Why men may have more severe COVID-19 symptoms, and using bacteria to track contaminated food

Science Magazine Podcast

Science Podcast

News, News Commentary, Science

4.3 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

First up this week, staff writer Meredith Wadman talks with host Sarah Crespi about how male sex hormones may play a role in higher levels of severe coronavirus infections in men. New support for this idea comes from a study showing high levels of male pattern baldness in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Read all our coronavirus coverage. Next, Jason Qian, a Ph.D. student in the systems biology department at Harvard Medical School, joins Sarah to talk about an object-tracking system that uses bacterial spores engineered with unique DNA barcodes. The inactivated spores can be sprayed on anything from lettuce, to wood, to sand and later be scraped off and read out using a CRISPR-based detection system. Spraying these DNA-based identifiers on such things as vegetables could help trace foodborne illnesses back to their source. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast is supported by the Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, one of America's leading research medical schools.
0:07.8	Icon Mount Sinai is the academic arm of the eight hospital Mount Sinai health system in New York City.
0:13.9	It's consistently among the top recipients of NIH funding.
0:18.0	Researchers at Icon Mount Sinai have made breakthrough discoveries in many fields vital to
0:23.0	advancing the health of patients, including cancer, COVID and long COVID, cardiology, neuroscience, and
0:30.4	artificial intelligence. The Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, we find a way. Morgan State
0:37.3	University, a Baltimore, Maryland,
0:39.4	Carnegie R2 doctoral research institution, offers more than 100 academic programs and awards
0:45.4	degrees at the baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral levels, is furthering their mission of
0:50.4	growing the future leading the world. Morgan continues to address the needs and challenges of the modern urban environment.
0:57.4	With a four-year quadrupling of research, more than a dozen new doctoral programs,
1:02.4	and eight new national centers of excellence, Morgan is positioned to achieve Carnegie R1
1:07.8	designation in the next five years.
1:10.4	To learn more about Morgan and their ascension to R1, visit morgan.edu slash research.
1:22.8	Welcome to the science podcast for June 5th, 2020. I'm Sarah Crespi.
1:28.7	First up this week,
1:35.6	staff writer Meredith Wadman discusses a link between coronavirus, sex hormones, and male pattern baldness.
1:41.4	It turns out that this link might be behind the higher numbers of men dying from the infection.
1:44.2	Next, we have researcher Jason Chen. He talks about a system for tracking objects using DNA bar-coded bacterial spores.
1:50.5	You spray the spores on something like lettuce, and then if you ever need to know where that lettuce
1:55.2	came from, perhaps if it was contaminated with dangerous bacteria, you can click the spores
2:00.5	and read out the DNA barcode.
	...

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