‘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 nowA 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
More details | Watch nowLapatinib treatment for HER2 Positive Breast Cancer
Discussion on the background information, etiology, and treatment of HER2 positive breast cancer.
More details | Watch nowLighting up cells
A presentation about fluorescing cells by a Senior Lecturer in Bionanotechnology in the Department of Biomedical Science at the University of Sheffield
More details | Watch nowMagnetic brain stimulation and brain function?
Like his nineteenth century contemporaries David Ferrier tried to reveal cerebral localisation of function by direct electrical stimulation of the exposed brain of animals. With some notable exceptions the results were disappointing and confined to t....
More details | Watch nowMaking bacteria glow to aid healing
Mammalian biodiversity: past, present, future?
Beautiful and charismatic, mammals are biodiversity icons. But a quarter of mammalian species are now threatened with extinction, as ecosystems reel under the impact of a growing and ever more demanding human population. This lecture explores the his....
More details | Watch nowMapping memory: the brains behind remembering
Historically memory research has focussed on the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain's temporal lobes. Damage to the hippocampus is known to have a devastating impact on the ability to form new memories as well as compromising recollection of ....
More details | Watch nowMicrofluidic Biosensor
University of Toronto student Jonathan Yam describes his research on microfluidics during Summer 2010 in the laboratory of Bob Westervelt at Harvard University under the direction of Alex Nemiroski.
More details | Watch nowMicroscopy goes cold: secrets of frozen viruses
Viruses are a major cause of death and disease. Too small to be seen by light microscopy, they were first visualised about 50 years ago by electron microscopy. Dr. Crowther describes his work on the development of the methods and illustrates how he h....
More details | Watch nowMinimizing a Bacterial Genome by Global Design and Synthesis
In 2010, we chemically synthesized the 1078 Kb Mycoplasma mycoides genome and transplanted it into a recipient cell cytoplasm to create a 'synthetic cell', JCVI-syn1.0 (Science, 329, 52-56, 2010). We identified several hundred non-essential genes by ....
More details | Watch nowMitochondrial DNA Testing
Molecular chaperones: how cells stop proteins from misbehaving
Proteins are the action molecules of all cells, and to function properly, protein chains must fold and assemble correctly. But each chain of every protein runs the risk that it will combine with one or more identical chains to form nonfunctional aggr....
More details | Watch nowMultiscale Simulations of the Functions of Biological Molecules
Despite 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 computer....
More details | Watch nowNature’s glass: half-full or half-empty?
Andrew Balmford FRS is Professor of Conservation Science at University of Cambridge. The world’s governments failed to meet their pledge of reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Wild populations, their habitats, and the benefits they pr....
More details | Watch nowNerve tissue engineering
Research staff explain how they are developing nerve guidance channels for repairing peripheral nerve injury
More details | Watch nowNetworks in ecosystems and financial systems
This talk surveys our growing understanding of the relationships between the network structure of ecological networks ? both in mathematical models and in the real world ? and their ability to withstand disturbance, natural or human-created.
More details | Watch nowNeurochemistry
A presentation on neurochemistry - the effects of drugs and nutrition are also discussed.
More details | Watch nowNeuroNavigation: how the brain represents the space we live in and finds our way around
Learning about new environments or locating ourselves in familiar environments are some of the most fundamental tasks that the brain performs. Information is not stored in response to biological needs such as hunger or thirst but on the basis of cogn....
More details | Watch nowNuts and Bolts of the Mind
Susan Greenfield conducts us on an exhilarating tour of brain. A brief fascinating historical introduction is followed by a discussion on our present, admittedly limited, understanding of this amazing organ. Members of the group handle (and dissect) ....
More details | Watch nowOrigin of Life on Earth: Abiogenesis
This presentation portrays a general overview of the theory of abiogenesis and its conceptual history. From the theory of spontaneous generation to biogenesis to the modern-day abiogenesis, the changing perception of the origin of life is discussed.....
