The Living Revolution

IndiaBioscience is an organisation serving as the bridge between the ivory towers of academic research, clinicians, and the wider public, It serves to take the science funded by public money and give it back to the community, whether it is through outreach programmes, mentorship schemes or getting people in the same room for fruitful discussions. Executive director Dr. Karishma Kaushik resembles this very bridge. She has had a career both as a clinical microbiologist and principle investigato...

Algae is a high potential and high protein food. Learn how engineers and entrepreneurs like Peter Mponzi are using algae to cultivate the future of nutrition. Peter Mponzi is a chemical process engineer by training and current entrepreneur in algal production. He has eight plus years experience in the renewable fuel industry, and is currently focusing specifically on downstream algal processing and scale-up. Mponzi talks us through the technical, regulatory and market success criteria for alg...

In an iGEM competition, open source interchangeable parts of genetic material (BioBricks) allow hundreds of teams of students to create synbio solutions to real world problems. Joined by captain Johannes and treasurer Niko from the 2023 Wageningen iGEM team, we discuss their challenges and ideas about creating novelty, using non-model organisms, and the importance of educating ourselves about novel technologies, not to be dissuade by fear.

Can you patent a newly discovered protein? Does getting a patent depend on the application? What does intellectual property encompass? Our guests, IP specialists Sara Holland and David Holt from Potter Clarkson, join us to shed light on these topics and explore why protecting biotechnological innovations is crucial. Get ready to expand your knowledge and better understand what can be considered an 'invention'.

Sebastian Cocioba is an amateur scientist conducting research from his home lab. In our previous episode, we discussed how he's building tools for the future molecular florists. Here and now, we take this topic further, starting with the example of a DIY directed evolution machine made cheaply. If you're an engineering student, we encourage you to make, improve and remake his designs. You'll be supporting a community of open source directed evolution machines. In this episode, we also hear...

Sebasian Cocioba is an independent researcher, conducting the discovery, research and more from his own home lab. This is part one of our conversation with Sebastian. He details his first experiences in science from seeing a maple leaf and thinking "I need to understand" this, to being recruited for a start-up and learning how to build a lab from ground up. Stay tuned for further episodes! Check out his Twitter for what he terms his open lab book: https://twitter.com/ATiny...

Dr. Clarice D. Aiello is a quantum engineer interested in how quantum mechanics informs biology. She fearlessly leads the Quantum Biology Tech (QuBiT) Lab in UCLA where she explores if spin physics can account for relevant biosensing and be used to develop technologies. Quantum Biology is a nascent field in both physics and biology and much collaboration is needed to bridge the gap between both fields. Although the data of Quantum mechanics in biology is correlative, research has not been abl...

Research is behind bars: paywalls and a closed peer-review process. You pay both to publish and to read published works. A small fraction of scientists are involved in peer review, creating a bottleneck and limiting the range of expertise that can improve rigor. Finally, publishing takes a long time, with the rapidly growing body of scientific literature needing to get through the peer-review bottleneck, stifling the innovative process of scientific discovery and application. Arcadia Science ...

Current automation is expensive and difficult to use. Scientists have to learn complex programming languages, becoming more programmers than experimenters. Machines they use understand basic commands such as ‘draw one ml of liquid from this tube to the next’, yet the burden of ensuring that protocols and methodologies are complete, carried out accurately and without fault still falls with the scientists themselves. A mountain of manual labour is a main aspect of a scientist’s job. Keoni and R...

Proteins are the functional unit of all life processes and as such it is important that we maximise our understanding of their interactions with other molecules in order to study their effects. Dr. Tomas Rube talked with us about his recently developed method for estimating protein-ligand binding affinity and the importance of this for understanding transcription factors and how they control our genes.

Biocomposite materials can utilise potentially waste carbon sources and capture them for a useful purpose. For example, Dr. Aled Deakin Roberts talked with us about how he can create a biocomposite material from ashes using a bio-inspired adhesive. Further to this, biocomposites also open up opportunities for additional properties, such as the addition of organic molecules that cannot be added to classic materials as they are broken down at high temperatures, biocompatibility and potentially ...

Controlling the behaviour and output of microorganisms is one of the most important pieces in the biotechnology puzzle. Without an improved level of control in biology, it is difficult to create consistent results from engineered organisms. Future prospects hope to allow genetic circuits to be designed on a computer and to accurately predict the effect of these gene circuits when they are inserted into living bacteria. Another topic discussed is the benefits of co-culturing bacteria in order ...

Discovering the remaining part of a human genome. The first draft of the human genome was published in 2001, now, over 20 years later, we have a complete sequence of the human genome. The newly complete genome contains sequences that were difficult to sequence using older methods and required newer nanopore sequencing to complete the final parts. The region consists of repeating units of DNA, which at first might sound quite boring but these regions are thought to play an important role...