Liz Sockett on friendly killer bacteria

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2017

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Professor Liz Sockett studies an extraordinary group of predatory bacteria. Bdellovibrio may be small but they kill other bacteria with ingenious and ruthless efficiency. Liz has devoted the last fifteen years of her career as a microbiologist to work out how this microscopic killer invades and consumes its victims - victims which include a host of disease-causing bacteria which have also acquired resistance to antibiotics which once killed them. As well as studying the numerous tricks and weapons which Bdellovibrio have evolved to despatch and feed on other bugs, Prof Sockett's lab at the University of Nottingham is also testing the bacteria's potential as a new kind of treatment in the era of antibiotic resistance. Deadly infections may not be able to outwit this bacterial top predator in the way they have with ever increasing numbers of antibiotic drugs. Liz talks to Jim Al-Khalili about how a BBC TV children's show first introduced her to the superfast killer bacteria, how Roman villas led her towards a life of discovery, and how her lab in Nottingham might be compared to the kitchen of a restaurant and her team to a brigade of chefs. Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.

Transcript

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0:33.0	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.
0:37.0	First broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
0:40.0	I'm Jimal Kiele and my mission is to interview the most fascinating and important scientists alive today
0:46.8	and to find out what makes them tick.
0:50.3	My guest today has devoted the last 15 years of her career to the forensic study of a true wonder of evolution.
0:57.0	It's a top predator that's one of the fastest swimmers of its kind.
1:01.0	It's armed with grappling hooks to latch onto its prey and a
1:04.5	further bunch of tricks to get inside its victims and eat them with ruthless
1:08.6	efficiency. Now if you're thinking, oh I don't know, maybe a giant squid, then think much, much smaller.
1:15.6	And according to my guest, Liz Socket, this marvel of nature may one day be saving many
1:20.2	thousands of lives every year, curing people with life-threatening infections
	...

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