06 June 2019: Microbes modifying medicine and kickstarting plate tectonics
Nature Podcast
podcast@nature.com
4.5 • 893 Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2019
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, how gut microbes might be affecting drugs, and a new theory on the beginning of plate tectonics.
In this episode:
00:45 Microbes metabolising drugs
Researchers are investigating whether the gut microbiota can alter the activity of medicinal drugs.
Research article: Zimmermann et al.
06:40 Research Highlights
Elephants counting with smell, and audio activity monitoring.
Research Highlight: Elephants have a nose for portion size
Research Highlight: Deep learning monitors human activity based on sound alone
08:57 The origin of plate tectonics?
A new theory suggests that sediment may have lubricated the Earth’s tectonic plates, allowing them to move.
Research article: Sobolev and Brown
News and Views: Earth’s evolution explored
14:14 News Chat
Scientists protest in Hungary, and a trial of a new post-review process to test reproducibility.
News: Hungarians protest against proposed government takeover of science
News: Reproducibility trial publishes two conclusions for one paper
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Nature. |
| 0:04.3 | In a experiment, I don't know yet. |
| 0:06.2 | Why is Blight so far? |
| 0:08.1 | Like, it sounds so simple. |
| 0:09.3 | They had no idea. |
| 0:10.8 | But now the data's... |
| 0:12.0 | I find this not only refreshing, but at some level astounding. |
| 0:19.9 | Nature. |
| 0:21.6 | Welcome back to the nature podcast. |
| 0:26.4 | This week we'll be finding out how microbes may modify medicine |
| 0:30.2 | and hearing how plate tectonics first got moving. |
| 0:34.4 | I'm Charmoney Bund. And I'm Nick Howl. |
| 0:47.4 | I've got such a headache. |
| 0:50.8 | Oh, big night last night. You have no tolerance for alcohol. |
| 0:53.3 | You can talk. Better take some aspirin. |
| 0:55.1 | Oh, aspirin never works for me. |
| 1:00.0 | So you're rolling on the floor after half a pint of cheap ale but have a high tolerance for aspirin? |
| 1:07.4 | Yeah, it is kind of weird. But people do have big differences in their responses to all sorts of drugs. |
| 1:12.8 | Things like gender, age, size. They all seem to have an impact, and this week in nature, there's another idea. Our hypothesis was that the microbiome might play a role. |
| 1:20.2 | This is Michael Zimmerman, a microbiome researcher from Yale University. Since most oral drugs |
| 1:27.1 | are absorbed in our gut, Michael wondered if the |
| 1:30.2 | diverse microorganisms that live there could be a major reason people can react so differently to |
... |
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