 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Okay, we're back. We're live for an exciting show. This is what I call a puke show. You know, when a show, if somebody gets sick, can make it too tired, whatever, then we send a message out to all our friends and hosts and we say, we got a puke show. Let's fill it up. And they do. Thank you for bellying up to the bar. Ethan Allen, man. Thank you. Glad to be here again today. Always a pleasure to talk with you. Yeah, we got a few interesting things. And we're calling this show, not that this is going to be our head topic here, the sex life of a spermatozoa, also called New Ways, New Weapons in the Battle of the Sexes. You'll see how interesting this is. Came off an article in a scientific journal that will really blow your mind. But before we do that, I just want to mention that the House passed Trump's tax reform bill. Oh, uh, I mean, you know, he probably didn't know what is in that. I mean, it's really ridiculous. And, you know, I mean, little by little, he is destroying our country. And I mean that in so many words. In so many ways. In so many ways, you know. EPA, environmental regulations. EPA, environmental regulations. Our diplomacy, our brand overseas, our image in the world, our hegemony, you know, all over Asia and in Europe. I mean, they're laughing. I was going to say the Canadians and Australians are just, you know, I don't know whether to laugh or cry for us. So now you told me that he's made elephant tusks legal again. So in this country, you can buy and sell elephant tusks. Apparently. Who wants to buy and sell elephant tusks knowing that that's going to further further depreciate the elephants, the elephant, you know, herds around the world. They're already going extinct. So now we make it legal to make them further extinct. What kind of stupidity is that, Ethan? They got me, Jay. No, I mean, obviously this is kind of regulation that Trump is doing that benefits a few people. His rich buddies, basically, who want to go out trophy hunting. And basically, you know, hurts the elephants, hurts conservation efforts, ultimately hurts the economies of these nations where the elephants are, because once the elephants are gone, they get, tourism goes down, you know. You know, we're going to pay a really, really high price for him. Everyone is. He is killing the country in so many ways. And when the blow is finally visited, when we realize the enormity of the damage that he's doing daily, some of which we know about other things we don't even know about. It's behind his back. It'll be too late to do anything about it. I mean, our brand, our image in the world is already so damaged, I don't know if we could get back to where we were. His backsliding on climate change work. I mean, that's something that's just getting worse and worse and worse every day, more and more urgent. And he's just setting us back, setting us back. Yeah, it's almost incalculable, the damage. Yeah, incalculable. And Congress is going along with him. And you know, other Republicans are in charge of Congress, but you have to appreciate the Republican Party that exists today is not the Republican Party that we knew 10 years ago, because the Koch brothers and others are running off a guy named James Buchanan, who was a Virginian some years ago, created this whole new philosophy of a kind of revolution within the country, a kind of dissolved the Constitution revolution. And they moved, and they're still moving the Republican Party to the right with people that would not be treated as Republicans 10 or 20 years ago. Right, it wouldn't treat it as a weird raffle fringe. It's a new party, and they seem bent on destroying things. Yes, yes. And he's running it. Anyway, you know, it's renewable energy, bad. He's not doing that anymore. Environment, he's not protecting the environment. He's hurting the environment. Health care. This tax reform act, which is really what led me to this whole point, the tax reform act that passed in the House has got a provision that attempts to further undermine and kill Obamacare. Even though the number of people who signed up for Obamacare has remarkably increased in the past six months. So, I mean, just destroy everything you can and leave the Mad Max at Thunderdome kind of scenario behind you. The country is really going to pot now, and I don't know if there's anything we can do about it. There is a bill pending to impeach him. It was introduced yesterday by some Democrats. Not a likely chance to get any votes from the Republicans. Then, of course, you'd be left with Mike Pence. Yeah, well, that's true. A lot of people are scared of that. But the reason I raise all of this is that if we give $1.5 trillion away to the multinationals, as is happening, this cockamamie tax reform, this euphemistic reform act, what happens to science? We're not going to have the money. $1.3 trillion is getting thrown away. Don't give me the trickle-down business. That's ridiculous. What's going to happen to science? Already, science is under stress from this administration. What about the scientists getting federal money for research? And you know about this, you've been through this and how much huge percentage of the funding that goes for science in this country comes from the federal government. We won't have the money. I know he's not going to apply any money to scientific research going forward, not only because he won't have it, because of this tax reform, but because he doesn't want to anyway, to believe in