From: Scott Badger (wbadger@psyberlink.net)
Date: Thu Apr 29 1999 - 19:23:21 MDT
For those who enjoy the show, National Public Radio's Science Friday will
feature a couple of (hopefully) good discussions tomorrow at 3:00 Central.
If you miss it, you can always listen to it later at
http://www.sciencefriday.com/
Hour One, Second Half: The New Plant Biotech
Imagine a world in which plants aren't just "what's for dinner" - they're
biological machines that can manufacture drugs or help clean up human
messes. Sound like science fiction? Research published this week in the
journal Nature Biotechnology says that it may not be too far off...Many
researchers have been looking into ways to get plants to produce specific
proteins for human use. But a big problem has always been getting the
proteins out of the plant once they're produced. Having to harvest the plant
and separate out the desired protein has made large-scale protein production
through plants somewhat difficult. But researchers at Rutgers University in
New Jersey have developed a new twist - tobacco plants that manufacture
proteins, and then excrete them out of the plants' roots into a hydroponic
solution. That makes it a lot easier to separate the wheat from the chaff -
and raises the possibility of "protein factories" in which plants suspended
in hydroponic tanks drink in protein ingredients and ooze the finished
product out into a constantly-flowing stream.
Plants are also being used to take chemicals out of the soil. Some teams are
developing plants that filter harmful materials like chromium, lead, and
mercury out of the soil - and one team, at Cambridge University in the UK,
have developed a tobacco plant that can filter the explosive TNT out of soil
and break the organic compound down into harmless components.
Plants as living, breathing solar-powered machines? We'll talk about it on
this segment of Science Friday.
Guests:
Ilya Raskin
Professor of Plant Biology
Rutgers Biotechnology Center
New Brunswick, NJ
Michael Sussman
Professor of Horticulture and Genetics
Director, University of Wisconsin Biotechnology Center
Madison, Wisconsin
Hour Two: The X Chromosome
What, deep down, makes a woman a woman? Sugar and spice and everything nice?
Nope - unless you count the tiny amount of sugar that makes up the backbone
of the DNA in the X chromosome.
You probably learned once that women have two X chromosomes, while men have
one X and one Y. But can that microscopic difference really account for all
the differences between the sexes - beyond the physical differences to the
emotional, behavioral, and psychological differences? (and do all those
differences actually exist, or are some of them just a product of society?)
On this hour of Science Friday, we'll talk about the X chromosome and what
it does... and next week, we'll continue the conversation in this hour with
a look at the Y chromosome.
Guests:
Natalie Angier
Author, "Woman: An Intimate Geography" (Houghton Mifflin)
Science Writer, The New York Times
Takoma Park, MD
Meredith Small
Author, "Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We
Parent" (Anchor Books)
Professor, Anthropology
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY
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