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This summer, many people living in Lancashire were forced to boil their drinking and cooking water, after an outbreak of a parasite that can cause a nasty bout of stomach cramps and diarrhoea. This outbreak was caused by the protozoan Cryptosporidium, a water-borne parasite that can cause a potentially life-threatening infection in the very young or the immunocompromised.

To learn more about Cryptosporidium we spoke to Christopher Miller, a PhD student at the University of Kent, who is looking at ways to better culture this poorly-understood parasite.

Image credit: Steve Johnson on Flickr under CC BY 2.0



Microbe Talk Extra: Cryptosporidium

This month's podcast is all about microbes in remote and hostile environments.

Ben spoke to Dr Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist from the University of Leicester, about NASA's recent announcement that there is liquid water on Mars. Lewis told us more about the discovery, and how microbes might be able to survive in this extremely salty Martian environment.

We also hear from Dr Kevin Newsham of the British Antarctic Survey. Kevin spoke to us about his expeditions to the maritime Antarctic, and the impact of climate change on soil fungi and the ecosystems found there.

Image credit: Kevin Gill on Flickr under CC BY-SA 2.0

Microbes on Mars and Antarctic soil fungi

This week has seen the Society decamp to Liverpool for our Annual Conference 2016. It’s been a fantastic event with over 1,400 delegates in attendance and more than 300 scientific presentations and posters. 

For this month’s edition of Microbe Talk, Anand and I got to speak to a few researchers about the work they were presenting at the Conference.

Up first is Dr Lucy Gilbert from the James Hutton Institute, who told Anand about her work investigating how climate change will affect tick distribution and disease risk.

Next up is an excerpt from an on-stage interview I did with Professor Philippe Sansonetti, this year’s Prize Medal winner. Philippe has had a long and distinguished career, and has published hundreds of research papers. I asked him to describe a key experiment that stood out to him throughout his work.

Finally in this month’s edition of the podcast, I spoke with Professor George Weinstock, one of the first researchers to use genomic sequencing to better understand microbial processes. We talked about the early days of modern DNA technology, and the direction that current microbiome research is taking.


Annual Conference 2016 Super Roundup

In 2010, a medical case report was published about a man with inflammatory bowel disease. The man had a serious case of a condition called ulcerative colitis, and was facing the prospect of having a section of his intestine completely removed.

But remarkably, the man was able to cure himself and achieve almost complete remission – by infecting himself with parasitic worms.

This month's episode is about new research which may shed light on how a parasite can end up curing disease, rather than causing it.

Music:
Ryan Cross – Inso
Keinzweiter – Mircoobee
Asthmatic Astronaut – Body Language
Jahazzar – sketch (vlad)
Asthmatic Astronaut – UP


Can parasitic worms treat inflammatory diseases?

On 6 July, the spacecraft Soyuz MS-01 is scheduled to blast-off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, headed for the International Space Station (ISS). On board, will be Dr Kate Rubins, who, along with Anatoli Ivanishin and Takuya Onishi, will be part of the 48th expedition to the ISS, due to return in November this year.

Before training with NASA, Kate worked as a microbiologist, most recently at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, where she worked on emerging viruses such as the Ebola and Lassa viruses.

For this month's podcast, we caught up with Kate as she prepared for her mission, and chatted about the experiments she'll be undertaking in space, what it's like to train to be an astronaut, and whether a pipette works in microgravity...

Image credit: NASA, public domain

Music:
Paddington Bear – Bountiful
Alex Fitch – Ronny




Does a pipette work in space? with NASA Astronaut Dr Kate Rubins

Fungal diseases cause an estimated 1.5 million deaths each year – more than malaria.  Despite this, fungi are often overlooked compared to other pathogens like bacteria and viruses.

In this extra edition of the podcast, we sent Anand Jagatia along to the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition to find out more about the dangers of killer fungi, and the world's biggest Petri dish...

To find out more, visit www.killerfungus.org

Microbe Talk Extra: Killer Fungus

"Every one of us is a zoo in our own right – a colony enclosed within a single body. A multi-species collective. An entire world."

In this episode, we chat to science writer Ed Yong about his upcoming book and The New York Times Bestseller, 'I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life'.

It's a book about the trillions of microbes that live on us and within us; microbes that build our bodies and organs, protect us from disease, shape our behaviour and drive the processes for life on earth.

Music: NeVe by Manuele Atzeni

I Contain Multitudes: An interview with Ed Yong

The National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) building in Boston is a high-tech facility for the study of emerging, and re-emerging, microbial diseases of humans and animals. The building, part of Boston University, is equipped up to Biosafety level 4 (BSL-4), allowing the researchers there to safely study dangerous viruses like Ebola or Nipah.

In this episode, we got special access to the facility to have a look round, guided by Professor Paul Duprex, a Microbiology Society member and an Editor of our Journal of General Virology.

On the tour we got to meet the NEIDL’s Director, Professor Ron Corley, who told us about the building’s architecture and function, and talked with Dr Nahid Bhadelia who runs the facility’s back-up medical programme.

Music: Ryan Cross – Out
Image credit: Tim Llewellyn for Boston University Photography

Inside one of America's highest containment laboratories

What gives beer its taste? Why do some ales taste of berries, bananas or chocolate?

A big part of the answer is the type of yeast used to ferment it. There are hundreds of different strains that brewers can use to make beer, and many of them can be found at the National Collection of Yeast Cultures in Norwich.

We went for a pint with scientists from the NCYC to find out how different yeasts affect the taste of ales, and learn about their research to find strains that can produce new and better beers.

Brewing Better Beer

In 1901, Captain Robert Falcon Scott led a team of men on the Discovery Expedition to explore the mysteries of Antarctica.

The expedition is famous for it’s scientific legacy, including the discovery of snow-free valleys, emperor penguin colonies and the location of the South Magnetic Pole.

But the team also brought back some mysterious life forms living at the bottom of a lake. It took nearly  60 years for scientists to work out what they really were: cyanobacteria.

Dr Anne Jungblut is a microbiologist studying cyanobacteria today at the Natural History Museum.  In this episode, we visit the museum to learn more about these microbes, and see the very samples that Scott’s team brought back over 100 years ago….

Music: Alex Fitch
Image: Scott's Expedition Leaving for Antarctica - 1901, Archives New Zealand

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Osnat Gillor