Dr Pontus Skoglund, winner of this year’s Balfour Lecture for early career researchers, uses ancient DNA to unlock the secrets of human evolution, old diseases and population migration.
All in Human origins
Louisa Zoliewski: From chubby mice to everyday toxins
Dr Louisa Zoliewski was awarded the inaugural Bruce Cattanach prize for her PhD thesis on the genetics of fat distribution. She tells us how her skills and knowledge have led her to a career in genetic toxicology within the biotech industry.
Rebecca Coffey: Evolutionary tales and Just So Stories
Author Rebecca Coffey chats about wasp facial recognition genes, how yeast epigenetics explain the Dutch Hunger Winter and a dinner party tale of spider cannibalism.
Going round in circles: The story of extrachromosomal DNA
While most of an organism’s DNA is packaged into chromosomes, that’s not the whole story.
Turi King: Digging up the past with DNA sequencing
Professor Turi King led the genetic identification on the remains of King Richard III in a carpark in Leicester. We chat about what that experience was like, the ethics of sequencing long-dead humans and who should be involved in those ethical decisions.
All about (genetic) Eve: the quest to find the female founder of our human species
We find out how researchers are using mitochondrial DNA to find the ‘mother of all mothers’
Origin of man: In search of the original Y chromosomal Adam
Y chromosomes and surnames pass from father to son, shedding light on origins, inheritance and migration.
My milkshake brings all the genes to the yard
While it might not be as dramatic a superpower as being able to live four kilometres up a freezing mountain, the ability of many humans to drink milk in adulthood is certainly handy. As the story goes, the spread of this gene through populations in some parts of the world coincided with the rise in dairy farming. In turn, this enabled people to get more protein and fat in their diets, grow healthy and strong, and outcompete the non-milk drinking populations around them. But the latest research suggests that this neat evolutionary Just So story may not be true.
EPAS1: The mountain gene
Tibetans have lived in the thin mountain air for more than 6,000 years thanks to a gene variant they originally inherited from the ancient Denisovans. The thin air has favoured the persistence of one particular version of a gene called EPAS1, which allows these mountain-dwellers to get along just fine despite the shortage of oxygen. But it’s not only high-altitude humans who have traces of ancestral ‘ghosts’ in their DNA, it’s their pets too.
Svante Pääbo: searching for secrets in ancient DNA
Where did we come from? And how are we related to the ancient species that came before us? Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo is helping us find out - and, as has recently been announced, his work has led to him winning the 2022 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution”. So what did he discover?
The monkey in the mirror
Dr Kat Arney is looking at the monkey in the mirror, investigating how flipped genetic switches and long-dead viruses make all the difference between our human faces and those of our closest primate relatives.
Jennifer Raff: A Genetic History of the Americas
Jennifer Raff discusses her new book, Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas, telling the story of how humans first populated the American continents.
Krystal Tsosie: Exploring Native American genetics
Krystal Tsosie joins us to discuss why Native American genomes are of such interest to modern geneticists, and how Indigenous researchers are working to take ownership of the field.
The darkest side of genetics
Eugenics - the idea of Charles Darwin’s brilliant but racist cousin, Francis Galton - led to some of the darkest acts of the 20th century, carried out in the name of genetic purity.