Over a year, an average of 342 watts of power is emitted on every square meter of the earths surface. The ability to harness this energy is vital for our future source of renewable energy.

There are many types of solar cells, one type is perovskite solar cells, which is an actively researched material that has the potential to be deposited onto most surfaces such a textured and flexible ones. 

It was a pleasure to talk with Robert Tirawat about perovskite solar cells, we touched on what they are, their benefits and the biggest areas of research in the field.

The waste plastic problem is not a stranger to anyone. Plastics are required for many of our daily activities, and it is not foreseeable to live without them. As such, it is important we find ways to prevent waste plastic from building up in our environment. 

I spoke with Dr. Kristoffer Kortsen about his work into this area, focusing on the different fates of waste that we might put in our rubbish bins, and the most sustainable and viable options for recycling and reusing these materials.

If you would like to check out his research, you can have a look here: https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/kristoffer.kortsen/publications/ 

The robots that most easily come to mind are production line robots, they will move where they are told to move, regardless of any obstructions on the way. This means that these rigid robots must be kept separate from humans over safety concerns. That is where soft robotics come in to play, completely safe robots that do not have the physical capabilities to cause accidental damage to humans. 

The field of soft robotics is a thriving area of research, and much work is ongoing to improve the control and movement of these robots. The end goal is to be able to aid humans alongside humans in environments where it is beneficial to automate repetitive processes.

I spoke with Dr. Daniel Bruder about his work in the field, looking into modelling soft robots to improve their properties.

Check out Dr. Daniel Bruder here: https://danielbruder.com/

The sun radiates an imense amount of energy onto the surface of the earth, scientists and engineers dream of using this energy to build materials and chemical products by engineering algae.

In this episode I spoke with Dr. Elias Englund about his work in the area of metabolic engineering to produce valuable products in microorganisms and we also touched on his recently published paper on poly ketide synthatses (PKS) which are a class of biomolecule that behave like a molecular factory line, producing important molecules such as antibiotics and other drugs.

The field of material science is a complex and interdisciplinary field, with most engineering processes relying on specific materials, it is important that specific bespoke materials are made to suit each application. 

An emerging field in the area of material science is that of living materials, a type of material that houses living biological organisms within it. The purpose of this is to allow otherwise inanimate materials to be able to respond and interact with their environment.

In this episode, I spoke with Dr. Debika Datta about some of her work, in collaboration with others at UCSD, on creating a living material that can take up polluting dyes from surrounding water.

Most cells in the body have a very specific function, and cannot replace cells from other areas of the body. For example, a skin cell could not replace a neurone cell in the brain. Interestingly, the two cells will contain the exact same genetic information in the form of DNA, however, some genes will be switched on or off depending on the type of cell, this is known as epigenetics.
 
Stem cells are a type of cell which, because of their epigenetic state, can change into (mostly) any other type of cell. These cells are in a state before genes have been switched off, so they are not specialised in any way, and can choose which genes to switch off/on depending on the environment they are in.  This makes them incredibly useful in regenerative medicine, where different cell types may be required to regenerate a damaged complex organ. However, these stem cells often come from embryonic tissue, which has obvious ethical concerns. Luckily researchers have been working on "Induced Stem Cells", where normal human skin cells can be changed epigenetically, to become stem cells, these can then be used in regenerative medicine.
 
In today's episode, Dr. Daniel Poppe talked about his recently published work in the area of induced stem cells. Specifically, he talked about the differences between embryonic stem cells and induced stem cells and a new method for minimising these differences, so that induced stem cells and more effective at performing the role of a stem cell.
 
Buckberry, S., Liu, X., Poppe, D. et al. Transient naive reprogramming corrects hiPS cells functionally and epigenetically. Nature 620, 863–872 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06424-7

Pathogenic bacteria often release their DNA into the environment that they colonise. This DNA is potentially a great method of detecting specific types of bacteria, before they become pathogenic, making treatment easier and more targeted. 

There are many such methods of sensing this bacterial DNA, one such method is to use biology itself to tell us when it is present. This is possible, because DNA has a very specific structure that can bind to other molecules that mirror its structure. 

In today's episode, Dr. Yu-Yu Cheng talked about his recently published work on a DNA circuit he designed which was capable of binding to specific target DNA, like the ones emitted by pathogenic DNA. Upon binding the target DNA, the DNA circuit would light up (fluoresce) thus alerting the observer that a specific bacteria may be present in a sample.

The cell is the fundamental unit of life, our understanding of which is growing at a rapid rate, but still there is a vast amount we need to learn before we truly understand the cell. Each cell contains a complex system of circuits and chemical pathways that are so interconnected, it is difficult to change something without the whole system changing.

To understand the chemical pathways further, we must change the genes of a cell, which in turn modifies the proteins that are responsible for the chemical reactions. As a result, we can see the effects caused by altering different chemical pathways in the cell. An amazing area of research is 'striping back' the genes in a cell to see how few chemical pathways are necessary for survival, this is known as a 'minimal cell'. The minimal cell is incredibly useful in helping us understand genetics and understanding how we can manipulate biological systems with synthetic biology.

Synthetic biology is an incredibly exciting field of biology, which hopes to manipulate living organisms to benefit many important areas such as health, materials and fuels.

It was great to talk with Dr. Roy Moger-Reischer about his recent publication on the evolution of a minimal cell and the impacts of his work.