it. He still doesn't have a science advisor. He still doesn't have a science advisor. He knows. That's right. He's a smart guy. He knows better than generals. He knows the military stuff better than generals. He knows the intelligence stuff better than the CIA. So, you know, why does he need a scientist? He dealt with nose science better than scientists. And you can't go on the yo-yo idea that, well, we get rid of them and then science can re-flower. No, it doesn't work that way. Because what happens is this discourage is a scientific community. A few people go into it. They can't make it. They can't have jobs. They can't have careers. They can't get research done. So, certain percentage of them are going to get out of it and not do it. And the kids who come up from school will not have those people to ideate as followers and mentors and heroes. So, the whole scientific effort shrinks down. That's what I expect is going to happen. You're absolutely right. It's one of the most waffle impacts of what he's doing. It's really hurting our whole future economy of this country because the economy of this country really depends on science and technology we are developing. So, it's going to hurt everyone. Kumbaya, baby. Keisarasara. Let's talk about something else. All right, good. Let's talk about the title of our show. The Sex Life of a Spermatozoa, New Weapons in the Battle of the Sexes. So, this is a really interesting article that you found. Quantum Magazine, was it? I think so. It's a scientific journal and it's about Spermatozoa. You know, the sex life of a sperm. Things we didn't know. Things that even Mendel didn't know. So, we have a new chapter unfolding in genetics, I suppose. What's going on? So, very classically, Gray or Mendel sort of discovered that there are sort of, if you sort genes randomly, certain patterns occur. And he did it with his pea plants, whether they were tall or short or had white flowers, yellow flowers or curly peas versus straight peas, smooth peas or whatever. And found these probability ratios held very nicely. Ever since then, we've sort of gone ahead with this idea that there's a random mixing of genes in between the sperm and the egg. Some scientists, a guy named, I think, Joe Nadeau, I could have that wrong, at a research institute in the Pacific Northwest, found, however, an interesting case where he was looking at two different genes that predispose mice to a particular inherited testicular cancer. And we'll call them just for simplicity gene A and gene B. And when he had females with gene A mated to males with gene B, everything worked pretty much the way he expected. He got the kind of ratios of these two genes in the offspring that he expected. But when he had females with gene B and the males with gene A, the ratios in the offspring were all screwed up. Only a tiny percentage of the offspring showed with the sort of expected ratios of these two genes that he had. And a huge percentage of them didn't have these mutant genes in them. And it was just, it was phenomenal. And he went through a very elaborate process to look and see, well, was it just that, you know, there are fewer offspring than usual? Was it the offspring who got the copies of these genes or dying faster in utero? None of this happened. What he was left with is this radical idea that somehow the egg is selecting which sperm it lets fertilize it. The egg is selecting the sperm. Before we were led to believe that the sperm was shooting a lot of, you know, a lot of sperms were coming on the egg. And the first one would get there, he would fertilize the egg. And it was, you know, it was a matter of getting there fast, I suppose. The race belongs to the swift. You got to be a strong swimmer and all that. But we find that it's much more complicated than that. And that there's this handshake engagement and selection process happening between the sperm and the egg. Let's have a picture. We've got a picture. This is a fabulous picture that showed him that article. Oh my God, this picture. You know, it looks like a hairy ball, but it is not that at all. This is all the sperm that are surrounding the egg and trying to get inside and fertilize the egg. This is the essence of reproduction we're looking at right here. This is the moment of truth. Right, this is very typical. A gazillion sperm, long hairy things there, all fighting for the privilege of fertilizing that one big round egg, basically. And, yeah, this is very typical. And supposedly in the normal sense, one of those sperms at random, basically, or the strongest sperm would do it. But basically, apparently that coating that sort of haze on the egg, maybe doing some selective active, maybe knocking some sperm out and letting other sperm in. But that's not entirely random. There's a rationale there. There's a methodology. Based on characteristics that the sperm have, genes that they're expressing, which they have to then be chemically expressing somehow. It's incredible that the egg could be, this egg is how big? It's tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny. It's a big microscopic blow-up here, but this could be such a sophisticated process. So the egg is looking for some kind of sperm that it likes, one that has characteristics, genetic characteristics. That presumably are to the female's advantage. Because this is the battle of sexist part. Males and females have different wants in reproduction. The male wants basically the father's many offspring as he can in a general sense, because