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Natural Prodcast is a podcast about natural products and the science and scientists of secondary metabolism. Natural products, secondary metabolites, specialized metabolites -- whatever you want to call them, they're the chemicals that make species unique and different from one another, and are incredibly important to medicine, the environment, and human health. Hosts Dan Udwary and Jackie Winter introduce concepts in this exciting field, and talk to the fascinating scientists who work in it. This series brought to you by the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Detailed interviews connect natural products chemistry to the organisms, experiments, and research tools that make new compounds intelligible.
Natural Prodcast starts with a scientist's work and keeps asking how biological chemistry is found, tested, and made useful. Its interviews move between microbial genomes, medicinal plants, enzymes, and laboratory methods, with questions that connect unfamiliar chemistry to the…
Antarctic sediment microbes leave you with an excellent question: were they asleep before reaching the lab?
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A bonus episode that connects Great Salt Lake microbiology to a new public data portal.
Natural Podcast turns its off-schedule bonus into a useful double feature. Jackie Winter gets a proper introduction, and the host then walks listeners through SMC, the Secondary Metabolism Collaboratory, now released for the public.
A technical conversation that makes methylotrophs and quorum sensing feel immediately worth following.
The episode follows Aaron Puri through a focused stretch of microbiology and chemistry, with particular attention to the underexplored meeting point between methylotrophs and natural products chemistry.
A tight enzyme episode about selectivity, sequence, and bringing dead proteins back to life.
The episode follows a chemist working through a stubborn problem: how sequence maps onto the chemistry an enzyme can actually carry out. It stays with flavin monooxygenases, substrate-face selectivity, and the sequence clues that may help predict where oxygen lands and from…
A technical episode on actinomycetes, Actinobase, and Antarctic isolates with genuinely novel chemistry.
This episode brings Professor Catherine Duncan of the University of Strathclyde into a wide-ranging look at actinomycetes, where chemistry, chemical ecology, actinomycete and microalgae biology, and mass spectrometry are all put to work together.
Research made practical, patient, and public.
Chemistry with the footnotes left in.
The periodic table, read by a business desk.
Chemistry, queerness and grad school, told by the chemists
A bonus episode, and knowingly self-promotional.
Schedules are hard.
Allison Narayan comes at natural products from a side door.
Natural Podcast interviews Emory University ethnobotanist Cassandra Quave about The Plant Hunter, traditional medicines, and plant-based drug discovery.
Kate Duncan works across plenty of scientific borders.
Host Dan Udwary interviews JGI director Nigel Mouncey about secondary metabolism, his background in agricultural natural products, and upcoming JGI events.
Hosts Dan Udwary and Jackie Winter interview Professor Eric Schmidt about his work on ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs) and other natural products.
This episode is the third part of a primer series on natural products discovery, covering modern history and current research at JGI.
An interview with Brad Moore about natural products research, including seaweed, algae, and biocatalysis.