2013 Press Releases

Cork research features on BBC's Science Club

28 Aug 2013

UCC scientists feature in, “Invisible Worlds”, the last of the current series of Dara O’Briain’s Science Club at 8pm on BBC2 TV tomorrow, Thursday, 29th August.

In the programme journalist Alok Jha travels to Cork to meet Professors John F Cryan and Paul O’Toole at the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC) at UCC to shine a light on some of the more mysterious and usually hidden worlds that surround us and to investigate the new and incredible world of the microbiome.  He discovers that he’s not only playing host to an entire ecosystem of microbes in his gut but that it’s responsible not just for his health but also for his mental well-being. 

One of the key arms of Professor Cryan's research is focused on understanding the interaction between brain and the microbiota within the gut and how it applies to disorders including depression, anxiety, irritable bowel syndrome, obesity and autism. Professor Cryan was recently awarded the prestigious Utrecht University Excellence in Pharmaceutical Research Award and was named UCC Researcher of the Year in 2012. His research group is funded by Science Foundation Ireland, the Health Research Board, The Irish Research Council and the European Union Seventh Framework Programme.

Professor O’Toole’s research aims to understand bacterial associations with the human gut, and how this impacts on health and disease.   Professor O’Toole led the Eldermet study which found that the composition of the gut microbiota can positively and negatively impact the health of older people in our population (see Nature July 2012;  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7410/abs/nature11319.html).  He was able to apply these methods to determine the composition of Alok Jha’s microbiota, and how that reflected what his normal diet is.

The Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (http://apc.ucc.ie) is a national centre for food and medicine which recently received €50m funding from government and industry through Science Foundation Ireland’s Research Centres programme. The APC spans across UCC, Teagasc (Ireland's Agriculture & Food Development Authority) and Cork Institute of Technology. APC’s research explores how bacteria in the human gut impacts on population health, leading to the development of future foods and medicines.

 

Additional Information on BBC Science Club “Invisible Worlds” Programme

 

Alok also visits Professor Jeroen Raes at the University of Flanders.

 

Dr Helen Czerski visits the UK’s most powerful syncotron facility to meet Professor David Stewart who has spent over 20 years developing an ingenious method of designing and engineering a safe synthetic vaccine to combat deadly viruses.

 

In the studio Dara enjoys his favourite experiment. It’s man versus machine when he pits his skill against a computer to identify whether whisky is genuine or fake.

 

Mark plunges into the curious nano-world to see what tricks we can steal from nature and has a go at manufacturing the world’s toughest high performance material - fibres of carbon nano-tubes. With the highest weight to strength ratio of any known substance they are destined to transform our material world in the coming decades.

 

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039c6b9

 

 

 

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