Do roast potatoes give you cancer?

The UK Foods Standard Agency issued a health warning in 2017 about the chemical acrylamide – found in starchy foods such as bread and potatoes – saying that it may cause cancer. The warning coincides with the launch of a new health initiative called ‘go for gold’ which encourages us to only cook foods to a golden yellow, rather than brown or black, to help to reduce the amount of acrylamide. I spoke to Jasmine Just at Cancer Research UK…

Acrylamide is produced naturally by starchy foods when they are cooked at high temperatures for a long period of time, such as when baked, fried, roasted or toasted.
It is created by the Maillard reaction that occurs between sugars and amino acids in the presence of water, which is also responsible for the brown colour and roasted taste.
A number of animal studies have found that acrylamide has the potential to damage our DNA which can lead to cancer, but the same process has yet to be established in humans.
The risk is described as ‘probable’ but is certainly much less than that from smoking, obesity and alcohol.
The advice from Cancer Research UK is to maintain a healthy balanced diet, follow the cooking recommendations for baked or roasted goods, and to not store potatoes in the fridge as this increases the potential for acrylamide to develop when they are cooked.

You can listen to the full interview for the Naked Scientists here.

September 27, 2018 0

Cocaine addiction leads to iron build-up in the brain

Cocaine used to be the drug of the rich and famous, but over recent years it has become cheaper and more readily available, and as a result more and more people are becoming addicted to this highly dangerous substance. A report last year from the UK Government Advisory Council found that 1 in 10 people between the ages of 16 and 59 had used the drug at some point. The current treatment for cocaine addicts is through therapy, but relapse rates remain high. Now a new study has linked cocaine addiction with a build up of iron in certain parts of the brain, and particularly areas known to control our inhibitions, although the team don’t yet know what the iron is doing there. I spoke with lead author Dr Karen Ersche…

Cocaine addiction leads to disruptions in the regulation of iron, with reduced levels in the blood and higher levels in the brain
Iron build-up in the brain is highly toxic and can be seen in other degenerative diseases such as dementia and Parkinson’s
Participants in the study had a brain scan which identified iron build-up in the area of the brain that controls inhibition
Possible explanations are that cocaine users have an appetite for fatty foods which hampers the absorption of iron, or that the cocaine weakens or destroys the blood-brain barrier causing iron to leak into the brain
The study also found a relationship between the amount of iron accumulation and the duration of cocaine use, but further work is needed to clarify its effect on brain cells
Understanding the relationship between cocaine addiction and iron regulation in the body could provide a new avenue for treatment in the future

You can listen to the full interview for the Naked Scientists here.

August 23, 2018 0

The World’s Smallest Knot

What do a clove hitch, a sheet bend and a sheepshank all have in common? They are of course, as any former scout will tell you, all knots. But I bet they couldn’t tie an 819 knot: at less than a millionth of a millimetre across, it’s the world’s smallest knot and has been tied by a team at the University of Manchester. They made the molecular tangle in a test tube using a sequence of carefully-controlled chemical reactions that used iron catalysts to bend and entwine short strings of carbon-rich molecules. I heard how from lead author David Leigh…

The knot is 192 atoms long with eight crossings and is the smallest, tightest knot ever tied.
The width of the knot is half a nanometre – less than one millionth of a millimetre or ten thousand times thinner than a human hair.
In mathematics, a knot describes a closed loop, which means that the knot here with its ends fused together, is still by definition a knot.
By viewing the positions of the atoms using X-ray crystallography, the knot can be seen to look like a four-leaf clover with extra strands wrapping around the outside of the leaves to generate the 8 crossings.
The knot is made using the technique of self-assembly where molecular strands are woven around metal ions, not too dissimilar to knitting.
The new technique used to make the knot could lead to a method of weaving molecular strands together to form stronger, lighter and more flexible materials.
In particular, Kevlar vest could be made much stronger by weaving the ‘rods’ of material together, rather than having them packed closely together like pencils in a pencil box, as is currently the case.

