We use analogies all the time to help us explain things. But what if we could use characters from a famous story – the Lord of the Rings – to learn about different life strategies of organisms?
Ask A Biologist
Biology Stories
Explore the world of biology and meet some of our biologists. Here you can learn about the living world and find out what is so cool about biology that someone would do it for a living. Pick a story to read or listen to one of our podcast shows filled with guest scientists who share their experiences and passion for discovery.
Alzheimer’s disease makes it difficult to remember many things – like where you live, the names and faces of family members, and even your own name. ASU professor Diego Mastroeni’s job is to study Alzheimer’s disease, and to hopefully find a way to cure it.
Life in the year 2050, what will it look like? Will it be the age of intelligent computers? Could this happen even sooner? Physicist and author Max Tegmark talks about the future of artificial intelligence and how it might impact biological life on this planet. Dr. Biology learns about the future of smart computers. Will they become too smart for humankind? What precautions should we put in place to secure our place on Earth and our future?
What is life and how do biologists decide if something is living or non-living? Dr. Biology visits with physicist Paul Davies and microbiologist Ferran Garcia-Pichel. They talk about life, extreme life forms (extremophiles), and the possibility of life on other planets. Listen in as they build their own E.T. and wonder if maybe, just maybe, we might all actually be E.T.
Fruit may just be something that you like to eat. For the fig wasp, fig fruit is more than just a food--it's where life begins and ends.
Have you ever wondered how animals and plants get their names? People give them names, lots of different names! That was how it used to be before Carl Linnaeus created the world of taxonomy.
Going where no one has gone before sounds exciting, but are we ready to go to Mars? Traveling long distances, and living on another planet is going to be a challenge. You could say an extreme challenge because of the conditions in which we will have to live. Dr. Biology learns a bit about the challenges from anthropologist, Mallika Sarma, who is looking into what it will take to travel to and live on distant planets. Do you have the right stuff?
Even though we live in a modern world how we act and what we do many times is controlled by our Stone Age brain. This impacts our diet, friendships, love and more. Dr. Biology sits down with authors Doug Kenrick and David Lundberg-Kenrick to get the inside story on their book - Solving Modern Problems with a Stone Age, Brain, Human Evolution and the Seven Fundamental Motives. This lively conversation can help you wrap your Stone Age brain around the challenges we face today and give you some solutions as you navigate our modern world.
What does it take to attract a mate? For some animals it requires some push-ups. Other animals have a dance. And in both cases showing off some color is important. Dr. Biology catches up with biologist David Clark to learn more about his lizards and the robot lizards he has built to study these animals. The two also talk about David’s other study animal some fun jumping spiders. It turns out these eight-legged animals are fans of some movies David makes. Who knew that jumping spiders would like to watch the big screen, or in this case the tiny screen? This episode is part of a series of podcasts recorded at the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology conference– also called SICB.,
Could differences in the food animals like be enough to eventually separate one species into two? Learn what flies are teaching us about what can cause new species to form.
Life on other planets. Is it possible? Are there going to be little green people, or a friendly Martian? This PLoS article is the story about how scientists are looking for life beyond our planet.
Where might we find life, and what should we even be looking for to see if life exists on other planets?. Sara Walker is going where others have not gone before in the search for life.
Looking into the past can be strange and exciting. To understand a past that goes back millions of years, we often depend on the stories told by fossils. Dr. Biology talks with anthropologist Donald Johanson about Lucy, a fossil of human ancestors that has taught us some interesting things about the human-like species that existed before us.
Step-by-step tutorial for building your own Pocket Seed Viewer. You can use it to test the effects of light, dark, temperature and gravity on seed germination and plant growth.
Much like a mechanical watch, living things only work when all the gears work together. Some of the tiniest of gears are proteins. Learning about the shape and size of these proteins is the job of X-ray crystallography.
We hear a lot about DNA, but not as much about RNA. It is true that DNA is the encyclopedia of life or the ultimate instruction manual for living things. But what good is a book if it is not read or an instruction manual that is not used? This is where RNA comes into the story of life. It is the unsung hero, or maybe the superhero of cells. Dr. Biology has the opportunity to sit down and talk to a big fan of RNA. Computational biologist, Brandon Ogbunu talks about his early work, which he titled The Liberation of RNA, and much more in this very fun and thought-provoking episode.
Mushrooms can be mysterious. You might know that some are poisonous while others can be tasty, but did you know that a few kinds can be used as medicine? Learn more about the new ways scientists are using mushrooms to treat cancer.
By the time the first endangered species list was made, many species had already gone extinct. Some species, like whooping cranes, were almost extinct at that time. But the US government did not begin to protect animals as endangered species until they were put on the official endangered species list.
It's a gassy, microbe-filled world out there. How can we control or even use these gases for good? That's what Hinsby Cadillo-Quiroz is figuring out.