Lab-made skin grows its own hair
Nature Podcast
podcast@nature.com
4.5 • 893 Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2020
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, a new method to grow hairy skin in a dish, and new research takes aim at the RNA world hypothesis.
In this episode:
00:45 Hairy Skin
Researchers may have developed a way to make skin that can grow hair in the lab, paving the way for treatment of a variety of skin disorders, and perhaps even baldness. Research Article: Lee et al.; News and Views: Regenerative medicine could pave the way to treating baldness
08:56 Research Highlights
How mercury moved during the ‘Great Dying’, and the link between mobile phones and gender equality. Research Highlight: Giant eruptions belched toxic metal during the ‘Great Dying’; Research Article: Rotondi et al.
11:21 Does DNA predate life?
The RNA world hypothesis posits that RNA formed spontaneously leading eventually to life. Now new research suggests that RNA and DNA formed together, before life. Research Article: Xu et al.; News and Views: How DNA and RNA subunits might have formed to make the first genetic alphabet
19:25 Pick of the Briefing
We pick our highlights from the Nature Briefing, including the recent SpaceX launch, and the earliest fossil of a land animal. CBC: Scientists find oldest fossil of a land animal; Nature News: SpaceX to launch astronauts — and a new era of private human spaceflight
Other links
Video: We test a home antibody kit for tracking Covid-19 transmission
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Nature. |
| 0:02.0 | In an experiment. |
| 0:05.0 | Why is blight so far? |
| 0:08.0 | Like it sounds so simple. |
| 0:09.0 | They had no idea. |
| 0:11.0 | But now the data's... |
| 0:12.0 | I find this not only refreshing, but at some level astounding. |
| 0:20.0 | Nature. |
| 0:25.8 | Welcome back to the nature podcast. |
| 0:29.4 | This week, hairy lab-grown skin. |
| 0:32.4 | And did DNA exist before life? |
| 0:33.9 | I'm Charmany Bandell. |
| 0:35.0 | And I'm Nick Al. First up, the skin is a pretty important organ. |
| 0:48.3 | Not only is it what you see when you look at someone else, but it also protects us and helps us |
| 0:55.1 | regulate our temperature. So when people have certain disorders that affect their skin, it can be |
| 1:01.6 | quite a problem. Fortunately, scientists have been able to grow skin in the lab for decades, |
| 1:07.7 | and more recently, they've been able to graft lab-grown skin onto patients. |
| 1:12.5 | But there's always been something important missing from this synthetic skin. |
| 1:16.8 | Hair. |
| 1:18.4 | That may be all about to change, though, as this week in nature, Carl Kohler and his colleagues |
| 1:23.3 | show a way to grow hairy skin in the lab. |
| 1:27.0 | I called up Carl to find out more, and started by asking how he got into the skin game. |
... |
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