Alison Smith on algae

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2017

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Think of algae and you'll probably think trouble. Algal blooms turned the diving pool green at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Smelly seaweed ruins many a trip to the beach. But Alison Smith, Professor of Plant Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, argues that we should appreciate algae more. They range in size from giant kelp to microscopic diatoms. They are found all over the world from the Arctic to the Tropics, live in water and make energy from the sun by photosynthesis. Alison Smith talks to Jim al-Khalili about algae's sometimes bizarre biochemistry and how she discovered that they obtain their vitamins from bacteria they live alongside in the sea. They also discuss how we are beginning to farm algae to make all kinds of chemicals, from food stuffs to biofuels. We may become very dependent on them when the oil runs out.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:03.0	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.
0:07.0	First broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
0:10.0	I'm Jimal Kiele and my mission is to interview the most fascinating and important scientists alive today and to find out what makes them tick.
0:20.0	Imagine a future in which the countryside is no longer covered with fields of wheat and rape seed,
0:25.4	but ponds of algae, providing us with foodstuffs.
0:29.1	This is a vision of my guest today Professor Allison Smith,
0:32.0	one of the world experts on the biology of
0:34.0	algae. Algae she says aren't well known. We're all familiar with seaweed and
0:38.9	we may have seen algal blooms and garden ponds or more recently and famously in the diving pool at the Rio Olympics in August 2016.
0:47.0	But are you aware that algae may have remarkably useful applications?
0:51.0	Allison Smith is a professor of plant biochemistry at the University of Cambridge,
0:55.6	where she spent many years understanding the sometimes strange biology of algae.
1:00.4	She's now arguing that algae have a role to play in a future economy when the oil begins to run out.
1:05.6	Allison Smith, welcome to the life scientific.
1:07.6	Thank you very much.
1:08.8	When most people like me think of algae, we think inevitably of seaweed. So I'm wondering if there's a proper definition of
1:15.9	algae. You see I just got more confused when I was researching the subject. For example,
1:20.7	are algae plants? Yeah, so it is very difficult and I'll try and explain it in simple terms.
1:27.0	Algae are generally photosynthetic organisms and they fall into two groups,
1:32.0	the micro algae and the macro algae.
1:34.4	The macro algae are seaweeds.
	...

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