Join the enzyme evolution revolution… today! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Enzymes are cellular machines that perform a wide variety of critical tasks for human health. What if we crank them up? Researchers have tried a technique called ‘continuous evolution’ that uses millions of
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Gaston ate sixty eggs a day! How’s HIS cholesterol? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science saying… Who knows? How bad is egg cholesterol, really? Sharayah Carter and team from the University of South Australia investigated. Forty-eight adults tried different diets for five weeks each. One
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I’ve got a GUT feeling we know each other somehow! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. What can your digestive gut microbiome say about your social life? Francesco Beghini and team from Yale studied nearly two thousand people across villages in Honduras. In these eighteen
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Don’t open Pandoraea’s box! Who knows what you’ll unleash! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Pandoraea is an awful bacteria that infects mucus in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients. But could we use it for good? Here’s how that nasty stuff works. Meet Elena
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Cancer cures don’t grow on trees! Or do they? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. To Celtic Druids, the yew tree symbolized death and resurrection. Today, it could mean… anti-cancer medication! Why? Yew tree needles contain the chemical Baccatin Three. If researchers could synthesize it,
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Ahh, a breath of fresh … biometrics?! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. To track wildlife species, researchers analyze environmental DNA – or eDNA – from the air. But sometimes they find PEOPLE’S PRIVATE information. Oops! Take Orestis Nousias and team from University of Florida.
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Would you eat more corn if it used less fertilizer? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Half of the world is fed by crops grown with NITROGEN fertilizers! But the nitrogen that plants can’t use pollutes the environment! How do we cut back? Enter Rafael
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It’s uh me, Bactario! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Antibiotic resistant bacteria are emerging everywhere. Like goombahs in Super Mario! How do we stop them? Ready player one: Amninder Kaur, and team, from Austria and Germany. They cultivated a rare bacterium that naturally makes
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Can AI predict what goes on INSIDE our bodies? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science saying… GOOGLE IT. The tech giant’s AI division – DeepMind – has developed an algorithm to model our bodies’ internal molecules… It’s called AlphaFold, and it’s a Nobel Prize winner.
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Plants versus bacteria. Who will win? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Bacteria are sneaky. Sure plants can use enzymes – like BGAL1 – to uncover them. But some bacteria can block those enzymes and stay hidden using a mystery molecule. Scientists knew that this
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