then his genes are widespread and no matter what happens, come feast or famine, he's good. The female wants to have good offspring who can reproduce well. So her genes keep getting reproduced. The need for life, the need for reproduction, it goes right down to the egg itself. The egg is trying to preserve the line. This is incredible. There's been all kinds of interesting ways that people recognized beyond the obvious displays of males, deer, crashing heads or sheep crashing heads or whatever it may be. They've known that females try to do different things. They try to select certain males based on certain characteristics. The classic examples are peacocks in the lake where the male is sort of forced into carrying all this extra weight, this huge tail in the case of peacock in order to show the female that he's a good guy. He's strong. Good characteristic. He's healthy. He's able to support this sort of huge useless appendage, which basically says, I'm a good candidate for you. But if recognized in these cases, it's always a female who chooses. She gets to pick basically. But now it turns out... She shows you the power of the woman. She's actually picking on a very deep level now on a cellular level basically. How did she get so smart? It's a whole new kind of intelligence that we never imagined before. We thought this was sort of primitive, physical magnetic action, but it's much more than that. We began to discover some decades ago that some females, for instance, can store sperm from different males in different packets and then choose which sperm to use to fertilize their eggs when, which I mean just the mechanics of that is sort of beyond... Keep them in your pocket. How do you do that? Just decide later what you want. And it's well known too that sperm are involved in various interesting gains to out-compete other sperm, right? Sperm, there are some sperm that form sort of big globs, big meshes of sperm that may be behind them. So you put your sperm in and any sperm comes in later. It's like a football team with a walker. It has no chance of getting in. This reminds me of herd animals where they fight to get the female, right? The males fight and the surviving male becomes the leader of the pack and he has the females. It's sort of like that, isn't it? I mean that the sperm are kind of... They're having their own contest among themselves to be the strongest and to get to the head of the pack and the female is only going to take the ones that she, I shouldn't say she, but it, whatever, she believes is the head of the pack and has the characteristics that she wants for the preservation of the line. This is incredible. And we really don't know much about it, but let's after this break, Ethan let's speculate about how this exactly works Okay, we'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii raising public awareness. Aloha. I'm Vic Kraft the volunteer host of It Never Got Quiet. Think Tech is important to me because we can bring the issue of Hawaiian veterans of the Vietnam War to the community and tell their story. For the first time, Think Tech Hawaii is participating in an online web-based fundraising campaign to raise $40,000. Thanks to Think Tech will run only during the month of November and you can help. Please donate what you can so that Think Tech Hawaii continue to raise public awareness and promote civic engagement through free programming like mine. I've already made my donation and look forward to yours. Please send in your tax-deductible contribution by going to this website www.thanksforthinktech.causebox.com On behalf of the community I think Tech Hawaii is 30-plus weekly shows. Mahalo. Okay, we're back for the best part. I'm Jay Fidel. I'm the guest host. That's Ethan Allen. He's the host guest. This is likable science in case you were wondering. And although we've talked about other things especially including the effect of this tax reform act on scientific research dreadful, ugly. We also are talking as our principal subject about the sex life of a spermatozoa new weapons in the battle of the sexes that we are just discovering now. And so as discussed we have found that the egg has a choice and can actually implement willpower in selecting the sperm that is the best suited in her opinion to continue the line. This is incredible that the egg should be so smart and capable of effectuating this choice chemically with this coating on the egg. It's incredible. Anyway, let's talk about how this might work. They don't really know what characteristics she is looking for. Presumably in the way of life itself the characteristics that she is looking for are the ones that would preserve the line. Smart. Long. Tall. Mustache. Head of hair. Strong shoulders. Resistance to disease. Whatever it is. There is a lot of choices to be made. First of all, chemically how would an egg know that? You have biology experience. You have been in science and biology research. So how would an egg know all of the possibilities and be able to choose a sperm that meets her standards? She's got to have standards. She's got to have the ability to reject those who don't meet the standards and select those who do. It's pretty smart business. Presumably this is all programmed in by the female who released the egg. It's not really the egg doing higher level thinking here. You think the host actually communicating with the egg. Or leaving messages with the egg. She's built an egg that has filters on it basically. That's a whole new idea. Her filters may say any