Biopedia

Science has to change with the evidence if it is to be trusted. One example of this comes with Dollo's Law, named after the French Belgian biologist Louis Dollo. His original theory was that evolutio…

In our third Rewind episode, I'm going to go back over the concept of dominant vs. recessive as a mechanism of genetic inheritance, which I've touched upon before but not really in any great detail.

This episode is really going to do what it says on the tin- discuss the question of how many species there are in the world. This might seem a simple question, but a simple answer has eluded the scie…

The Central Indo-Pacific (or CIP if you're stuck for time) is a highly diverse region of the ocean. But how did it get to be this way? It's this question which is the topic for today's episode.

Sour…

Building on our discussion of the Red Queen hypothesis last week, we're going to go through a theorem which is similarly chess-themed but goes against our hypothesis from episode 20. This theory hold…

This week, I'm going to discuss the Red Queen Hypothesis, which sounds intimidating but is actually rather straightforward. Not only is it an evolutionary theory, but it's also a reminder that biolog…

Happy Darwin Day! On the anniversary of Darwin’s birthday on 12th February 1809, I thought it would be fun to release a special episode covering some aspect of Darwin’s life or theories. Today, we’re…

Apoptosis is the phenomenon by which cells commit suicide in an orderly and programmed fashion. But why is it important? And what happens if it goes wrong? Today, we're just going to introduce the to…

Eye colour is one of the first examples of genetic inheritance talked about in schools across the country. But what is it that these genes really do? What causes eye colour from a functional perspect…

Assortative mating is essentially the recognition that theory isn’t always perfect and that, however desperately biologists might want some simplicity in the world, organisms don’t just encounter eac…

The adaptive landscape is an important method for biologists, ecologists, and geneticists to visualise the process of evolution. But what is it, and how does it work? This week, we’re going to discus…

Bonus episode! In the main episode on Sunday, I briefly mentioned NRAMP1, a mutation in which can influence how susceptible someone is to the leprosy bacterium, Mycobacterium leprae. But what exactly…

Happy new year! In our inaugural episode of 2021, we’re going to go back to the 1100s and focus on the famous case of the Leper King Baldwin IV, who ruled as king of Jerusalem from 1174 to 1185. What…

Proteins are often mentioned on the show, but what about the building blocks that they consist of? This week, we’re going to tackle amino acids in our second rewind episodes. There are some topics th…

Building on our discussion of both signalling pathways and G-protein coupled receptors from a few weeks ago, this week we’re going to discuss the Wnt signalling pathway- a pathway which is crucial in…

In the first of our ‘Rewind’ episodes, we go back to basics and discuss cells- where they came from and the famous cell theory of 1839, which is still present in textbooks today. There are more stori…

As discussed in previous episodes, the actin cytoskeleton is vital to allow cells to move. But what about the specifics? In this episode, we’re going to be dissecting the lamellipodium- a meshwork ac…