Scientificast, la scienza come non l'hai mai sentita

Rane stitiche e proboscidi rugose

·53 min·5 clips

Ilaria and Luca tease an episode about constipated frogs and wrinkled elephant trunks.

The episode begins with hosts Ilaria and Luca joking about technical problems before introducing the main topics: proboscises, anesthetics, and the Nobel Prize. They first delve into a scientific study about Japanese frog tadpoles, specifically Curixalus eifingeri, which live in tiny aquatic environments called philotelmata. These tadpoles exhibit a unique behavior of not defecating to avoid contaminating their habitat with ammonia, and they have developed a tolerance to high ammonia levels. The hosts explain the ecological strategy behind this adaptation, including experiments comparing these frogs to other species. Next, Leonardo interviews Marco Nobile, an associate professor in computer science, about the recent Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Marco discusses the winners: Bacher for protein design, and Hassabis and Jumper for AlphaFold, which uses deep learning to predict protein structures from amino acid sequences. He explains the importance of protein shape for function and how AlphaFold accelerates drug discovery by reducing computation time from months to minutes. Marco also shares his own research in computational drug discovery, including a project targeting specific cells to minimize side effects. After the interview, Luca returns to discuss elephant proboscises, focusing on the wrinkles that develop early in gestation. He notes differences between Asian and African elephants in wrinkle count and mentions that elephants can be right or left-trunked. The conversation explores how these wrinkles enhance dexterity and potential applications in robotics. The episode ends with announcements about a live recording event and contact information for the podcast.

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