You can listen to the full interview for the Naked Scientists here.

July 12, 2018 0

Music Taste Linked to Brain Type

How does the way you think influence the music you choose to listen to? Scientists at Cambridge University have developed a test that marries up a person’s personality traits including how empathic they are, and how systematically they think, with the tunes most likely to resonate with them. I went to see the lead researcher David Greenberg to discover what the test revealed about my own musical tastes…

David – The measure of empathy is called the empathy quotient and it’s a sixty-item measure that asks about how you interact in your daily life and your care for others, how you perceive emotion and react to emotion and thoughts of others. Another dimension is called systemising and systemising is the drive to construct, analyse and look at the rules that govern different aspects of the world.

Tom on the empathy quotient you scored a 56, and the average male scores around 30 so you were slightly above average on empathising. On systemising you scored very high – so you’re score is a 95 and the average male usually scores a 68.

Tom – Okay so that makes sense I guess – I do maths, I do see patterns in things and so this is sort of reflecting how I would have thought my brain worked.

David – It’s not too surprising because previous research has shown that males tend to score higher than females on systemising. And mathematicians score higher on systemising than for example students who are studying humanities.

Tom – And then once you’ve worked out how someone thinks, how did you then try to find out their musical preferences – do you say to them perhaps ‘here’s a list of band names who’d you like’?

David – No, so that’s been done previously where participants would just list how much they like a genre, but the problem with genres is that they’re so vast. If you take the rock genre in general, you have heavy metal, punk and you have bands like Metallica. But also in the rock genre you have Jeff Buckley or Jodie Mitchell and so there’s a vast difference. So we thought a more accurate way of doing it could be to just administer pieces of music to the participants: have them listen and then to indicate how much they liked each piece of music.

Tom – And so what did you find then? Once these participants have done this questionnaire you’ve worked out how they think – how did this affect their music choices?

David – What we found quite consistently over several studies was that empathisers in terms of the style of music that they liked, they were preferring music that was mellow and was from R&B, adult contemporary and soft rock genres. Whereas, systemisers were preferring music that was more intense and that was from the punk and heavy metal genres.

Tom – So what do I like? What did you find out about me?

David – You scored for example with mellow music or unpretentious styles which is from the folk genres or music that’s from classical or jazz, you scored average on those preference dimensions. But you scored the highest on intense music – so musical extracts that were from the punk, heavy metal and hard rock genres those were your favourites by far.

[MUSIC]

Tom – That was my favourite one that I listened to yesterday! I feel like I’ve been the perfect test student here! We’ve just been discussing exactly what type of music a systemiser should like and we’re just looking at my results here and I’ve nailed it to be honest!

And are there any applications for this beyond just figuring out which music people should and shouldn’t like?

David – A lot of research and there’s volumes of it has shown that music can be effective in music therapies. So, for example in terms of social skills or emotion recognition, we could use these results as a way of say teaching emotion recognition to children through music.

Tom – Based on my test results, play me the song that I should absolutely hate – I should leave the room I should dislike it that much!

[MUSIC]

…Yeah not liking that! That’s just so depressing I’m just not buying it.

David – But that’s the great thing about this study: there’s really no right or wrong answer. It’s just that people like different things and you can actually say that music is a mirror of the self in a way, it’s a reflective of who we are. And that our musical choices are a link or an expression of our mind, our personalities and the way we interact with the world.

You can listen to the full interview with the Naked Scientists here.

Looking inside your heart

One of the tools available to doctors to see the heart in action is the echocardiogram. This uses ultrasound waves to image the heart as it beats, so the cardiologist can tell whether it’s contracting correctly and that the heart muscle is a healthy shape. I volunteered to be a guinea pig…

Clare – I’m Clare Ward-Jones; I work for Phillips Healthcare and my role is a cardiac ultrasound applications specialist. We’ve got a machine the ETHIC and that is the supreme ultrasound machine for cardiology. We can do a 2D scan on you, we can also do 3D images so we can get a 3D model of the heart.

