Radiobio

Climate change can cause organisms to experience conditions they are not adapted to. How do these organisms respond and keep up with a changing world? Our guest this week studies how a small, ubiquitous plant responds to both natural and experimental climate change to learn about the potential pathways to adaptation plants may follow. Dr. Johanna Schmitt introduces us to Arabadopsis thaliana, a tiny weed that can yield big insights into what the future holds for plants.

In many cells, RNA plays an essential role in regulation. Technological innovations are needed to further understand the role of RNA molecules in regulating basic biological function. Further, there is a need to expand the biochemistry toolkit to understand how large groups of RNAs are working in parallel inside living cells. The Spitale lab develops novel biochemical approaches toward understanding the role of RNA molecules in normal cell biology, as well as disease. Today we are going to learn about these new methods and tools in the RNA world from our guest Dr. Spitale himself.

What are coelacanths? Why would a marine fish contain chitin, a sugar that makes up the exoskeleton of insects? How do sharks sense fish? Why do we care about lamprey immune systems? Dr. Chris Amemiya from the Benaroya Research Institute studies these questions using comparative genomics. This research will improve our understanding of marine ecology as well as immunology, and holds implications for both the medical and biotechnical fields.

The famous geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky once said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." But how do we study evolution? How do we reconstruct evolutionary relationships amongst hundreds, even thousands of taxa across the tree of life? Can we really predict how fast species evolve? Dr. Emily Jane McTavish, Assistant Professor in the Quantitative & Systems Biology graduate group at the University of California, Merced, joins us to talk about her research as a phylogeneticist and computational biologist.

QSB RadioBio interviews Dr. Nathan Lanning of CSU-LA.