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2- The Identification of Richard III

It’s genetics time! Back in 2012, a skeleton was unearthed in a car park in Leicester, which was later positively identified as Richard III of England. But how? Join us as we delve into how genetics cracked a 500 year old case wide open…

Sources for this episode: 1) King, T. E., Fortes, G. G., Balaresque, P. Thomas, M. G., Balding, D., Delser, P. M., Neumann, R., Parson, W., Knapp, M., Walsh, S., Tonasso, L., Holt, J., Kayser, M., Appleby, J., Forster, P., Ekserdjian, D., Hofreiter, M., and Schürer, K. (2014), Identification of the remains of King Richard III. Nature Communications 5:5631, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms6631. 2) Shakespeare, W., Richard The Third (play), Act 1, Scene 3. 3) Author unknown, BBC news (2015), Richard III: Leicester Cathedral reburial service for king (online) [Accessed 29/10/2020]. 4) Author unknown, BBC (2018), ‘The discovery of Richard III’s skeleton changed my life’ (online) [Accessed 29/10/2020].

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1- Biofilms

Welcome to our first proper episode! This week, we tackle the problem of biofilms- an extracellular matrix which can protect the species inside it and is a source of frustration to doctors and dentists alike.

Sources for this episode: 1) Thain, M. And Hickman, M. (2014), The Penguin Dictionary of Biology, 11th edition. London: Penguin Publishing Group (p.79). 2) Lopez, D. Vlamakis, H. And Kolter, R. (2010), Biofilms. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 2(7): a000398. 3) Wiley, J. M., Sherwood, L. M. And Woolverton, C. J. (2017), Prescott’s Microbiology, 10th edition (International Edition). New York, McGraw-Hill Education. 4) Short, F. L., Murdoch, S. L. And Ryan, R. P. (2014), Polybacterial human disease: the ills of social networking.