sperm that expresses X characteristic on its head you're going to block it. Whereas if it expresses Y characteristic on its head you're going to flood it through. Now how do you do that chemically? A sperm is even smaller than this tiny little egg. Is it a single cell or something? Each egg and each sperm is a single cell. The sperm are tiny tiny tiny cells. But I really hadn't thought of that. It's true that the woman the host of the egg who creates the egg and passes the egg she could be sending signals making demands. This is the kind of sperm you should be dealing with. And don't take any other. The research was also interesting in that it is possible that actually the females may produce multiple kinds of eggs sort of cubed to different sets of sperm and that the sperm within her reproductive tract may influence which egg she releases. So this can be even sort of an extra loop on the choice. Interactive. There's very much as you said earlier handshaking kind of thing going on here much more than we ever really suspected before. It's a collaborative business doubtless. God to be there you know to watch the action would kind of be so fascinating to see the acceptance and the rejection. You can personify it's amazing. I want to get in there. You're okay to get in there. Our views of this have really been very colored by there's some really obvious conflicts you can see between elephant seals and all the big bull elephant seals that are fighting for each other the winner gets to maintain the whole supremacy of the fitness and all that sort of obvious stuff so you get this impression of the males being sort of in charge in some sense but in reality as I was saying earlier if you look at for instance birds doing this like kind of behavior it's the females who are really choosing the males will all stand around and display and she walks around and says you that's it and now we're finding the same kind of thing is actually happening on the cellular level basically the sperm are all there playing their own sets of games trying to get ahead or block others or do what it is and egg is basically also saying come hither or stay away all this information in one cell even more than that it's one cell dealing with a bunch of other cells that are all that's a lot of information you need a computer to deal with the possibilities and permutation combinations of all these sperms you know I just how could it possibly be so smart how could this be coming down the genetic pipeline so that this cell, one cell knows so much about the world it's a worldly cell it has the whole genetic experience all historical experience of millennia that's exactly what it is it's that natural selection phenomenon eggs you might think of they produce a lot of different kinds of coatings, those that did the best kinds of coatings that were selective and let only the best sperm those are the ones that thrive basically and the lines all died out and so over the eons that selection process has gotten better and better and better basically and now it is at a phenomenal level where apparently eggs can select for genotype of the sperm which must somehow be expressed on the outside of the sperm because the eggs aren't reaching out and taking samples from the sperm well first of all Mendel never really thought about this kind stuff and in fact we only became kind of vaguely aware of it within the last what 10 years or so and now now that we know it's a logical kind of thing we learned this from not so much inductive but deductive reasoning about what we found in the studies right so the question I suppose is could we do a biochemical analysis of the egg and the coating you mentioned to determine first how the egg actually rejects the sperm it doesn't like and B I'll ask you this separately and B how it rejects some kind of sperm but not other kinds of sperm so how does it the coating this is kind of like it's kind of a chemical keep away from me kind of saying I'm not going to I'm physically not going to let you in right I mean you can sort of think of it as an oil and water kind of interface where you know they're being kept separate and they can't get together and then you can think of if the female has a little drop of liquid soap right to ping on the surface and suddenly it's going to allow the merger of the water to mix in with the oil it bounces off because it's a surface tension kind of thing or is it a mosquito repellent kind of thing you know sperm don't go there because it's offensive in some way it's not just visible it's chemical it could be a chemical weakening it weakens them as they enter a kryptonite unless you are yes of the right type it's spermatozoic kryptonite weakens them and they need to get out of there right away I guess it's amazing so you know this has got to be a very interesting study going forward assuming we have the research funds from our federal government to make this kind of study but who knows where it could go so the first question is what is the coating how does it get established and how does it get controlled by whatever intelligence is within that little tiny one cell egg this is really how can we find out let's say I gave you 100 million dollars just let me how would you start that investigation I'd go out and find some good reproductive biologist to do this people who are used to doing this kind of work because there are scientists around here who pull out individual eggs and probably pull that coating off the egg and chemically analyze it probably