Podcasts+and+articles

//Share and discuss interesting articles and podcasts relating to biology//

The following is another gem from 'Einstein a-go-go' Continuing in our series of guests from the Australian Synchrotron, Professor Michael Parker joined us in the studio. He’s the head of the Biota Structural Biology Laboratory, St. Vincent’s Institute and uses synchrotron to study proteins and their role in health and disease. The development of synchrotron technology has been revolutionary for medical research, built by physicists, now used by biologists. One area that has particular benefited is protein crystallography, a technique used to work out the three dimensional size and shape of a protein. Knowing the structure of a protein provides information on it’s function; seeing is believing and once you know what a protein looks like, it’s easier to work out what it does! One of the challenges is to get protein molecules to form crystals in the first place, as unlike minerals, most proteins are not naturally found in crystal form. Once produced, the protein crystals are placed in the synchrotron beamline and exposed to a blast of X-ray light. The crystals scatter this light as it hits, and the pattern created is used to determine the shape of the protein molecules, with computer programs using the data to re-construct the protein’s size and shape. Micheal’s work has clinical applications, and his research team has revelaed the structure of 100′s of proteins involved in a number of diseases such as cancer, bacterial and viral infections, and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.

The following is a summary from a radio show I love- 'Einstein a-go-go'.

//'Do humans have the ability to sense the// //earth’s magnetic field// //? Many animals like turtles, birds and bees have proteins called// //cryptochromes// //that allow them to sense magnetic fields. Humans also have a cryptochrome protein, and when transferred into flies, the human crytochrome protein enabled flies to sense magnetic fields. This is the first evidence that the human protein can function as a sensor, but as humans generally aren’t aware of magnetic fields, it suggests that we lack other crucial components in the detection pathway.'//

This ability to sense magnetic fields is what enables birds to migrate across the globe without getting lost. Maybe we don't need GPS on our phones after all!!!!

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Senses podcast media type="custom" key="10030607" The above link is also available through facebook. I will be asking you to listen to this and summarise what you learned.