‘Witch Weed’ – breaking the spell
Striga (witchweed) is a parasitic weed that seriously constrains the productivity of staples such as maize, sorghum, millet and upland rice on some farms in Uganda. Kilimo Trust supported this initiative to try and control its spread.
More details | Watch now2014 3MT Competition Finals: Resistance Training & Protein Supplementation on Body Composition in Breast Cancer Survivors
A Crime against Humanity
When Monsanto first tried to introduce GMO seeds into Europe there was a backlash by the Green parties and their political allies, who feared that American agro-business was about to take over their food supply. Thus began a massive campaign not agai....
More details | Watch nowA molecular window into speech and language
Our capacity for complex speech and language remains one of the most intriguing aspects of being human. It has long been suspected that some answers to this enigma will be found buried within the genome. With recent advances in genetic technologies, ....
More details | Watch nowA Personal View of the History of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance in Biology and Medicine
In 1952, Felix Bloch and Edward Purcell were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the description of the phenomenon of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Over the years, NMR has been used in a wide range of fundamental studies in physics, and in the....
More details | Watch nowAdventures in vascular biology
Thirty years ago it was thought that the endothelium, a layer of thin, flat cells that line the interior surface of blood vessels was inert. However, major discoveries since then have demonstrated that it is a highly metabolic organ involved in maint....
More details | Watch nowAre Genetically Modified Foods Safe?
There have been many arguments for and against GM Foods, but the question still stands - are they potential saviors of mankind or a disaster waiting to happen? This award winning video covers a range of important issues, discussed by scientists with ....
More details | Watch nowAtmosphere Climate and Chemistry in the Anthropocene
Despite their relatively small mass, 10-5% of the earth biosphere as a whole, generations of ambitious 'homo sapiens' have already played a major and increasing role in changing basic properties of the atmosphere and the earth's surface. Human activ....
More details | Watch nowBacterial cell walls, antibiotics and the origins of life
The cell wall is a crucial structure found in almost all bacteria. It is the target for our best antibiotics and fragments of the wall trigger powerful innate immune responses against infection. Surprisingly, many bacteria can switch almost effortl....
More details | Watch nowBert Sakmann
Winner of the Nobel Prize 1991 in Physiology / Medicine 1991 together with Erwin Neher 'for their discoveries concerning the function of single ion channels in cells'
More details | Watch nowBeyond the human genome project
Dr Lander and his colleagues have developed many of the key tools and generated many of the key information resources for modern mammalian genomics. Their work includes mapping and sequencing of the human, mouse, and other genomes. He was elected a m....
More details | Watch nowBioenergetics of Cancer Cells
A brief summary from the literature about cancer cells' metabolism; 1) the major pathways cancer cells use to generate energy and macromolecules efficiently and rapidly and 2) the enzymes cancer cells up-regulate to control those pathways.
More details | Watch nowBiological Evolution in the Context of Cosmic Evolution and of Cultural Evolution
After reconsidering the very long time periods in cosmic evolution, we will focus our attention to the evolutionary development of living organisms on our planet Earth. The genetic variants (mutations), which are occasionally produced, are alteratio....
More details | Watch nowBody Fuel for Long Distances
In my geoset project I will be discussing the effects of nutrition in long distance endurance. Topics include saturating carbohydrate stores before a race, the Krebs (citric acid) cycle, the effects of dehydration and hyponatremia, and replenishing y....
More details | Watch nowBrain development and brain repair.
The human brain is made up of close to a trillion nerve cells (or neurons), each of which makes connections with, on average, hundreds of other nerve cells, to form the complex neuronal circuits that control all brain activities, including perception....
More details | Watch nowBreast Cancer Susceptibility Gene BRCA2
BRAC2 is a tumor suppressor gene. Its protein product interacts with other proteins to assist regulation of DNA repair, transcription and cell cycle checkpoints. BRAC2 gene disruption may lead to protein truncation, mutations and loss of function. Ce....
More details | Watch nowCan the wheat which grows in dry areas solve the food crisis?
Chiho describes her important work in looking for varieties of wheat which could help increase food production in arid areas.
More details | Watch nowCape Gannets
Study on Cape Gannets, a new prey for quickly adapting Great White Pelicans on Malgas Island, South Africa. First observed in 2008. Result of indirect human involvement; Cape Gannets should be reconsidered for conservation management.
More details | Watch nowChristiane Nüsslein-Volhard
Winner of he Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1995 together with Edward B. Lewis and Eric F. Wieschaus 'for their discoveries concerning the genetic control of early embryonic development'.
