In this episode:
To protect themselves against viral infection, bacteria often use CRISPR-Cas systems to identify and destroy an invading virus’s genetic material. But viruses aren’t helpless and can deploy countermeasures, known as anti-CRISPRs, to neutralise host defences. This week, a team describe a new kind of anti-CRISPR system, based on RNA, which protects viruses by mimicking part of the CRISPR-Cas system. The researchers hope that this discovery could have future biotechnology applications, including making CRISPR-Cas genome editing more precise.
Research article: Camara-Wilpert et al.
Carved inscriptions suggest a queen named Thyra was the most powerful person in Viking-age Denmark, and the discovery of a puffed-up exoplanet that has just 1.5% the density of Earth.
Research Highlight: Runes on Viking stones speak to an ancient queen’s power
Research Highlight: ‘Super-puff’ planet is one of the fluffiest worlds ever found
Climate-change induced melting of Greenland’s vast ice sheet would contribute to 7m of sea level rise. But it has been difficult to calculate how the ice sheet will respond to future warming. This week, a team suggest that abrupt ice loss is likely if the global mean temperature is between 1.7 °C and 2.3 °C above pre-industrial levels. Keeping temperature rise below 1.5 °C could mitigate ice loss, if done within a few centuries, but even a short overshoot of the estimated threshold could lead to several metres of sea-level rise.
Research article: Bochow et al.
A massive reproducibility exercise reveals over 200 ecologists get wildly-diverging results from the same data, and how melting simulated lunar-dust with lasers could help pave the Moon.
Nature News: Reproducibility trial: 246 biologists get different results from same data sets
Nature News: How to build Moon roads using focused beams of sunlight
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Flood risk rises as people surge into vulnerable regions
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Audio long-read: How ancient people fell in love with bread, beer and other carbs
Coronapod: the latest on COVID and sporting events
How the US is rebooting gun violence research
Coronapod: Does England's COVID strategy risk breeding deadly variants?
How deadly heat waves expose historic racism
Coronapod: Will COVID become a disease of the young?
Food shocks and how to avoid them
Coronapod: the biomarker that could change COVID vaccines
The scientist whose hybrid rice helped feed billions
Audio long-read: How COVID exposed flaws in evidence-based medicine
Coronapod: should you have a COVID vaccine when breastfeeding?
Quantum compass might help birds 'see' magnetic fields
CureVac disappoints in COVID vaccine trial
Communities, COVID and credit: the state of science collaborations
Coronapod: Counting the cost of long COVID
Google AI beats humans at designing computer chips
Coronapod: Uncertainty and the COVID 'lab-leak' theory
On the origin of numbers
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