The machine is the same as that used for a scan on a pregnant woman and relies on ultrasound beams which are sent out from the end of the probe and bounce back when they hit structures in the body.
Patients must lie on their left-hand side to bring their heart closer to the front of the chest meaning the ultrasound has to travel a shorter distance and therefore produces a clearer image on screen.
Electrodes are also applied to the patient to monitor the heart rate during the procedure – mine measured 87 which lies between the normal rate of 60-100 beats per minute.
Jelly is applied to the skin to remove any air between the probe and the skin which ultrasound cannot travel through.

Rick – My name is Rick Steeds; I’m a consultant cardiologist. I’m particularly interested in cardiovascular imaging and I’m the current President of the British Society of Echocardiography.

Echo sounds are very good at showing the structure of the heart; how strong the muscle is; whether the valves work; whether they leak or whether they’re narrowed, and whether there’s damage to the heart, for example, from a heart attack.
The images of my heart show two of the four chambers and the valves between them opening and closing.

You can listen to the full interview for the Naked Scientists here.

June 28, 2018 0

Can a pill make you fitter?

These days it seems that we are always hearing about the latest ‘wonder pill’ that will help you to get fit – often with very little science to back it up. Well, this time things are a little different. Scientists at the Salk Institute in California have discovered a new pathway used by the body during exercise and are able to recreate its effects in mice by simply giving them a pill. The mice were able to run for a much longer period of time and gained less weight! I spoke to senior researcher Weiwei Fan to find out how it all works…

The process involves a protein called PPL-delta which during exercise turns up the genes that burn fat and turns down the genes that burn sugar.
Mice that were given a chemical to activate the PPL-delta protein over an 8-week period could run for about 270 minutes, whereas mice that were not on the drug could only run for about 160 minutes.
The activation of the protein not only increases endurance, but by burning fat instead of glucose it can also result in weight loss, making it a possible treatment for type 2 diabetes, obesity and fatty liver disease.
On a high-fat diet, the mice with the drug gained 50% less weight than those without, with the weight loss occurring almost entirely in fat rather than muscle.
The ultimate goal is to test the findings in humans once the current negative side effects of the drug are eliminated.

You can listen to the full interview for the Naked Scientists here.

June 21, 2018 0

Why are fingerprints unique?

Question

Please put me out of my misery. How is it possible no one person’s finger prints are the same as another’s? How can one developing embryo possible know what pattern another developing embryo has chosen?

Answer

The movies say that if your fingerprints are found at the scene of the crime, you’re guilty. But does this notion hold up in the real world. Forensic scientist Professor Niamh Nic Daeid, put me through my paces at our very own virtual crime scene where, would you believe it, the murderer has left his fingerprints on the candlestick in the dining room.

In forensic science, we’re moving away from the notion that fingerprints can be considered as unique and instead talk about the comparison between fingerprints and finger marks.
Fingerprints are the records that are taken directly from a person’s finger by law enforcement and finger marks are what we take from crime scenes.
There are a range of characteristic patterns, called friction ridge patterns, which can be used to identify and compare fingerprints. They include: whirls, loops, arches and the location of ridge divisions.
Ridge patterns also occur on the palms of your hands and on your toes.
Fingerprints develop in the womb around the 10^th week of pregnancy and are largely complete by the end of the fourth month.
Factors that influence their development include blood pressure, oxygen levels in the blood, the position adopted by the foetus in the womb, nutrition, hormone levels and the touching of fingers onto the sac and amniotic fluid, which means that even identical twins have different fingerprints!

You can listen to the full interview with the Naked Scientists here.

The Naked Science of a DNA test

I had my genes sequenced by 23andMe in the name of science… and of course I had to ask about the ‘maths’ behind the results.

