A weekly podcast hosted by a post-doc (Komal Gupta) and a PhD student (Madan Mohan) from the National University of Singapore, featuring interviews with leading scientists. We talk about our experiences as researchers, what excites us, how we navigate challenges, and more. There is also a ton of laughing, personal stories, and random trivia. So tune in for a fun and extensive tour of life in academia. www.artofacademia.com
Journal Club: The Simplest Way to Lengthen Telomeres?
Lengthening telomeres with a simple supplement sounds almost too good to be true. Yet, two recent papers suggest that supplying cells with thymidine, a basic DNA building block, is enough to do just that. Join us as we explore the unexpected discovery, why it's a big deal for telomere biology, and the big question that remains: how does it actually work?
(00:00) Intro
(07:20) Why do we even need telomeres
(14:30) The approach: CRISPR screen for telomere regulators
(16:30) The core finding: More thymidine, longer telomeres
(21:40) What makes these papers cool pt 1
(25:00) The missing piece: What's the mechanism?
(29:50) What makes these papers cool pt 2
(33:30) Outro
The papers:
1. Mannherz, W., Agarwal, S. Thymidine nucleotide metabolism controls human telomere length. Nat Genet 55, 568–580 (2023).
2. Mannherz, W., Crompton, A., Lampl, N. et al. Metabolic constraint of human telomere length by nucleotide salvage efficiency. Nat Commun 16, 3000 (2025).
17 Aug 2025
Most cited papers of the 21st Century
We discuss the news feature from Nature covering the most cited papers of the 21st Century
(00:00) Intro (grant writing, going to AACR)
(11:45) Most cited papers of the 21st century (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01125-9) (overview)
(15:20) 2ddct method
(17:45) Thematic analysis in psychology
(23:15) The DSM-5
(25:15) Random Forests Classifier
(27:40) Attention is all you need
(31:45) Sequences and Consequences (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2009.0221)
(34:30) Publish houses of brick, not mansions of straw (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28541345/)
(35:30) Outro (Potential AI projects)
17 Mar 2025
Diffusion of scientific ideas
We discuss a paper on scientific diffusion—a metric for how widely an idea is spread—and how it can tell you if you are in a bubble.
(00:00) Intro: Komal's trip to Langkawi
(04:30) Setting goals for the new year
(14:00) Million dollar weekend (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/145624504-million-dollar-weekend)
(22:10) Diffusion paper (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-02041-0)
(24:20) Knowledge lab (https://knowledgelab.org/)
(25:10) What is diffusion (of research papers)
(26:45) Two case studies of low and high diffusion papers
(30:20) Low diffusion correlates with bubble bursting
(34:30) What this means for your own research
(39:00) Final thoughts on the paper
(40:30) Outro: Building a social task manager app for my friends
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Spotify
5.0 / 5
2 ratings
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