Solutions Science: Recent Episodes
Luke Roche
Conversations with the worlds greatest innovators solving the worlds biggest problems. With a focus on synthetic biology, sustainable chemistry, materials, built environment and much more!
Over a year, an average of 342 watts of power is emitted on every square meter of the earths surface. The ability to harness this energy is vital for our future source of renewable energy.
There are many types of solar cells, one type is perovskite solar cells, which is an actively researched material that has the potential to be deposited onto most surfaces such a textured and flexible ones.
It was a pleasure to talk with Robert Tirawat about perovskite solar cells, we touched on what they are, their benefits and the biggest areas of research in the field.
The waste plastic problem is not a stranger to anyone. Plastics are required for many of our daily activities, and it is not foreseeable to live without them. As such, it is important we find ways to prevent waste plastic from building up in our environment.
I spoke with Dr. Kristoffer Kortsen about his work into this area, focusing on the different fates of waste that we might put in our rubbish bins, and the most sustainable and viable options for recycling and reusing these materials.
If you would like to check out his research, you can have a look here: https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/kristoffer.kortsen/publications/
The robots that most easily come to mind are production line robots, they will move where they are told to move, regardless of any obstructions on the way. This means that these rigid robots must be kept separate from humans over safety concerns. That is where soft robotics come in to play, completely safe robots that do not have the physical capabilities to cause accidental damage to humans.
The field of soft robotics is a thriving area of research, and much work is ongoing to improve the control and movement of these robots. The end goal is to be able to aid humans alongside humans in environments where it is beneficial to automate repetitive processes.
I spoke with Dr. Daniel Bruder about his work in the field, looking into modelling soft robots to improve their properties.
Check out Dr. Daniel Bruder here: https://danielbruder.com/
The sun radiates an imense amount of energy onto the surface of the earth, scientists and engineers dream of using this energy to build materials and chemical products by engineering algae.
In this episode I spoke with Dr. Elias Englund about his work in the area of metabolic engineering to produce valuable products in microorganisms and we also touched on his recently published paper on poly ketide synthatses (PKS) which are a class of biomolecule that behave like a molecular factory line, producing important molecules such as antibiotics and other drugs.
The field of material science is a complex and interdisciplinary field, with most engineering processes relying on specific materials, it is important that specific bespoke materials are made to suit each application.
An emerging field in the area of material science is that of living materials, a type of material that houses living biological organisms within it. The purpose of this is to allow otherwise inanimate materials to be able to respond and interact with their environment.
In this episode, I spoke with Dr. Debika Datta about some of her work, in collaboration with others at UCSD, on creating a living material that can take up polluting dyes from surrounding water.
Most cells in the body have a very specific function, and cannot replace cells from other areas of the body. For example, a skin cell could not replace a neurone cell in the brain. Interestingly, the two cells will contain the exact same genetic information in the form of DNA, however, some genes will be switched on or off depending on the type of cell, this is known as epigenetics.
Stem cells are a type of cell which, because of their epigenetic state, can change into (mostly) any other type of cell. These cells are in a state before genes have been switched off, so they are not specialised in any way, and can choose which genes to switch off/on depending on the environment they are in. This makes them incredibly useful in regenerative medicine, where different cell types may be required to regenerate a damaged complex organ. However, these stem cells often come from embryonic tissue, which has obvious ethical concerns. Luckily researchers have been working on "Induced Stem Cells", where normal human skin cells can be changed epigenetically, to become stem cells, these can then be used in regenerative medicine.
In today's episode, Dr. Daniel Poppe talked about his recently published work in the area of induced stem cells. Specifically, he talked about the differences between embryonic stem cells and induced stem cells and a new method for minimising these differences, so that induced stem cells and more effective at performing the role of a stem cell.
Buckberry, S., Liu, X., Poppe, D. et al. Transient naive reprogramming corrects hiPS cells functionally and epigenetically. Nature 620, 863–872 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06424-7
Pathogenic bacteria often release their DNA into the environment that they colonise. This DNA is potentially a great method of detecting specific types of bacteria, before they become pathogenic, making treatment easier and more targeted.
There are many such methods of sensing this bacterial DNA, one such method is to use biology itself to tell us when it is present. This is possible, because DNA has a very specific structure that can bind to other molecules that mirror its structure.
In today's episode, Dr. Yu-Yu Cheng talked about his recently published work on a DNA circuit he designed which was capable of binding to specific target DNA, like the ones emitted by pathogenic DNA. Upon binding the target DNA, the DNA circuit would light up (fluoresce) thus alerting the observer that a specific bacteria may be present in a sample.
