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
But Pseudomonas protogenes bacteria have a powerful weapon that will target far more than anyone who gets in the way of that last piece of bacon.
Why are they fighting their own family?
Tell me more about these weapons.
So your protogenes is fighting for sugars at the surface of roots.
And you're saying that it blows itself up in order to release these weapons to kill their cousins.
that is such an extreme behaviour to kill yourself.
If we're going back to the hotel buffet analogy, I mean, I really want those eggs, but I don't want them enough to kill myself.
So what is the advantage of killing yourself just so that you can kill some cousins?
These are like soldiers that are just doing whatever it takes to protect the colony.
What was it like when you first looked down the microscope and saw these bacteria blowing themselves up to release these weapons?
I mean, this sounds pretty brutal, right?
Dr Jordan Vacheron.
Pseudomonas protogens isn't the only bacteria whose actions give us a helping hand.
During an oil spill, the numbers of Alcanovorax bacteria skyrocket.
They produce a biosurfactant to break down the chemicals in the oil, just as washing up liquid cleans a greasy frying pan.
They also work together in biofilms to change the shape of the oil droplets.
so their social actions help clean up a disaster more quickly.
Professor Lars Blank at the University of Aachen in Germany studies these oil-guzzling bacteria, but he's also interested in what bacteria do when they're stressed out.
When it's too hot or there's no water, some bacteria form spores, in the same way as fungi, to protect their DNA.
It sounded like putting on a protective suit and entering an underground bunker.
Showing 41–60 of 274 · page 3 of 14
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