Anna Walker
speaker
274 appearances
5 recordings
4 series
first heard Dec 2025
last heard 2 Jul
Anna Walker’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
It turns out Joe's favourite bacteria is effective as both a solo agent and a team player.
Unfortunately for us, effective means making us ill and resisting antibiotics.
Pseudomonas aeruginosa's group behaviour, however, combines Lord of the Rings with Game of Thrones, and assuming you have the stomach for it, is magically inventive.
Its special skill set includes a strong defensive outer membrane.
And that's all things that it can do on its own.
So now they're working in 3D space, and if the antibiotic can kill the ones at the surface, the ones underneath, what, protected by the dead bodies of their friends at the top?
Oh wow, so they're living in a castle, a highly defended castle.
The walls built of their fallen comrades and individually wearing a magical wizarding shield that stops anything else from getting to them personally.
Absolutely.
That is insane.
Not all bacteria are so harmful.
Pseudomonas protogens is also found in soil, but unlike Originosa, it has a more beneficial effect, only this time for plants.
Senior scientist Dr Jordan Vacheron from Lausanne University in Switzerland.
So this is a good guy.
Now, I know that when I go to a hotel and there's a breakfast buffet in the morning, everyone's eyeing up the best bits at the buffet.
Everyone's eyeing up the fried eggs and the sausages and the bacon.
So is there a lot of jostling around the roots to try and get the best compounds?
OK, so it may be a good bacteria, but it still likes a fight.
I'm Dr Sally LePage, and this is the documentary on the social lives of bacteria from the BBC World Service.
I'll admit, if I'm at a buffet, sometimes the elbows will come out.
Showing 21–40 of 274 · page 2 of 14
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