The cell is the fundamental unit of life, our understanding of which is growing at a rapid rate, but still there is a vast amount we need to learn before we truly understand the cell. Each cell contains a complex system of circuits and chemical pathways that are so interconnected, it is difficult to change something without the whole system changing.
To understand the chemical pathways further, we must change the genes of a cell, which in turn modifies the proteins that are responsible for the chemical reactions. As a result, we can see the effects caused by altering different chemical pathways in the cell. An amazing area of research is 'striping back' the genes in a cell to see how few chemical pathways are necessary for survival, this is known as a 'minimal cell'. The minimal cell is incredibly useful in helping us understand genetics and understanding how we can manipulate biological systems with synthetic biology.
Synthetic biology is an incredibly exciting field of biology, which hopes to manipulate living organisms to benefit many important areas such as health, materials and fuels.
It was great to talk with Dr. Roy Moger-Reischer about his recent publication on the evolution of a minimal cell and the impacts of his work.
Each year 92 million tonnes of textile waste is sent to landfills, whilst some of these textiles are made from organic materials that can biodegrade, most are not and contain some form of synthetic polymer such as polyester.
Kevin Sullivan is the CEO and co-founder of Tereform, a company aimed at the recycling of waste textiles. The end goal is to use these recycled textiles to produce raw materials that can then be used to create new textiles. During the podcast, we talked about the chemistry behind this process, which Kevin likened to a fire as the textiles react with oxygen in a chain reaction. We also discussed a number of interesting topics, such as Kevin's route into becoming a start-up founder and some of his experiences so far as a CEO.
Check out Kevin on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpsulli/
Check out Tereform here: https://www.tereform.com/
The origins of life on earth remains a mystery that piques everyone's interest. To describe the minimal components that contribute to the formation of life, scientists refer to the 'protocell', a pre-life chemical arrangement that contained all the necessary molecules to one day evolve into self-replicating living cells. There are many different hypotheses explaining how the chemistry that creates life may have come from, one of the leading being 'The RNA World Hypothesis'.
This hypothesis posits that of the three main biomolecules, DNA, RNA and proteins, it was RNA that came about first. The thinking here is that RNA is much simpler to produce than complex proteins and can have similar catalytic functions, for example, the ribosome or ribozymes. As such, scientists are trying to recreate early earth conditions trying to prove that RNA can be created, for example from a lighting strike or from electromagnetic radiation.
Dr. Albert Fahrenbach is a researcher in this field, and he gave an incredible break-down of the subject, leaving me much more clued in on the subject than I had been previously.
The Brain is easily the most interesting organ in the body, simply because of the complexity of its nature that is still yet to be uncovered. Today, I spoke with Dr. James Pang, who is a neuroscience researcher at Monash University. We discussed the techniques used to study the structure of the brain then delved into James' recent publication on the topic and finally touched on the names, function and evolution of different structure in the brain.
When creating a new product we often think of how we can create something new, new ways of getting the product into the customer's hands and new ways of satisfying the customer to tell their friends about the product or service. Rarely do we think about what happens when the customer is done using the product. This is where the concept of 'Endineering' comes in. Endineering hopes to encourage those in the design phase of their projects to not only consider how they will create, but also how to sustainably dispose of the product once the customer is finished with it.
It was amazing to talk with Joe MacLeod about his concept of endineering and to learn more about the roots of the idea and how it developed.
If you are interested in learning more about #Endineering. Here are links to the Website, books, talks and the courses.
Endineering Website
http://www.andend.co/
Hear the Endineering talk at your University or Business
https://www.andend.co/speaker
Endineering for businesses.
https://www.andend.co/endineeringforbusiness
The Endineering training course.
Become an #Endineer
Online. 4 weeks. Group session once a week. 1-2 hours a week study.
Overview: https://www.andend.co/cohort
25% off the course: 25offendscohort
BOOKS
The Endineering book
https://www.amazon.com/dp/9163947846/
Ends book
https://www.amazon.com/dp/9163936445/
Ends ebook
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/744267
Discount code: EB55V
Endineering ebook
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1116883
Discount code: RN25W
https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephmacleod/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/andend/
@mrmacleod
@andend_co
@mrmacleod
@andend.co
Hash tags.
Endineering
DesignEnds
The plastic waste crisis is on everybody's mind, so it is interesting to hear about new and exciting technologies that could help solve this crisis. Researchers have found microbes that can not only produce but also break down a type of plastic. This plastic has the potential to be used in products that may otherwise go to landfill.
