In this episode:
To protect themselves against viral infection, bacteria often use CRISPR-Cas systems to identify and destroy an invading virus’s genetic material. But viruses aren’t helpless and can deploy countermeasures, known as anti-CRISPRs, to neutralise host defences. This week, a team describe a new kind of anti-CRISPR system, based on RNA, which protects viruses by mimicking part of the CRISPR-Cas system. The researchers hope that this discovery could have future biotechnology applications, including making CRISPR-Cas genome editing more precise.
Research article: Camara-Wilpert et al.
Carved inscriptions suggest a queen named Thyra was the most powerful person in Viking-age Denmark, and the discovery of a puffed-up exoplanet that has just 1.5% the density of Earth.
Research Highlight: Runes on Viking stones speak to an ancient queen’s power
Research Highlight: ‘Super-puff’ planet is one of the fluffiest worlds ever found
Climate-change induced melting of Greenland’s vast ice sheet would contribute to 7m of sea level rise. But it has been difficult to calculate how the ice sheet will respond to future warming. This week, a team suggest that abrupt ice loss is likely if the global mean temperature is between 1.7 °C and 2.3 °C above pre-industrial levels. Keeping temperature rise below 1.5 °C could mitigate ice loss, if done within a few centuries, but even a short overshoot of the estimated threshold could lead to several metres of sea-level rise.
Research article: Bochow et al.
A massive reproducibility exercise reveals over 200 ecologists get wildly-diverging results from the same data, and how melting simulated lunar-dust with lasers could help pave the Moon.
Nature News: Reproducibility trial: 246 biologists get different results from same data sets
Nature News: How to build Moon roads using focused beams of sunlight
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Coronapod: How African scientists are copying Moderna's COVID vaccine
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Coronapod: what people get wrong about endemic COVID
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Coronapod: Why T cells have been overlooked
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Audio long read: Is precision public health the future — or a contradiction?
Coronapod: COVID death toll is likely millions more than official counts
Why mutation is not as random as we thought
Podcast Extra: Recreating the lost sounds of spring
Webb Space Telescope makes history after tense launch
Science in 2022: what to expect this year
Audio long-read: The secret lives of cells — as never seen before
Our podcast highlights of 2021
The Nature Podcast annual holiday spectacular
Coronapod: Omicron - your questions answered
Pluto's strange ice patterns explained by new theory
Coronapod: vaccines and long COVID, how protected are you?
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