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Leading Edge brings you the latest news from the world of science. Geoff Watts celebrates discoveries as soon as they're being talked about - on the internet, in coffee rooms and bars; often before they're published in journals. And he gets to grips with not just the science, but with the controversies and conversation that surround it.
radioscience@bbc.co.uk |
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LISTEN AGAIN 30 min |
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"If what interests you are new and exciting ideas, it's science you should be turning to. And whether it's the Human Genome Project or the origins of the Universe, Leading Edge is the place to hear about them."
Geoff Watts |
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Geoff Watts returns for a new series of Leading Edge with a look at a development that seems straight out of the world of science fiction.
Although not quite creating whole dinosaurs in the manner of 'Jurassic Park', researchers at Rockefeller University in New York have succeed in resurrecting a vital protein molecule from the eyes of an extinct reptile which lived 240 million years ago. The prehistoric creature in question is an archosaur - a reptile group which gave rise to the dinosaurs, birds and crocodiles.
The team started by working out the most likely sequence of the gene for the visual pigment, rhodopsin, in archosaurs. This was done by comparing the known rhodopsin gene sequences of archosaur descendents and relatives alive today and - using statistics and theories about how DNA changes over evolutionary time - they then predicted the most likely DNA code for the 240 million year old archosaur gene.
As it's possible to make genes from scratch, the Rockefeller team then synthesised their predicted archosaur visual pigment gene. And using genetic engineering techniques, they inserted this into living cells in culture. The cells became factories for the rhodopsin and subsequent tests showed this resurrected protein has all the properties of a functioning visual pigment in an animal eye. The team's next step will be to insert their archosaur gene into mice, in the hope of finding how archosaurs might have seen the world 240 million years ago.
Geoff also talks to Dr Wayne Holland of the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh about the evidence his team has uncovered for a Saturn-like planet around a star called Fomalhaut. What's different about this discovery is that the planet in question is rather distant from its parent star - it's orbiting at a distance comparable to Neptune 's orbit about the Sun. Previously astronomers have only been able to detect giant Jupiter-like planets orbiting close to their suns - so Fomalhaut's planetary system is the first to be found bearing a resemblance to our solar system.
Researchers from the company Intel, the College of the Atlantic and the University of California, Berkeley, have teamed up to monitor the secret lives of nesting storm petrels on Great Duck Island off the Atlantic coast of Maine. Leading Edge reporter Molly Bentley discovers how a network of sophisticated sensors, which are capable of transmitting their data to the internet, means that conservationists can study the comings and goings of the shy seabirds, without visiting and disturbing the birds' habitat.
Finally, Chris Coomber, director of Qinetiq Metal Printing in Farnborough, tells Geoff Watts about a new chemical technique for producing micro-electronic devices. He says the simplicity and cheapness of the new process will make it possible to use of radio frequency identification tags on all items in a supermarket. As a result he predicts supermarkets that dispense with check-out tills and instead have trolleys which add up your bill as you go along and deduct the total from your bank account before letting you leave the shop.
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