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About 451,000,000 years ago, there was a sudden increase in the number of different types of animals in the fossil record. The animals that came before didn’t stand a chance. The new kids had hard shells, eyes, jaws and teeth. Join us for a chat about the Cambrian period.
Continue reading Ep 263: a bevy of beasts
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From Bacteria coordinating their attack, to brain cells trying to figure out how bacteria coordinate their attack, today we look at how cells signal and communicate with one another, for better or worse. No hippos were harmed in the making of this episode.
Continue reading Ep 262: itty bitty chatty: cells, signals, and communication
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Parental guidance is advised as we examine the strange, sometimes fatal, always messy world of sex. Queue the sax and have a look at fish joined in a special bond, single celled yeast, bugs with a mathematical sense of timing, and females that make a meal of their suiters.
Continue reading Ep 261: Sex
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When does cooperation become identity? How and why did single celled life, which was doing just fine, end up forming plants and animals made up of trillions of cells? By taking a look at birds, army ants, coral reefs and giant jellyfish, we try to understand multicellular life.
Continue reading Ep 260: The urge to merge: hives, colonies and multicellular life
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If your cell’s nucleus was about as tall as Brad, your DNA could stretch for more than 200 miles. How do such long molecules fit inside such tiny cells? While we’re on the subject, just how much information is in DNA? Join us for a look at your chromosomes, and cellular nucleus.
Continue reading Ep 259: The molecular clown car: DNA and your cells
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Inside the membrane of most of your cells are what look like little cells, with their own membranes and DNA. These little cell like things do important things, without which your cells couldn’t function, and you couldn’t live. The thing is, once upon a time, they really were cells in their own right, cells that one day moved inside of another cell, and never left.
Continue reading Ep 258: Living cells that make their living inside other living cells
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When oxygen first began to accumulate in our oceans and our atmosphere, most of what was alive at the time couldn’t take it. The oxygen was a terrible poison. Even those life forms that could stand the extra O2, had trouble when the oxygen reacted with the iron in the ocean, and took away much of what had been food. If that wasn’t bad enough, a long ice age got started, all because of tiny microbes, too small to see with the naked eye.
Continue reading Ep 257: Comes the oxygen
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Brad got older, and Phil got bolder. Since the one brother had a birthday and got all lazy, the other brother made a new show, and went all crazy. Join us while the inmate, (Phil) takes over the asylum, (the podcast.) No animals were provably harmed in the making of this show.
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The energy we need in order to live comes from the food we eat. Other organisms use other forms of energy. But what about the first organisms? Where did their energy come from? Along with a look at how living cells use energy, we try and figure out what was the very first food.
Continue reading Ep 256: What was the first food?
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DNA cannot copy itself. It needs enzymes, very large complicated proteins to replicate from one cell to a new one. The way the proteins are produced requires DNA and RNA. All three types of molecule have to be present in a cell for the cell to work. What exactly are DNA and RNA, and how did all this complicated business get started? Join us for the conclusion of our look at the evolution that happened before evolution.
Continue reading Ep 255: Prebiotic evolution part 2: DNA and RNA