Biology Interviews

What is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

Dr. Esther Crawley explains what chronic fatigue syndrome is, who gets it, the genetic component of chronic fatigue syndrome, and what we can currently do to help young people with the disease.Dr. Esther Crawley, Bristol University

Boosting Brown Fat for Weight Control

This week, scientists at Cambridge University have identified a signal that controls the activity of brown fat – that's a special kind of adipose tissue that when boosted, could help people to lose weight...Andrew Whittle, Institute of Metabolic Science, Cambridge

Detecting Virus Pathology, the Rewards of Self-Disclosure and Flatulent Dinosaurs

A new test to predict the pathology of a virus, ice sheet instability in Antarctica, the rewarding feeling of talking about yourself and how dinosaurs could have warmed the earth with their flatulence..!Julian Hiscox, University of Leeds; Hartmut Hellmer, Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research; Diana Tamir, Harvard University; David Wilkinson, Liverpool John Moore's University

Gene of the month - Callipyge

Move over Kim Kardashian, because our gene of the month is the curvaceous Callipyge, Greek for “beautiful buttocks”. It was first spotted back in the early 1980s on a farm in Oklahoma, when the farmer noticed some sheep in his flock with particularly big, muscular bottoms. Kat Arney

Gene of the month - Lunatic Fringe

Finally, keep your hair on, because our gene of the month is the rather wackily-named Lunatic Fringe. First discovered in fruit flies, the Fringe gene is involved in forming the edges of a fly’s wings.Kat Arney

Gene of the month - Sonic Hedgehog

If you ask most people what they think of when they hear the words “Sonic Hedgehog”, they’ll probably describe a spiky blue video game character. But ask a biologist, and they might at least pause for a moment, because as well as being the main protagonist of the 90s Sega games, Sonic Hedgehog is also an important gene found in mammals, along with the similar genes desert hedgehog and Indian hedgehog.Kat Arney

How do we know how big to grow? - Dr Nic Tapon

We’ve already heard how genes control the growth of an organism from single fertilised cell. But how do we know when to stop? Why do animals reach a certain size and then stop, and how do the organs inside our bodies know when they’ve reached the right size too? As you can probably guess, the answer also lies within our genes. To discover why we don’t grow forever, I spoke to Dr Nick Tapon, who leads the Apoptosis and Proliferation Control Laboratory at Cancer Research UK’s London Research Institute.Dr Nic Tapon, Cancer Research UK London Research Institute

Children of the 90s

A story that starts with 9,000 placentas floating in plastic buckets of formaldehyde...Nell Barrie

Stickleback evolution

Sequencing stickleback genomes reveals similarities in adaptation...Nell Barrie

Rebuilding evolutionary trees

A new paper in the American Journal of Human Genetics, talks about a Copernican revolution in how we view where we start comparing DNA sequences from...Nell Barrie

Autism genes

Researchers in America have looked at about 600 families who’ve got people with autism in the family, and they found three new high risk genes...Nell Barrie

Developmental genetics - Dr David Ish-Horowicz

For me, one of the most amazing things in biology is how a single fertilised egg cell can grow into a whole organism, whether it’s a fruit tree or fruit fly, hamster or human. To find out more about how this happens, I spoke to David Ish-Horowicz, who heads up the Developmental Genetics Laboratory at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute. Dr David Ish-Horowicz, Cancer Research UK London Research Institute

Zebra fish ears - Dr Tanya Whitfield

Dr Tanya Whitfield and her team at the University of Sheffield are using a rather different model - stripey little zebrafish - to study ear development. The first thing I had to ask was what on earth a zebrafish’s ear looks like.Dr Tanya Whitfield, University of Sheffield

Arabidopsis as a model plant - Dr Sean Cutler

Now it’s time to take a look at a couple more supermodels from the genetics world - starting with plants. Here’s Sean Cutler, Associate Professor of Plant Cell Biology at University of California, Riverside, explaining why the tiny weedy cress Arabidopsis makes a good model for plant biologists.Dr Sean Cutler, UC Riverside

Pigeon navigation

This is a little bit sad because it’s the kind of crushing of an urban legend. People did use to think that pigeons actually had magnetic beaks and that this acted as a sort of compass, allowing them to do these amazing feats of navigation that we hear about... Nell Barrie

MicroRNAs in bee brains

Another nice bee story that I noticed in the journal Genes, Brains and Behaviour and this is from researchers at Washington University was about the role of microRNAs in bee brains....Nell Barrie

Giant sex-crazed bees

This is about giant bees in China and this was published in PLoS One. They're actually looking at isolated colonies of bees on an island off the coast of China and what they were trying to figure out is how these bees cope with being so isolated...Nell Barrie

Tasmanian tiger diversity

This story's about an animal that's already become extinct, the Tasmanian tiger. This is research that's published in PLoS One by Dr. Brandon Menzies and his team at the University of Melbourne, obviously in Australia where the Tasmanian tiger lived...Nell Barrie

Polar bear evolution

What we’re looking at here is how did polar bears evolve to be different from normal bears – brown bears, all kinds of bears that do not live in the Arctic...Nell Barrie

Model worms - Professor Jonathan Hodgkin

When you think of super-models, you may think of skinny, pouting beauties strutting up and down the catwalk. But one of the more recent stars on the modelling scene in the world of genetics research is just over a millimetre long, completely transparent, and you can pop it in the fridge over the weekend. To find out more about these curious creatures, I spoke to Jonathan Hodgkin, Professor of Genetics at the University of Oxford.Professor Jonathan Hodgkin, University of Oxford