. How are memories stored? Today we are going to explore the brain's amazing ability to learn and store information over a lifetime, as well as a recently discovered mechanism of neuronal communication that resembles the life-cycle of retroviruses.

You and I .... are completely different.... Not just because we like different music or have different parents, but because we are more than individuals. We contains multitudes of microbial communities and, believe it or not, my community is different than yours. Today, we are talking with Dr. Kathryn Milligan-Mhyre about her research into how microbes associate with hosts and how those microbes change over time

Do you grow your own food or butcher your own meat? Many of us don't. We get our food from a lot of different places in our modern society and we have a global network of food import and export. But what happens when there is contamination in our food supply? How do we know where the contamination is coming from when our food is coming from all over the place? Join us as we find out how we can use genomic data to explore this issue in this episode of RadioBio.

Have you ever thought about how weird hybrids actually are? Some hybrids seem to be a contradiction: they can't reproduce! How could nature allow this? Today we discuss the evolutionary conflict of speciation, hybrids, and sterility.

Have you ever thought about how light affects your behavior on a day to day basis? Now think about how light would affect you on a molecular scale? Molecules have a direct influence on behavior from sleep cycles to depression and motivation. Today we discuss molecules, how they affect animal behavior, and the origins of such an intimate relationship in molecular biology.

It's getting warmer and drier, but there may be an untapped natural resource that can offer fresh water: fog! Fog is more than just one way your beach day can be ruined-- Coastal fog has the potential to be a major contributor to future sustainable agricultural practices. Today we discuss fog and its impact on crops in California.

This week is a special edition of RadioBio, put on for UC Merced's International Education Week. In this episode, we hear from five different researchers and their unique experiences with international research: Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Dr. Felipe Zapata, Dr. Gregory Mutumi, Dr. Samuel Wasser, and Dr. Teamrat Ghezzehei. From soil science to conservation biology to everything in between! Each story highlights the various ways we can be inspired by the world around us, and how science reaches beyond physical and political boundaries. Join us, as listening to life, goes international!

What is a virus? Why are they important? Viruses can cause disease and mortality, and they also significantly influence ecosystem ecology and environmental chemistry. Today we discuss viruses and their role in biogeochemical cycles and agricultural systems with Dr. Joanne Emerson from UC Davis.