Big Biology

<p>What is mutation bias and how can scientists study it? How does changing a population’s mutation bias influence its evolutionary trajectory?</p><br/><p>In this episode, we talk with Deepa Agashe, an Associate...

<p>This week on Big Biology we're sharing an episode from The Naked Scientists Podcast about how humans lost their tails.</p><br/><p>Humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans do not have tails. It sets us apart from...

<p>At what levels does causation happen in biology? Are metaphors useful for understanding biology?</p><br/><p>In this episode, we talk with Phil Ball, a science writer who was also an editor for the journal Nature for...

<p>How should biologists deal with the massive amounts of population genetic data that are now routinely available? Will AIs make biologists obsolete?</p><br/><p>In this episode, we talk with Andy Kern, an Associate...

<p>How should we study complex biological networks? How do cells keep time and stay in sync? What does it mean for a network to be resilient?</p><br/><p>In this episode, we talk with Rosemary Braun, Associate Professor...

<p>How do biologists strike a productive balance between descriptive natural history and manipulative experiments in the lab or field? Should we bring back species to areas where they’ve gone extinct and what values do...

<p>What is an agent, and does an organism have to be conscious to be one? How does organismal agency affect evolution?</p><br/><p>In this episode, we talk with Samir Okasha, a Professor of Philosophy of Science at the...

<p>On this episode, we talk with Alina Chan, postdoc at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and co-author with Matt Ridley of Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 could have plausibly jumped into...

<p>How can we reconcile the evolutionary problem of cooperation? What can social amoebae tell us about the origins of multicellularity?</p><br/><p>In this episode, we talk to Joan Strassmann and David Queller...

<p>If the tape of life were replayed, how recognizable would today’s species and ecosystems be? How and why does power increase over evolutionary time? How have humans unleashed so much power, and what are the...

<p>How are cephalopods like us, but also completely alien? How can they become so intelligent when they have such short lives? How do they coordinate a distributed set of brains?</p><br/><p>In this episode, we talk with...

<p>Does biological plasticity have a cost? Are there evolutionary consequences of plasticity and of organisms acting on their environments?</p><br/><p>In this episode, we talk with Sonia Sultan, the Alan M. Dachs...

<p>How do small, founding populations establish and thrive in new places? What is biocontrol, and how is it carried out responsibly?</p><br/><p>In this episode, we talk with Ruth Hufbauer, a Professor of Applied...

<p>How do biologists categorize species? What’s the best and quickest way to describe millions of unknown species?</p><br/><p>On this episode, we talk with Michael Sharkey, an entomologist and taxonomist who spent much...

<p>How do living things exert agency in a world of strict physical and chemical laws? Do humans have free will? </p><br/><p>In this episode, we talk with Kevin Mitchell, an Associate Professor of Genetics and...