Russ Hodge del Laboratorio Europeo de Biología Molecular en Heidelberg, Alemania, informa sobre la primera búsqueda completa de máquinas moleculares en levadura.

Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, de uitvinder van DNA fingerprinting, herinnert zich hoe hij als kind al een passie had voor wetenschap, hij legt uit wat we geleerd hebben van de directe analyse van DNA en hij beschrijft zijn werk met overlevenden van Tsjernobyl. Professor Jeffreys wordt geïnterviewd dor Russ Hodge en Anna-Lynn Wegener van het Europese Laboratorium voor Moleculaire Biologie in Heidelberg, Duitsland.

Shortly before Christmas 2006, German ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter returned from the International Space Station. A month later, Barbara Warmbein asked him about his trip, the experiments he did – and how to become an astronaut.

We sit on them, wear them and cook with them: plastics are everywhere. Yet this very versatility and abundance makes it all the more difficult to produce and dispose of plastics in environmentally friendly ways. David Bradley explains how researchers at the University of Manchester, UK, are among those working on a solution.

Paul Tafforeau from the University of Poitiers and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, explains what synchrotron X-ray studies of fossil teeth can tell us about the evolution of orang-utans – and our own origins.

Isabel Plantier teaches biology and geology to 15-year-old students in Portugal. She has been teaching for 25 years and tells Sai Pathmanathan that time really does fly when you’re having fun.

Fed up with explaining genomes, genes and proteins? Why not get your students to figure it out for themselves using Johan Leveau’s DNA puzzle?

John Watson, il professore che fa le verticali in classe,  ricorda come è arrivato ad insegnare biologia, racconta memorabili momenti dei suoi 38 anni di carriera di insegnante, e spiega come gli scienziati possano contribuire a  motivare l’insegnamento  della scienza.