The plastics are known as Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) and are made up, like a typical plastic, of a chain of polymers. Interestingly, these polymer chains can be functionalised with many different chemical groups, meaning that theoretically almost any plastic can be mimicked by this microbially derived plastic.
Dr. Andrea Westlie is a researcher who has worked on these plastics, and in todays episode gave a great overview of what they are, how we can improve them and other possibilities for solving the plastic waste crisis.
Check out Andrea on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-westlie-9b0339121/
Skin is a tremendously complicated organ that performs a number of functions. Namely, to protect the body from outside influences and to convey information from the outside world. The latter is covered in today's episode.
Electronic skin is an engineered system that can receive information and then produce electronic potential, similar to the way our nerves work, and pass this signal to the brain. This has future potential applications in prostetic limbs to allow users to feel and respond using their prosthetic limb.
Weichen Wang talks about his research into this area and gave a masterclass in the biology of the skin, nervous system and the difficulties with engineering electronic skin.
Check out his original research here: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ade0086
To stay updated, follow the link to find all our channels: https://linktr.ee/solutionsscience
Plastics are massively engineered to be most suitable for very specific needs. Whilst this means they are great for solving materials problems, when it comes to recycling them, we end up with mixtures of many different plastic materials. This becomes an issue as melting down mixed plastics often produces materials that do not mix correctly or with poor structural properties.
In this episode, Dr. Ryan Clarke talked about his research into improving mixed recycling methods by using cross linkers that allow mixtures of plastic monomers to effectively polymerise into useful materials.
A Biorefinery is a chemical plant that mimics an oil refinery in it's idea to extract valuable products from a complex input. However, rather than extracting products from oil, the biorefinery focuses on biomass inputs, for example waste from the logging industry, food industry and household waste.
Through the separation of biomass into it's three most common constituents, lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose, these can then be processed further into more valuable products such as sunscreens, fuels and polymer materials. The research is currently ongoing and there are currently some commercially operating biorefineries, however, these do not focus on lignin and in the future, researchers hope to use biorefineries to produce chemicals beyond what is possible from oil.
Today's guest was Dr. Filippo Brienza who studied lignin extraction from biomass at the University of Loauvain, now he works at BiCT srl on various research projects for the development of extractive, enzymatic and downstream processes. Follow him on LinkedIn if you are interested in his work: https://www.linkedin.com/in/filippobrienza/
Hydrogen fuel can be generated from electricity in times when production exceeds demand, for example, on a sunny day solar generated electricity can be stored as hydrogen, which can then be converted back to electricity at a time when supply exceeds demand.
Jacob Prosser explained some difficulties with storing hydrogen, due to the requirement of compressing the gas to fit into a reasonable space. We discussed alternatives to gas storage where hydrogen is reacted to solid materials and stored in a higher density form, and finally, we touched on some challenges associated with large-scale adoption of hydrogen fuel and its advantages.
DNA & RNA sequencing have revolutionised medicine and biotechnology. Of the different technologies available for sequencing, Oxford Nanopore sequencing is one of the most portable, quickest and cheapest platforms available. Some of the most notable achievements for Nanopore include devices being taken to the International Space Station, achieving the world record for the fastest human genome and being a vital part in the telomere-to-telomere project where a complete human genome was sequenced. Dr. Lakmal Jayasinghe talked about this incredible technology, how it works, and the incredible future the technology holds.
Research into Nuclear Fusion Reactors has been advancing steadily over the last half century. There are still many remaining research questions, including getting fusion reactions to a high enough energy for them to continue 'burning' without further energy input, preventing reactions coming to a stop and efficiently transferring energy from inside the reactor to turn a turbine outside of the reactor and generate energy. Dr. Frances Kraus gave us an incredible introduction to the subject and an overview of the current research areas in the field.
Automation is a technology that promises to improve productivity, reproducibility and open-access in science. Dr. Valerio Fasano & Dr. Rory Mykura talk about their work from the Aggarwal group at the University of Bristol. We speak about the methods they used and the challenges they overcame and the impact automation might have in the field of organic synthesis.
Hydrogen is a useful energy source where electricity cannot be used, for example, in long distance commercial transport where batteries would take up too much space and for energy storage when electricity supply exceeds demand. Kieran Heeley is a PhD student from the University of Birmingham and he spoke with us about how hydrogen is already in use, how it is made and the future prospects of the fuel.