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BBC Inside Science: Plastic-eating bacteria, Foam mattresses for crops, The evolved life aquatic, The Double Helix

19/04/2018

Plastic-eating bacteria, Foam mattresses for crops, The evolved life aquatic, The Double Helix

BBC Radio 4 - BBC Inside Science, Plastic-eating bacteria, Foam mattresses for crops, The evolved life aquatic, The Double Helix

Adam Rutherford investigates the plastic-eating bacteria in the news this week.

Featuring plastic-eating bacteria, foam mattresses as allotments, people evolved for the life aquatic, and views on The Double Helix fifty years after its first publication.

A breakthrough for closed loop plastic recycling? Two years ago Japanese scientists discovered a type of bacteria which has evolved to feed on PET plastic - the material from which fizzy drink bottles are made It was isolated at a local recycling centre. An international team has now characterised the structure of the plastic-degrading enzyme and accidentally improved its efficiency. John McGeehan of the University of Portmouth led the team and talks to Adam about where the discovery may lead.

If you can't recycle plastic, you can re-use. Sheffield University chemist Tony Ryan is working to convert old polyurethane foam mattresses into hydroponic allotment beds so that people at a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan can grow their own crops. Roland Pease reports.

How southeast Asian sea nomads evolved the life aquatic.

The Double Helix, fifty years after its 1968 publication. Biologist and historian Matthew Cobb and science writer Angela Saini discuss the place of James Watson's compelling and controversial memoir in the annals of popular science writing. His account of the discovery of the DNA's structure was unlike any science book that had come before. Does it stand the test of time and what of its blantantly sexist treatment of the gifted X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin? Her work was crucial to Crick and Watson's 1953 model of the DNA molecule.

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