will turn out that that coating has itself multiple layers within it which are all slightly chemically different and some of them are attracting certain things and then you look at the heads of the sperm and you would probably find they have certain chemicals that are either matching so you're in the school that would follow the chemical approach there's a sort of repellent kind of effect that will keep the sperm away and only allow the right sperm in so let's assume that we spend our 100 million assuming we could get any part of that and now we know the mechanics how you keep some sperm out and let the sperm in but there's a more profound question that is how does the information retain the whole thing about batteries and the grid and energy how does what's the biochemical process by which the information relating to which sperm is always allowed in and what characteristics how does it identify the characteristics of that sperm before it even meets it it's got to be sensing it from the other side of the membrane well yeah I mean that's presumably I'm just guessing here that there is some interaction happens chemically when the sperm start bumping into that coating so it's the bump the egg figures out something about the sperm from the bump there is some chemical interaction there that's doing something checking them out and either saying oh good this is a good one come on in or nope you're not my type of guy so stay away you only get one chance because only one sperm typically only gets through the coating once the one sperm gets through the whole thing locks up what's really the amazing thing if you think about this the human genome project a while ago pointed out that we actually have a really modest number of genes we thought we might have 120,000 genes something like this we ended up with 25,000 something really small and how are they making that level fine-tuned level of choice so we can see these multi-gene interactions which genes get how much expressed when, where all that's got to be a really critical part of it well I want to go to the last general area here let's assume that somehow message is this from Washington oh okay this is from Kauai Lucas who is our Hawaii is my mainland host on Friday she says that one egg cell is female that's why it is so much more complex than a sperm male females are more complex you know Ethan and I are not going to disagree with you about that just think how much better our scientific knowledge would be now if females had been leading research for the last 200 years no dispute there who goes to Kauai thank you Kauai Lucas actually there's a huge set of controversies rocking the scientific community these days because it's coming out that sexual harassment has actually been prevalent deep in the DNA you know in research teams but some people so I want to go to the last big question so now let's assume that with our 100 million maybe a couple more 100 million we figure out at least in general terms what that coding is like and how it's activated and we figure out what kind of intelligence we have in the egg which by the way is much bigger and presumably we can have more intelligence than a little sperm we figure out what that intelligence is and how the intelligence controls the coding which affects the sperm so the next question is ready are you sitting down how can we should we in what way would it benefit us to manipulate that process and tell actually program the egg to accept or reject certain characteristics in the sperm that would change the whole process of fertilization it's sort of the ultimate step in designer babies ultimate step you could go and make that selection about what characteristics your kid was going to have from literally day one you know by determining what sperm was going to get in would this be better than what we do now in gene splicing it sounds like it would be more elegant certainly more elegant and much more sophisticated technique and but again it's sort of hard to even wrap your brain around the complexities of it would it be legal would it be ethical I know the ethical guys would be honest about this so now I'm giving you another hundred million maybe two or three hundred million then you know I'd like to be able to manipulate this I'd like to go into the egg which I can find maybe up there on a slide and I got the equipment you know to go and change I don't know the genetic material in the egg change the messaging send a message to the egg but you are to accept this kind of characteristics and reject this kind of characteristics where does that go it sounds really elegant but it also sounds like we could do that yeah yeah this is it seems like the logical outcome of this process that we've just been discovering so we'll eventually learn to control this and that then raises really fundamental questions because these choices that are being made presumably have been fine tuned by evolution for eons and for us then to go in and on a whim and say don't let these sperm in and keep these guys out what is that going to do to the evolution of the species sure it sounds like discrimination discrimination at the most fundamental level you could possibly imagine if we make a mistake on that what effect would it have in the long term selection in the species I think we stumped each other well if we chew on there well it's been a great discussion Ethan I've enjoyed it beautiful to talk about science now we have to make it come true there we go Ethan Allen our chief scientist thank you Jay