Category: Podcast

Happy Darwin’s Day! On the anniversary of Darwin’s birthday on 12th February 1809, I thought it would be fun to release a special episode covering some aspect of Darwin’s life or theories. Today, we’re going to discuss the health of Darwin’s children and of Darwin’s immediate family, using a 2017 paper by Hayman et al.

Sources for this episode: 1) Hayman, J., Álvarez, G., Ceballos, F. C. and Berra, T. M. (2017), The illnesses of Charles Darwin and his children: a lesson in consanguinity. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 121: 458- 468. Information on the immediate family of Charles Darwin can also be found on Wikipedia, whether his article or the article on the Darwin-Wedgewood family.

This week, I’m going to do something a little different and talk through a process we hear a lot about, but which isn’t often discussed as a process outside biology classrooms very much- evolution. This episode will be a little different from my usual, as it’s mainly going to be me talking rather than drawing on sources. Instead, this discussion is going to be based on my biological education so far.

Apoptosis is the phenomenon by which cells commit suicide in an orderly and programmed fashion. But why is it important? And what happens if it goes wrong? Today, we’re just going to introduce the topic briefly and give some examples of why it is biologically useful.

Sources for this episode: 1) Alberts, Johnson, Lewis, Raff, Roberts, and Walter (2008), Molecular Biology of the Cell, Fifth Edition. Abingdon: Garland Science, ‘Taylor and Francis Group LLC’. 2) Thain, M., and Hickman, M. (2014), The Penguin Dictionary of Biology, 11th edition. London: Penguin Publishing Group.

Eye colour is one of the first examples of genetic inheritance talked about in schools across the country. But what is it that these genes really do? What causes eye colour from a functional perspective? As we’ll see on the podcast today, it’s all to do with the pigment melanin…

Sources for this episode: 1) Sturm, R. A. and Frudakis, T. N. (2004), Eye colour: portals into pigmentation genes and ancestry. Trends in Genetics 20(8): 327- 332. 2) Alberts, Johnson, Lewis Raff, Roberts, and Walter (2008), Molecular Biology of the Cell, Fifth Edition, p.786. Abingdon: Garland Science, Taylor and Francis Group LLC.

Assortative mating is essentially the recognition that theory isn’t always perfect and that, however desperately biologists might want some simplicity in the world, organisms don’t just encounter each other like gas molecules- it’s not a random process. In fact, it can even give evolution a helping hand…

Sources for this episode: 1) Thain, M., and Hickman, M. (2014), The Penguin Dictionary of Biology, 11th edition. London: Penguin Publishing Group. 2) Nishi, A., Alexander, M., Fowler, J. H. and Christakis, N. A. (2020), Assortative mating at loci under recent natural selection in humans. BioSystems 187 (2020) 104040.

Hi everyone, Vince here with a quick update- the podcast now has an accompanying website! From now on, you can head to ‘www.biopedia.co.uk’ to access all our episodes, as well as a blog featuring extra content. Thank you all for sticking with the show and I’m excited to add new content!

The adaptive landscape is an important method for biologists, ecologists, and geneticists to visualise the process of evolution. But what is it, and how does it work? This week, we’re going to discuss what the adaptive landscape actually is, so while there are going to be some sources listed, there’s also a bit of general discussion as well.

Some sources for this episode: 1) Martin, C. H. and Wainwright, P. C. (2013), Multiple fitness peaks on the adaptive landscape drive adaptive radiation in the wild. Science 339: 208- 211. 2) The Wikipedia article for ‘Fitness Landscape’ has quite a good visual guide for rugged landscapes. 3) Script writing was reinforced by my previous education on the topic.

Bonus episode! In the main episode on Sunday, I briefly mentioned NRAMP1, a mutation in which can influence how susceptible someone is to the leprosy bacterium, Mycobacterium leprae. But what exactly is the NRAMP1 protein and why is it important?

Sources for this episode: 1) Cannone-Hergaux, F., Calafat, J., Richer, E., Cellier, M., Grinstein, S., Borregaard, N. and Gros, P. (2002), Expression and subcellular localisation of NRAMP1 in neutrophil granules. Blood 100(1): 268- 275. 2) Forbes, J. R. and Gros, P. (2003), Iron, manganese, and cobalt transport by Nramp1 (Slc11a1) and Nramp2 (Slc11a2) expressed at the plasma membrane. Blood 102(5): 1884- 1892. 3) Rørvig, S., Østergaard, O., Heegaard, N. H. H. and Borregaard, N. (2013), Proteome profiling of human neutrophil granule subsets, secretory vesicles, and cell membrane: correlation with transcriptome profiling of neutrophil precursors. Journal of Leukocyte Biology 94: 711- 721. 4) Hennigar, S. R. and McClung, J. P. (2016), Nutritional Immunity: Starving Pathogens of Trace Minerals. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine 10(3): 170- 173.

A paper that mentions cell lysis in the context of pathogens surviving phagocytosis: Natural Resistance to Infection with Intracellular Pathogens: The Nramp1 Protein Is Recruited to the Membrane of the Phagosome.

Happy new year! In our inaugural episode of 2021, we’re going to go back to the 1100s and focus on the famous case of the Leper King Baldwin IV, who ruled as king of Jerusalem from 1174 to 1185. What exactly is leprosy, and what causes it? We’ll use the test case of Baldwin as an opening to talking a bit about the bug Mycobacterium leprae and how exactly leprosy works.

Sources for this episode: 1) Guerrero-Peral, A. L. (2009), Neurological manifestations of the leprosy of King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem. Revista de Neurologica 49(8). 2) Turner, J. J., Hektoen International, The remarkable Baldwin IV: leper and king of Jerusalem (online). 3) Fullick A., Locke, J. and Bircher, P. (2015), A Level Biology for OCR A. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 4) Author unknown, Microbiology Society (2014), Mycobacterium leprae, the cause of leprosy.(online) [Accessed 11/12/2020] 5) Abel, L., Sánchez, F. O., Oberti, J., Thuc, N. V., Van Hoa, L., Lap, V. D., Skamene, E., Lagrange, P. H. and Schurr, E. (1998), Susceptibility to Leprosy Is Linked to the Human NRAMP1 Gene. The Journal of Infectious Diseases 177: 133- 145. This paper is from 1998 not 1997- apologies, I read the wrong date on the paper!

Proteins are often mentioned on the show, but what about the building blocks that they consist of? This week, we’re going to tackle amino acids in our second rewind episodes. There are some topics that naturally branch off from this one, such as interactions between amino acids and how DNA encodes for different ones, but I’m going to save these topics for future rewind episodes.

Sources for this episode: 1) Thain, M., and Hickman, M. (2014), The Penguin Dictionary of Biology, 11thedition. London: Penguin Publishing Group. (p.26). 2) Campbell, N. A., Urry, L. A., Cain, M. L., Wasserman, S. A., Minorsky, P. V. and Reece, J. B. (2018), Biology: a global approach, 11th edition (Global Edition), Harlow, Pearson Education Limited: p.973. 3) Compound Interest- A Brief Guide to the Twenty Common Amino Acids (webpage). 4) Fullick A., Locke, J. and Bircher, P. (2015), A Level Biology for OCR A. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 5) Ritchie, R. and Ghent, D. (2015), A Level Chemistry for OCR A. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Side note: In case this wasn’t clear in the audio, variable groups, R groups and side chains all refer to the same functional group- namely, the variable part of an amino acid.