16 Jul 2026
↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓
For decades, one man was blamed for bringing AIDS to America. But the “Patient Zero” story was wrong. This is the story of how genetic detective work traced HIV’s true origins—from chimpanzees in Central Africa to a global pandemic—and how science unraveled one of the biggest myths in modern medicine.
Be Smart explores science questions you didn’t even know you wondered about. It is hosted and produced by Joe Hanson, PhD. We post new videos all the time, so please subscribe! If you enjoyed this video, hit the ‘like’ button, leave a comment, or watch another of our videos!
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9 Jul 2026
Two scientists on opposite sides of the world turned out to be studying the same evolutionary gamechanger. Their discovery — a new organelle called the Nitroplast — would end up rewriting an important rule of biology, and could help pave the way for plants that could make their own fertilizer.
Video by: Jesse Nichols
Executive Editors: Teresa Chin and Jess Stahl
Special thanks to: Naotomo Umewaka, Mayu Katafuchi, Sachi Mulkey, Clayton Aldern, and Emily Zhang.
Sources:
Jon Zehr
Kyoko Hagino
Tyler Coale
Ramon Massana
Luis Rubio
Solène Moulin
Coale et al. 2024
“Nitrogen-fixing organelle in a marine alga”
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s…
Cornejo-Castillo et al. 2024
“Metabolic trade-offs constrain the cell size ratio in a nitrogen-fixing symbiosis”
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0…
Harding et al. 2018
“Symbiotic unicellular cyanobacteria fix nitrogen in the Arctic Ocean”
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas…
Hagino et al. 2013
“Discovery of an Endosymbiotic Nitrogen-Fixing Cyanobacterium UCYN-A in Braarudosphaera bigelowii”
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art…
Thompson et al. 2012
“Unicellular Cyanobacterium Symbiotic with a Single-Celled Eukaryotic Alga”
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s…
Moisander et al. 2010
“Unicellular cyanobacterial distributions broaden the oceanic N2 fixation domain”
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s…
Zehr et al. 2001
“Unicellular cyanobacteria fix N2 in the subtropical North Pacific Ocean”
https://www.nature.com/articles/35088063
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