Naked Genetics, from the Naked Scientists

Our world - and our bodies - are teeming with bacteria. And although some of them are friendly, many of them are not. Plus, electrifying news about bacterial nanowires, cuddly koalas, and counting chromosomes, and our gene of the month is the mindblowing Mind Bomb. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

They suck your blood, hitch-hike on your luggage, and are a growing threat to the hotel industry. Bedbugs are a growing problem in the modern jet-set world, and scientists are using genetic techniques to try and understand why. Feeling itchy yet? Plus, we look at the genetics of some other annoying insects, get to the bottom of the recent controversy about junk DNA, and our gene of the month is no...

We've all heard of the genetic code - the letters that spell out the instructions in our DNA. But that's not the whole story. Researchers are increasingly digging into the epigenetic code - the marks that tell cells which genes to use and which to ignore. Plus, we take a look behind the headlines about older fathers and autism, find out what chimps can tell us about our cancer risk, and our gene o...

It's now over a decade since the human genome was first sequenced, costing over a billion pounds and taking 13 years. Today, we're close to the thousand dollar genome. But what's in a genome, and what can it tell us about our risk of disease? Plus we'll be arguing the age of polar bears, and finding out about fish with skin cancer. And our gene of the month is one for the Trekkies out there - it's...

Every biology student is familiar with DNA - the ladder-like blueprint of life built on a backbone of the sugar deoxyribose. Scientists are now hacking this structure to make entirely new DNA-like molecules built on different sugar skeletons, opening an exciting new world of synthetic genetics. Plus, we find out what happens when music has sex, discover why the X chromosome is more than just a num...

Complex, mysterious and currently incurable - the challenge for researchers working on neurodegenerative diseases is huge. We'll be finding out how scientists are using genetic approaches to understand these distressing illnesses. Plus we find out why claims of a male contraceptive pill are somewhat premature, discover how a 16th century mummy has revealed the history of hepatitis B, and investiga...

This month we're taking a look at the world of top models - not the kind that won't get out of bed for less than ten grand, but the model organisms used by researchers all over the world to answer some of the most challenging questions in biology. We'll also be hearing about the origins of polar bears, the extinction of Tasmanian tigers, fitter frogs with faster-changing genomes and promiscuous be...

This month we're taking a trip into the world of developmental genetics, finding out how an animal grows from one cell into many millions as it develops from a fertilised egg, and discovering how it knows when it's grown enough. We also hear about the hunt for genes involved in autism, see what sticklebacks can tell us about evolution, ponder the purpose of keeping 9,000 placentas, and ask whether...

From whole populations to individual cancers, we're taking a look at genes and evolution. We're also talking about dogs and their diseases, shining a light on Van Gogh's sunflowers, and wondering whether the USB-sized DNA sequence is hope or hype. Plus we've got our gene of the month - whether it's Sonic, Desert or Indian, we'll be carefully getting to grips with the prickly persona of the hedgeho...