More details | Watch nowClimate Change: Madagascar
Anjali Nayar visited a pioneering project in Madagascar that's aiming to protect one of the country's few remaining forests. It's hoped that projects like this will help curb global warming. But first, these projects must overcome the poverty and pol....
More details | Watch nowCloning
Why is cloning such hot science? What are the potential benefits? And are there other ways of achieving them? What are stem cells, and why do many scientists say that embryonic cells are required for this work?
More details | Watch nowCloning, stem cells and regenerative medicine
Extraordinary opportunities to study the molecular mechanisms that cause inherited diseases are being provided by new methods of producing stem cells. Hear about not only the potential value of these new methods, but also how their development was pr....
More details | Watch nowCuckoos and their victims
The sight of a little warbler feeding an enormous cuckoo chick has astonished observers since ancient times. It was once thought that cuckoos were unable to raise their own young because of defective anatomy and behaviour, and so other birds were onl....
More details | Watch nowDarwin’s Four Great Books
A lecture given as part of the Origins 09 series at Florida State University to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species'. Now in his 80th year, Alabama-born Edward Osborne (E.O.) Wilson has long enjoyed a reputation as ....
More details | Watch nowDavid Attenborough on birds of paradise – Part 2
British broadcaster Sir David Attenborough talks to Nature about his obsession with birds of paradise.
More details | Watch nowDavid Attenborough on Darwin – Part 1
British broadcaster Sir David Attenborough presents his views on Charles Darwin, natural selection, and how the Bible has put the natural world in peril in an exclusive interview for Nature Video.
More details | Watch nowDeciphering disease: cells and disruption of their communication
The human body may seem to be no more than a bundle of tissues and organs, yet the cells these are made from are capable of interacting, communicating and performing complex tasks. Our cells' capacity to interact in this way enables humans to adapt t....
More details | Watch nowDecoding consciousness
Everything we know about the world comes to us through our brain. Yet for each of us our own conscious mental world of thoughts and feelings is isolated and private. Despite centuries of research, language or gesture remains the only way we can disco....
More details | Watch nowDeep sea discoveries
Recent underwater images show that the deep sea realm of the British Isles is nothing like the monotonous expanse of mud that many people imagine. Spectacular coral reefs, once thought to be restricted to the tropics, are now known to occur in the ch....
More details | Watch nowDefying Death
We can now expect to live longer than ever before, and if we get ill, we expect to be made better! However new threats continue to emerge.This presentation discusses tuberculosis and flu, new dangerous versions of old diseases, smoking and other life....
More details | Watch nowDevelopment of electrical and electrochemical biosensors based on aptamer-conjugated carbon nanotubes and glucose oxidase immobilized carbon nanotubes
Saino describes her success in developing electrochemical biosensors during her PhD course at Toyo University.
More details | Watch nowDo Touch Ep 1 | Preserving Plant Material
Introduction to systematics & DIY plant preservation techniques. In this first webisode of Do Touch, Daniel Domínguez invites young scientist and collectors to Label, love, & learn about the world. The aim of this seri....
More details | Watch nowEdmond Fischer
Winner of the Nobel Prize 1992 in Medicine / Physiology together with Edwin G. Krebs 'for their discoveries concerning reversible protein phosphorylation as a biological regulatory mechanism'
More details | Watch nowEngineered zinc finger proteins and gene expression
It has long been the goal of molecular biologists to design DNA binding proteins for the specific control of gene expression. The zinc finger design, discovered by Sir Aaron Klug 20 years ago, is ideally suited for such purposes, discriminating betwe....
More details | Watch nowEntomologist
Rob Hutchinson is an entomologist and one of the top mosquito experts in Europe whose work assesses the risk of Malaria returning to UK. He has developed a great interest in mosquito biology and did a masters degree at the School of Tropical Medicine....
More details | Watch nowErwin Neher
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine / Physiology 1991 together with Bert Sakmann 'for their discoveries concerning the function of single ion channels in cells'.
More details | Watch nowEverything we touch is dirty!
Evolution and Creationism
Dr Adam Rutherford investigates the idea that the teaching of evolution is being threatened by a rise in creationism amongst religious students.nRutherford speaks to the former Director of Education at the Royal Society, Reverend Professor Michael Re....
More details | Watch nowFibroblasts and Oesophageal Cancer
Does the anatomical source of fibroblasts affect their behaviour within a 3D composite model of oesophageal adenocarcinoma invasion?
