RadioBio

Here's a riddle for you, what is something that stays behind in an environment after an animal is long gone? The answer is... POOP! What if we could use poop to study animals that would otherwise be difficult to track down? Well, Dr. Sam Wasser does just that. This week on Radiobio, we talk with Dr. Wasser from the University of Washington about how he uses poop to better understand animal populations with implications from tracking poachers to tracking whales.

Matter in a random universe. How does it behave? Can we predict it? When physics meets biology, this intersection between two disciplines can crack some major gaps in our understanding of how matter transforms from one state to another. Today we discuss proteins that change their physical state and the theory that goes into understanding this state change.

Water. It is one of the basic requirements of life as we know it, especially in California. The Washoe people of California's Sierra Nevada mountains believe that all water bodies contain water spirits known as water babies that dictate if you will catch fish or if the river will run dry. And these beliefs are founded in the reality of water's significance...the Sierra Nevada mountains are the reservoir of California, with more than 60% of the state's water originating in the mountains. Our history, our economy, our entire being is tied to how much water falls on these mountains. But what happens...when the water stops?

Today, Kinsey Brock, Morgan Quail, and I, Jeff Lauder, speak with a hydrologist and three ecologists about what made the 2012-2016 drought so historic, and how studying its impacts on forest ecosystems can help us understand what a changing climate means for California.

How do you search for a virus? Even worst, how do you search for a virus's DNA? A virus you've never seen before and have no clue what it looks like! If you think of one of your cells as the size of a baseball stadium, a virus would about the size of a baseball. You could try a targeted approach by sequencing your best, educated guesses but with metagenomics you can sequence everything but the kitchen sink. This week we talk small viruses and big data with Dr. Eric Delwart.

Imagine a world with no leaders. No Presidents. No generals. No bosses. No central control. Ants have successfully occupied every continent on earth and even though they have a queen, they use a system with no central control which we term collective behavior. But what is collective behavior? How do we begin to understand behaviors that emerge in a spontaneous way? Dr. Deborah Gordon, Professor of biology at Stanford University, joined us to talk all about collective behavior in ants.

Have you ever wondered what powers us? We all consume food for energy, but HOW does that actually turn into energy?  You may be familiar with the molecule ATP, or adenosine triphosphate. ATP is used to store energy from the breakdown of food, and through a process called hydrolysis, that energy can be released and transferred to power reactions. This tiny but mighty molecule is what powers nearly every reaction in our cells. In this episode, we journey inside the cell as we learn more about this powerful molecule, and the specialized structure inside the cell where its made, the mitochondria.

"The thymus is a really ugly-looking organ, but tastes fantastic. Have you ever had sweet breads?" In case you don't know, sweetbread is the culinary term for the thymus, but what is the thymus, besides a tasty dish? In this episode Genevieve and Stephen sit down with Dr. Jarrod Dudakov and discuss what the thymus is, its function, and why it is worth researching.

When you are thinking about how the world works, how often do you think about the tiny forces of nature? Just about never, what do you mean? I mean microbes! They play an important role in ecosystem processes such as decomposition and nutrient cycling. But what do we know how these microbes live in nature? It turns out they live in communities, just like we humans do. In this episode we talk with Dr. Jennifer Martiny from UC Irvine about her work with microbial communities.

A lot of people don't like bats, even Batman is afraid of them. But maybe people are just afraid of what they don't know. Today Dr. Greg Mutumi talks to us about what makes bats so unusual, interesting, and, like he said earlier....cute!

Do you think you can put a number on the amount of species you've seen in your life? Absolutely not. Just stepping out onto the city street, there are countless species around us at all times. It's a huge amount of biodiversity. But what does that even mean and how do we study it? This week on RadioBio, we are joined by Dr. Felipe Zapata from University of California Los Angeles to discuss just that.