Monthly Archives: April 2020

Ep 260: The urge to merge: hives, colonies and multicellular life



The urge to merge: hives, colonies and multicellular life

When does cooperation become identity? How and why did single celled life, which was doing just fine, end up forming plants and animals made up of trillions of cells? By taking a look at birds, army ants, coral reefs and giant jellyfish, we try to understand multicellular life.
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Ep 259: The molecular clown car: DNA and your cells



The molecular clown car: DNA and your cells

If your cell’s nucleus was about as tall as Brad, your DNA could stretch for more than 200 miles. How do such long molecules fit inside such tiny cells? While we’re on the subject, just how much information is in DNA? Join us for a look at your chromosomes, and cellular nucleus.
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Ep 258: Living cells that make their living inside other living cells



Living cells that make their living inside other living cells

Inside the membrane of most of your cells are what look like little cells, with their own membranes and DNA. These little cell like things do important things, without which your cells couldn’t function, and you couldn’t live. The thing is, once upon a time, they really were cells in their own right, cells that one day moved inside of another cell, and never left.
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Ep 257: Comes the oxygen



Comes the oxygen

When oxygen first began to accumulate in our oceans and our atmosphere, most of what was alive at the time couldn’t take it. The oxygen was a terrible poison. Even those life forms that could stand the extra O2, had trouble when the oxygen reacted with the iron in the ocean, and took away much of what had been food. If that wasn’t bad enough, a long ice age got started, all because of tiny microbes, too small to see with the naked eye.
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