Plastic-eating bacteria, Foam mattresses for crops, The evolved life aquatic, The Double Helix
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2018
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A breakthrough for closed loop plastic recycling? Two years ago Japanese scientists discovered a type of bacteria which has evolved to feed on PET plastic - the material from which fizzy drink bottles are made It was isolated at a local recycling centre. An international team has now characterised the structure of the plastic-degrading enzyme and accidentally improved its efficiency. John McGeehan of the University of Portmouth led the team and talks to Adam about where the discovery may lead.
If you can't recycle plastic, you can re-use. Sheffield University chemist Tony Ryan is working to convert old polyurethane foam mattresses into hydroponic allotment beds so that people at a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan can grow their own crops. Roland Pease reports.
How southeast Asian sea nomads evolved the life aquatic.
The Double Helix, fifty years after its 1968 publication. Biologist and historian Matthew Cobb and science writer Angela Saini discuss the place of James Watson's compelling and controversial memoir in the annals of popular science writing. His account of the discovery of the DNA's structure was unlike any science book that had come before. Does it stand the test of time and what of its blantantly sexist treatment of the gifted X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin? Her work was crucial to Crick and Watson's 1953 model of the DNA molecule.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service. |
| 0:04.7 | Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests. |
| 0:08.8 | Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook. |
| 0:11.2 | Technology doesn't want to be good or bad. |
| 0:15.0 | It's in the hands of the creator. |
| 0:16.7 | It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room. |
| 0:20.7 | If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're doing the wrong thing. |
| 0:26.0 | Julie, but at your service. |
| 0:28.0 | Listen to all episodes on BBC Sales. |
| 0:31.6 | Hello You, this is the podcast of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4 first broadcast on |
| 0:35.8 | the 19th of April 2018 I'm Adam Rutherford we're under the sea with the amazing |
| 0:41.2 | budgeau people of Southeast Asia who dive to breathtaking depths for |
| 0:45.7 | breathtaking lengths of time. We're beginning to find out how they adapted to the bottom of the |
| 0:50.0 | sea and it's all to do with their big spleens. And on the 50th anniversary of its publication, |
| 0:55.2 | we're taking a look at a true classic of science writing, the brilliant, gossipy, |
| 0:59.9 | very sexist and maybe not wholly true account of one of the greatest scientific |
| 1:04.7 | discoveries of all time, the double helix by James Watson. |
| 1:09.0 | You really get a sense of what it was like to make this discovery, to be racing towards it, to not know if you would |
| 1:16.4 | get there or not, and in that sense it's brilliant. |
| 1:19.7 | But first, plastics, more and more these days we're being exposed to the huge ecological impact that our burgeoning use of plastics is having on the environment. |
| 1:28.8 | Blue Planet memorably showed us the heartbreaking effects of plastic in the ocean and we're now all |
| 1:34.1 | thinking much harder about recycling. The government are even considering banning |
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