More details | Watch nowFinding Mutations that Affect Immunity
Beginning with an exception to normal function caused by a genetic aberration, one may hope to find at least one protein with non-redundant function in a certain biological process. This approach permitted the identification of the receptor for bacte....
More details | Watch nowFinding patterns in genes and proteins: decoding the logic of molecular interactions
Dr Sarah Teichmann is based at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Cambridge. In the post-genomic era, high-throughput methods are providing us with a deluge of data about genes and proteins. What knowledge about biology do....
More details | Watch nowFlight in Birds and Aeroplanes
John Maynard Smith, one of our most eminent evolutionary biologists and scientific communicators originally trained as an engineer and spent the war years designing aircraft. He describes the way that flight developed in the animal kingdom. The fossi....
More details | Watch nowForever Young – How long can we live?
How long can we live, and how long do we want to live? Why do we change as we get old, and is there anything we can do to stop it? In this video the panel discuss ageing and some of the recent remarkable scientific advances that suggest ageing may no....
More details | Watch nowFred Sanger – Father of Molecular Biology
Fred Sanger is often considered the father of modern molecular biology, and is one of the few people to have been awarded two Nobel prizes. Working in Cambridge he developed a new chromatographic method for determining amino-acid end-groups. His n....
More details | Watch nowFrom bears’ winter-sleep to advanced antibiotics
Professor Ada Yonath, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. To facilitate instant recovery of active life once bears wake up from their winter sleep, nature provides ingenious mechanism based on periodic packing of their ribosomes, the cellular ma....
More details | Watch nowFrom bench to bedside: KATP channels and neonatal diabetes
Whether you eat a whole box of chocolates or fast for the day, the pancreatic beta-cells ensure that your blood glucose level remains relatively constant by regulating the release of insulin from the pancreatic beta-cells. Diabetes results when insul....
More details | Watch nowFrom proteins to drugs
The normal proteins which circulate in human blood are either known or presumed to have beneficial functions. However normal immunity and inflammation proteins can cause or exacerbate disease in addition to helping to resist infections.
More details | Watch nowFrom Proto-oncogenes to Precision Oncology
The diagnosis, classification, and treatment of human cancers are being transformed by scientific discoveries that were strongly influenced by the discovery of the c-src proto-oncogene, as described in the lecture by Michael Bishop. The path to this ....
More details | Watch nowGenerating the Fuel of Life
The lecture will be devoted to the topic of how the biological world supplies itself with energy to make biology work, and what medical consequences ensue when the energy supply chain in our bodies is damaged or defective. We derive our energy from ....
More details | Watch nowGenes, worms and the new genetics
A surprising finding over the past 20 years is that all animals have many of the same genes and that they use them in similar ways to grow and develop. These similarities mean that much of what is learned about what genes do in simple animals such as....
More details | Watch nowGenetic control and the mammalian radiation
To grow tissues in our body two key types of DNA control how, where and when to build essential proteins. Recent comparisons of mammal genomes show that instructions coding how to build proteins are similar across diverse species. In contrast the gen....
More details | Watch nowGenetic Engineering
Genetic fingerprinting and beyond
Professor Jeffreys will describe how DNA typing can be used to solve casework and will review the latest developments, including the creation of major national DNA databases that are proving extraordinarily effective in the fight against crime.
More details | Watch nowGenetic fingerprinting: past, present and future
Alec Jeffreys presents the origins of DNA fingerprinting through to the latest developments and their social impact
More details | Watch nowGenetic Programming
Genetic Programming is an artifical intelligence technique based off of natural selection. A generation of programs is generated, then tested using a fitness function. After that successful programs are altered and replicated successively until a d....
More details | Watch nowGenetically Modified Organisms
A brief overview of genetically modified organisms and their effect on the global population.
More details | Watch nowGenetics, epigenetics and disease
The human genome sequence has been available for more than a decade, but its significance is still not fully understood. While most human genes have been identified, there is much to learn about the DNA signals that control them. This lecture describ....
More details | Watch nowGFP and After
Since its introduction as a biological marker, the Aequorea victoria Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) has had a strong impact in biology, being used in an ever-increasing variety of ways. I will review a bit of the history of GFP and show how having ....
More details | Watch nowGreen Fluorescent Protein: Lighting up Life
The accidental discovery of this wonderful tool has changed the face of biology.
More details | Watch nowGrowing gold-banded lilies with fungi
Tomoha describes her work in helping preserve this threatened species of plant.
More details | Watch nowGünter Blobel
Günter Blobel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine/ Physiology 1999 'for the discovery that proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization in the cell'. In this interview Blobel talks about the work that he did for t....