Nowadays, a lot of companies offer online ancestry tests, or tests to quantify your risk of inheriting some life-changing diseases. But how seriously should we take their results? Izzie Clarke and Tom Crawford spoke to Garrett Hellenthal from UCL and Julianna Cintron from 23andMe in order to find out…

Tom – Fill the tube with saliva to the black wavy line… shall we just crack on?

Izzie – Okay! You get the idea. But in order for companies to analyse our genetic information, all we have to do is spit into a test tube and send it off to the lab. Tom sent his to a company called 23&Me to find out about his health and physical traits, and I wanted to explore my family history. So, how does a bit of my saliva reveal so much about my ancestry?

Garrett Hellenthal from University College London’s Genetics Institute…

Saliva contains your genetic code in a series of cells which can be extracted and identified via a series of genetic markers that define your unique DNA sequence.
They look at about 500,000 different pieces of genetic code and compare them to the codes of people in the company database to determine who you share matching DNA patterns with.
Izzie found out that she is 30% Irish, 24% Western European, 15% Great Britain and 15% Scandinavian.

Izzie – But what about health and physical appearance? Let’s take a look at Tom’s results…

Tom – I think most of them are correct for me like I should likely have lighter eyes, and I have blue eyes. It says likely little upper back hair, and I can fortunately report I have minimal upper back hair. I was also pleased to see that I’m likely not to have a bald spot; I really hope that one’s true.

Izzie – In addition to appearance, Tom’s test was able to look at specific parts of his genetic code and explain the likelihood of there being a change called a ‘variant’, which could possibly lead to a life-changing illness.

Julianna – My name is Julianna Cintron and I’m a produce specialist on the customer care team at 23andMe.

There are some traits that are more influenced by genes than others, for example if you have two copies of the gene associated with having red hair then you are much more likely to have red hair.

Tom – Just with you mentioning there this idea of it’s to do with the confidence in something, or there’s a probability. We’re using phrases like more likely, it’s not sort of fixed. In my result I was told that I have a particular variant which leads me to be at a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease and I was just wondering what exactly does this mean? Does this mean I will get Alzheimer’s; does this just mean I’m above average likely; how does this result actually relate to the risk factor?

The e4 variant is known to impact your risk of developing Alzheimer’s and having one copy of the variant puts you at a slightly increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s by a certain age. Having two copies increases the risk further.
Most of the genetic risks are actually relatively small, much less than say smoking or unhealthy lifestyles in general.
The most important thing is to use the results as ‘one piece of the puzzle’ and not as a diagnosis that you will or will not get a certain disease.

You can listen to the full interview with the Naked Scientists here.

How old is Homo naledi?

Back in September 2015, a new species of early human – Homo naledi – was announced to the world. The remains were found in the aptly named ‘Cradle of Humankind’ near Johannesburg, South Africa at the Rising Star cave system. Since their discovery they have changed the way that we think about human evolution. Now another chamber has been discovered containing yet more remains and analysis of the skeletons within has shed light on what Homo naledi looked like and where they fit into the timeline of evolution. I spoke to the lead researchers Lee Berger and John Hawks…

The new ‘Lesedi chamber’ is located 100 metres from the original and contains multiple partial skeletons which have been dated at 2 to 300,000 years old.
Homo naledi has human-like hands, wrists, feet, body size and teeth, but the rest of the body is primitive in nature, including the skull, trunk and the brain, which is about one third of the size of modern human brains.
It was originally thought that Homo naledi branched from human evolution around 2 million years ago, but the fact that the new skeletons seem to be much younger suggests that there was another lineage evolving in Africa at the same time as our Neanderthal ancestors.
The Rising Star cave system has up to 2 kilometres of passageways and the entrance to the Lesedi chamber was found branching off from the original Dinaledi chamber through a 25cm gap.
The Dinaledi chamber contains at least 15 individuals of all ages and the Lesedi chamber at least three individuals.
Homo naledi are believed to have been purposefully entering these caves up to 30 metres underground to ritually dispose of their dead.

You can listen to the full interview for the Naked Scientists here.