Professor Martha Clokie

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2020

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Professor Martha Clokie tells Jim Al-Khalili how she found viruses that destroy antibiotic-resistant bugs by looking in stool samples, her son's nappies and estuary mud. Could viruses improve our health where antibiotics have failed? As a child, Martha Clokie spent a lot of time collecting seaweed on Scottish beaches. She loves plants and studied botany for many years. But mid-career, she learnt about all the viruses that exist in nature. We tend to focus on the viruses that make us ill but there are trillions of viruses on earth and in the ocean and most of them eat bacteria. When a virus destroys a bacteria that attacks our bodies, then it could be just what the doctor ordered. Our enemy’s enemy is our friend. Martha became interested in how these viruses - or bacteriophages as they’re known - might be used to treat disease. Before long, Martha had moved from studying African violets in Uganda to looking at stool samples under the microscope and asking fellow parents to donate their babies’ dirty nappies to her research. She spent many years looking for phages that attack the superbug C. difficile, which is responsible for a particularly nasty form of diarrhoea and results in tens of thousands of deaths every year. And she has shown, in animal models at least, that these phages could succeed where antibiotics have failed.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and trust me you'll get there in a moment but if you're a comedy fan
0:05.2	I'd really like to tell you a bit about what we do. I'm Julie Mackenzie and I commission comedy
0:10.1	podcast at the BBC. It's a bit of a dream job really. Comedy is a bit of a dream job really.
0:13.0	Comedy is a fantastic joyous thing to do because really you're making people laugh,
0:18.0	making people's days a bit better, helping them process, all manner of things.
0:22.0	But you know, I also know that comedy is really
0:24.3	subjective and everyone has different tastes. So we've got a huge range of comedy on offer from
0:29.8	satire to silly, shocking to soothing, profound to just general pratting about. So if you
0:36.1	fancy a laugh, find your next comedy at BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	Hello, today on the Life Scientific I'll be finding out about the viruses that could make us better.
0:46.0	Professor Martha Clokey loves plants and studied botany for many years.
0:51.0	But mid-career she learns about the viruses that eat bacteria and
0:55.0	there are trillions of them. She became interested in how these viruses or
0:59.6	bacteriophages as they're known might be used to treat disease. The viruses that attack
1:05.1	bacteria, that attack us, could be just what the doctor ordered. Our enemy's
1:09.7	enemy after all is our friend. And the hope is that these phages could succeed
1:14.8	where antibiotics have failed. Before long Martha had moved from studying
1:19.5	African violets in Uganda to looking at stool samples under the microscope and asking
1:24.9	fellow parents to donate their baby's dirty nappies to her research.
1:29.1	Professor Martha Clocke, welcome to the Life Scientific.
1:32.0	Thank you. Well, apologies to the life scientific. Thank you.
1:33.0	Well, apologies there for pointing out that rather less than glamorous aspect of your research.
	...

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