More details | Watch nowOur genomes, our history
Genetic differences between humans reflect the fundamental processes, such as mutation, recombination and natural selection, which have influenced our evolutionary history. Now that we can chart the genomes of many individuals, we are finding many su....
More details | Watch nowPandemic Influenza: one flu over the cuckoo’s nest
Where do the pandemic influenza viruses come from and why did experts fail to predict the severity of the 2009 pandemic? However to date, the 2009 H1N1 pandemic influenza has been much less severe than the 1918 Spanish influenza.
More details | Watch nowPerception, deception and reality
Sir David Attenborough delivers the 2003 Michael Faraday Lecture entitled: Perception, deception and reality
More details | Watch nowPhysical perspective on cytoplasmic streaming
Professor Ray Goldstein FRS is the Schlumberger Professor of Complex Physical Systems at the University of Cambridge. Here he describes a biological example of topological inversion, with relevance to engineering problems in human technology.
More details | Watch nowPlague-carrying crayfish
Plant and animal communication
Organisms of all kinds use signals comprising minute amounts of natural chemicals. The exploitation of semiochemicals is demonstrated with dramatic success in the management of pests and parasitic weeds in resource-poor East African cereal farming.
More details | Watch nowPlasticity of the brain: the key to human development.
How do our genes program the complexity of our brains? Why is human culture so much richer than that of the Great Apes? And how has human cognitive achievement continued to accelerate, when our genetic makeup has changed very little over the past 100....
More details | Watch nowPlatypus Genome
The duck-billed platypus is a truly unique animal; a monotreme with almost no close relatives alive on earth. Scientists just had to take a look at that genome and here they discuss their findings.
More details | Watch nowRegenerating organs and other small challenges
A disagreeable side effect of longer life-spans is the failure of one part of the body – the knees, for example – before the body as a whole is ready to surrender. The search for replacement body parts has fueled the highly interdisciplinary fiel....
More details | Watch nowRemarkable Creatures – Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species
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'. Sean B. Carroll is a professor of molecular biology and genetics at the University of Wisconsin-M....
More details | Watch nowReprogramming the code of life
The information for synthesizing the molecules that allow organisms to survive and replicate is encoded in genomic DNA. In the cell, DNA is copied to messenger RNA, and triplet codons in the messenger RNA are decoded in the process of translation to ....
More details | Watch nowRetinoblastoma
Kyla discusses an overview of the disease, the most common method in which it is diagnosed, as well as the major chemotherapeutics used to treat it.
More details | Watch nowRole of Nitric Oxide and Cyclic GMP in Cell Signaling and Drug Development
Nitric oxide research has grown rapidly with about 150,000 research publications describing its biological effects. It is an important messenger molecule that affects most tissues and biological processes. Many effects of nitric oxide are mediated by....
More details | Watch nowScience not stamp collecting? Botany from 1759 to 2059
Professor Hopper considers the vital role that the study of plant taxonomy and systematics has played in plant science. He considers, in particular, how these fields are transforming to meet the needs of 21st Century science as we address the challen....
More details | Watch nowSelf-Assembly: Nature’s way to do it
Biology operates at two levels: the large scale which we can see and the underlying microscopic one. The amazing way in which intermolecular forces cause protein arrays to self-assemble, enabling Nature to fabricate the large scale components of livi....
More details | Watch nowStem Cells to Synapses
One of the goals of research in neurobiology is the repair and regeneration of neurons after damage to the brain or spinal cord. Before we can understand how to repair the nervous system we must first learn how the nervous system is put together.
More details | Watch nowStructural Biology and its Translation into Practice and Business: My Experience
As a student in the early 1960s, I had the privilege to attend winter seminars organized by my mentor, W. Hoppe, and by M. Perutz, which took place in a small guesthouse in the Bavarian-Austrian Alps. The entire community of a handful of protein cry....
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