We dig into the science of farming this week with a look at how agriculture can adapt to a changing climate, how scientists are striving to produce a perfect pea and a new initiative to turn native African fruit trees into the next commercial blockbusters. In Kitchen Science we use chromatography to reveal the colours concealed in chlorophyll, and in this week's news round-up, a new way to finger criminals using the trail of bacteria they leave behind, combating cancer with synthetic lethality, and how scientists have turned mosquitoes into flying vaccinators...
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Cancer is a disease caused by gene faults and increasingly, researchers are working out how to use these faults to our advantage to fight the disease...
Scientists have found a new way to track down criminals - using the unique collections of bacteria they leave behind on things they touch.
RNAi is a powerful technique used to switch off DNA polymerases in cancer cells grown in the lab. But until now we haven't seen that it can work in humans. Now research published in the journal Nature shows the first inklings that we might be able to get RNAi to work in patien...
Scientists have found a way to use mosquitoes as mobile vaccinating machines!
Leila Luheshi explains how a binding protein could be used to prevent the build up of the toxic proteins that cause Alzheimers disease...
The human population is estimated to be about 6.8 billion right now, and it’s set to grow to over 9 billion by 2040. Supporting a population that big is a really big challenge, but it could be made even harder if you factor in the effects of climate change. We find out how a c...
Meera Senthilingam explores how the domestication of African fruits trees is helping meet the nutritional and economical needs of Africas increasing population...
The humble pea is something of a wonder plant, we all like to think – for one thing, it adds nitrogen back into the soil, and that reduces the amount of fertiliser that you need to add to the next crop that you want to grown on the same soil. But, some scientists think they can...
Find out some of the pigments in a leaf using some easy household materials.
Dear Chris
Also on a recent farming programme they explained that satelite pictures of farmland combined with computer programming of the distribition of fertilsers from a tractor could optimise yields using no more than the necessary amount of fertiliser. Suprisingly they s...
Is a black eyed pea actually a pea or a bean?
Peas are actually really heavy and hard to handle. They're Very dusty and the weight means that they need a specially reinforced grain bin to hold them.
Does this get factored into the environmental argument?
With the recent sequencing of various lung cancer and melanoma genomes, it seems that the specific sets of mutations that cause one type of cancer differ from those that cause another type of cancer.
If this is the case, how does cancer spread from one organ to another?
F...
Are all the calories in food actually absorbed by the body?
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