Seasonal Variation in Immunity, Chemosynthesis, Role of the ISS, Storing Digital Data in DNA

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2015

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Many diseases strike harder and more often in the winter, including major inflammatory conditions such as Type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. New research out this week has uncovered the reasons why: it turns out that our immune responses are heavily influenced by the seasons. Professor John Todd who led this new global study discusses the results and how this could influence the way we administer medicines in future.

Organisms generate energy in all sorts of ways and it can happen in all sorts of weird places, such as deep sea hydrothermal vents, where bacteria takes nasty stuff such as Hydrogen Sulphide, and turn it into useful stuff such as amino acids. This is called chemosynthesis. But it turns out that it doesn't just happen in dark corners of the ocean. As tubeworm expert Nick Higgs explains we are learning that chemosynthesis is everywhere.

Major Tim Peake begins his six-month mission to the International Space Station in November,. Ever since its inception, the question of 'what the ISS is for?' has been asked.. So, what sort of science does it deliver? Richard Hollingham reports from Alabama, in a secret NASA research bunker.

Two years ago, a team led by Nick Goldman at the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge successfully took a collection of important cultural artefacts, encoded them digitally, and then wrote them in DNA. These included Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, and all the Shakespearean sonnets. He's now collaborated with artist Charlotte Jarvis to encode a new musical composition which will also form a new art installation Music of the Spheres. DNA's ability to store complex digital data appears close to a reality. Could it hold the key to permanent long term storage for anything?

Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Transcript

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0:40.6	first broadcast on the 14th of May 2015. On this day in 1796
0:46.4	Edward Jenner administered the first smallpox vaccination. Smallpox was
0:50.8	eradicated from Earth in 1979, so well done us.
0:55.0	More information at BBC.co.
0:56.9	UK slash Radio 4.
0:59.2	Major Tim Peek is getting into the final furlongs of his astronaut training for a November launch,
1:04.4	so we're off to the International Space Station to ask the question,
1:07.5	what exactly happens on a laboratory in orbit?
1:10.5	We're into the dark of the oceans as well to take a squiz at the lobsters, giant tube worms, and clams who don't actually eat, but host bacteria who supply all of their dietary needs. That is the first piece of music recorded onto DNA. Amid redundant hard drives and
1:37.7	defunct formats could DNA be the future of digital data storage. But first it's May and spring has sprung the
1:45.9	grasses riz summer is threatening to emerge blinking in the sunshine. That 23
1:51.3	degree tilt from the vertical that the Earth sits on gives us a variable distance from the sun during the course of an orbit, also known as the seasons.
2:00.0	And of course the sun is most welcome as everyone feels a bit ropey in the dark days of January in February.
2:05.2	That's not just old wives tales or folk wisdom. There are plenty of ailments that strike harder and more often in the winter.
2:12.0	Not just colds and the flu, but also inflammatory diseases including
	...

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