More details | Watch nowHelix – Episode 1 – Genetics
Helix is an educational series covering genetic disorders, brought to you by Patricia Martin and powered by GEOSET Studios. In this first episode, Patricia primes young learners on modern genetic theory before diving into the exciting field of geneti....
More details | Watch nowHelix – Episode 2 – Tay-Sachs Disease
In this episode of Helix, Patricia Martin outlines the symptoms and complications associated with the terminal illness Tay-Sachs disease.
More details | Watch nowHelix – Episode 3 – Turner Syndrome
In this episode of Helix, Patricia Martin covers the chromosomal condition Turner syndrome. Patricia gives a quick lesson on the symptoms and treatments associated with this congenital disorder.
More details | Watch nowHelix – Episode 4 – Klinefelter Syndrome
In this episode of Helix, Patricia Martin outlines the symptoms and complications associated with Klinefelter syndrome, which is related to Turner syndrome.
More details | Watch nowHelix – Episode 5 – Down Syndrome
In this episode of Helix, Patricia Martin covers the very common and well-known chromosomal condition, Down syndrome.
More details | Watch nowHelix – Episode 6 – Sickle Cell Disease
In this episode of Helix, Patricia Martin outlines the symptoms and causes of sickle cell disease (also referred to as sickle cell anemia), a hemoglobin-affecting disorder.
More details | Watch nowHelix – Episode 7 – Hemophilia
Helix – Episode 8 – Wilson Disease
This episode outlines details about Wilson disease, a rare disorder involving the amounts of copper in the body, and the negative effects on vision and different organs.
More details | Watch nowHelix – Episode 9 – Autism
This episode covers the symptoms and theorized causes of the Autism Spectrum Disorders.
More details | Watch nowHow embryos build organs to last a lifetime
All the organs of our body originate from small founder populations of cells which multiply into complex structures. ÊAdult stem cells are used to maintain organs throughout adult life and to repair or regenerate them after damage.Ê Focusing on the....
More details | Watch nowHow to Model the Action of Complex Biological Systems on a Molecular Level
Despite the enormous advances in structural studies of biological systems we are frequently left without a clear structure function correlation and cannot fully describe how different systems actually work. This introduces a major challenge for compu....
More details | Watch nowHuman Papilloma Virus
The aim of this presentation is to provide an overview of the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) and the associated carcinogenic pathologies of HPV. The predominant cellular players discussed in HPV pathologies are p53 and viral oncoprotein E6. In addition,....
More details | Watch nowIn the Oceans
Satellite, ship survey and computer modelling studies of the workings of the marine environment are used explore present fish supplies worldwide. The desperate need for global 'farming' strategies necessary to ensure that the Oceans can continue to p....
More details | Watch nowInbreeding in an isolated population of animals
Jennifer talks about recent research detailing the effects of inbreeding on an isolated animal population and shows how this affects our ideas about breeding domestic animals.
More details | Watch nowInsight into the Laws of Nature for Biological Evolution
Both evolutionary biology and genetics have their roots 150 years ago in work with phenotypic variants of plants and animals. In contrast, microbial genetics originating as recently as the 1940s, rapidly revealed that filamentous DNA molecules are th....
More details | Watch nowIntroduction to CRISPR interference
CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) interference is a newly discovered immune system acquired by bacteria and archaea. This system has attracted great attention in research and industry because of its potential applicat....
More details | Watch nowInvestigating the ribosome inactivating protein-curcin, as a protent therapeutic candidate in nano-drug delivery systems
During the defence of his doctoral thesis, Mohamed describes his work and investigation of curcin, the ribosome-inactivating protein and the ways it may be used in the treatment of cancer.
More details | Watch nowIon Channels: Their Discovery, their Function and their Role in Diseases
The concept of bioelectricity emerged in the late 18th century, based on the experiments of Galvani and Volta. Sixty years ago, Hodgkin and Huxley showed that the nerve impulse is a result of permeability changes of the nerve membrane. This raised th....
More details | Watch nowIs biodiversity going the way of the Dodo?
Panel discussion with Professor Jonathan Baillie, Dr William Cheung, Professor Adrian Lister and chaired by Dr Susan Lieberman, as part of the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2011. Right now one-fifth of the world’s vertebrates are classi....
More details | Watch nowIs the Great Barrier Reef on Death Row?
Professor J.E.N Veron, the former Chief Scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science and widely regarded as the world's leading authority on coral reef ecosystems, presents the effects that climate change is having on coral reefs.
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