Life at the extreme

As glaciers melt, they uncover brand new soils that have been hidden for thousands of years. I’m investigating how tiny bacterial pioneers survive in these harsh, freshly exposed environments and how some even feed on carbon monoxide from the air. This remarkable process is happening in one of the most remote corners of Svalbard, where I’ve travelled to see first-hand the astonishing effects of a warming climate, with glaciers shrinking rapidly and losing metres of ice each year, the quiet return of life after ice, and the need to keep an eye out for polar bears along the way.

Did you know that the world relies on the optimal size of something you can’t even see? The air we breathe and the growth of the plants we eat depend on tiny mouth-shaped cells in plant leaves. Get their size wrong, and plants struggle.
Most cells follow a simple rule: more DNA, bigger size - but I want to know why.
Using glowing microscopes and mutant plants, I shrink cells beyond their supposed limits and watch them break the rules. Join me for a pint-fuelled journey into the life of a glowing cell and how learning to control its size will help us grow better crops for the future.