SoT 294: Plastics Bad, Bacteria Good

May 1, 2018

Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Lucas Randall

[00:01:31] While studying the enzyme produced by a bacteria that eats plastic, an international team has accidentally made it even better.

[00:08:57] NASA’s new planet-hunding spacecraft has launched. TESS will study 85% of the sky, and will be able to study the mass, size, density and orbit of thousands of exoplanets.

[00:23:37] Retrotransposons – elements of DNA that can spread to other species – are being found more and more often. And they’re almost ubiquitous in marine animals, especially shellfish.

This episode contains traces of French President Emmanuel Macron speaking before the US Congress.