 I was just the plug Oh the plugs From that or is it the input part of the plug is that need to be We want to get into it. Let's start the show You know, of course I went to send that thing and it didn't send That we're live I know we're live, but I'm waiting for the you're alive notification That everything is all good to go There's a there's a moment and that happens there it is three two this is Twist this week in science episode number 646 recorded on Wednesday November 22nd 2017 twist giving time Hey everyone, I am dr. Kiki and tonight we are going to fill your heads with a kill switch sinister snails and poo but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer The thankful season is once again upon us and while the president has plenty of turkeys He would like to pardon we should pause here a moment to consider giving thanks to a creature that has done More than just fill our bellies and a beast Creature that has nourished our minds and propelled us into a more healthy and prosperous future the heroes behind many of our Nobel Prize winning humans Living lives dedicated to science and whilst our whiskered cousins may not claim credit for their results the modern era of science medicine Psychology would not have been possible without their bold and bountiful contributions They're model metabolisms. They're stoic steadfast equivalents of our emotional equilibrium So to the lab rat and research mouse alike we offer you our heartfelt thanks this season here on this week in science Coming up next Knowledge I seek I want to know And a good science to you too Justin Blair and everyone out there welcome to our twist giving episode Of this week in science. It is twist giving time again Where we give you lots of science. Oh, we do that every week Yeah It is twist giving it's a time for gratitude for science and All the stories we can fill this show with and I have stories about bacterial kill switches interstellar interlopers and troubled turkeys What do you have for us Justin? I've got things that make you go poo going viral with bacteriophage Transcytosis and One more reason to wash your hands or less brain samples required Is that an either or story or the same story to potential titles for the same story? Whoa, okay. I want to see where that one goes. Oh show Blair. What's in the animal corner? I brought some animal courtship some invertebrate sex and Some animal bones That's tomorrow After everybody eats you see there's bones that are left over. Yeah And that's a little bit ahead of the game more about bones being bought as presents, which is more what Friday is about All right We'll get into it in the animal corner and the entire show ahead, but now it's time for me to remind you That you can subscribe to this week in science on iTunes the Apple podcast Places the Google podcast places Stitcher spreeker tune in basically just about everywhere podcasts are so are we so look for us there You can search for it this week in science and you should find us You can also find us by doing the same exact thing looking for this week in science on YouTube and Facebook and you can always visit twist org especially if you are interested in taking a look at our 2018 Blair's animal corner twist calendars Which are available now? But right now it's time for science Let's go science. Are you are you guys ready? Let's go science. Let's go There we go. Yeah, here we go science. Here we go. We're cheerleading a little bit Because we're cheering on the adventures of an interstellar interloper an object that astronomers found as it just kind of Passes it's passing through our solar system and it's not going in the plane of our solar system It's coming in at a really odd angle which made everybody go. Huh? What about that? That's coming from someplace else Yeah, and then researchers making observations Making observations using the European space observatories very large telescope in Chile using the fours instrument on this telescope researchers Led by Karen Meach at the Institute of Astronomy in Hawaii Used four different filters and these images from this fours instrument on the ESO telescope and Combined them with images from other telescopes to take a look at this object that was noticed passing through and They've pretty much determined that it it varies in its brightness Karen says Can't pronounce this name. It's Hawaiian Muah muah. Muah muah. Oh muah muah is what it's called. It's a Hawaiian name, but it this object varies in brightness by a factor of 10 as it spins on its axis every 7.3 hours And we've never seen anything in our solar system vary in such a manner and the fact that it's varying in the way that it does Let's researchers know that it has a really large ratio between its length and its width so it's long and kind of shaped like a space cigar or Maybe like I don't know a spaceship. Hmm It's most likely not a torpedo like a space rock torpedo Most of the objects in our solar system do not have that kind of a shape are the objects in our solar system are usually Spherical in nature oblate spheroids for sure, but we don't get these splinters or shards in the way that this one appears to be so that's one note another note that gives us More points to start investigating to figure out. What could the forces at work have been to create this object? Has it been traveling through space and an interesting question? That my husband brought up this thing has a reddish hue about it that that suggests it's not surrounded by a cloud of dust in in any way. It's just a smooth rocky object and The question is as it's been traveling through space. Is it possible that it's run into little little pieces of dirt and dust in its Galactic Journey that have shaped it in this way. Is this Space erosion that we're seeing Huh, has it because it's been traveling so far is this why it's turned this way This is not very likely though We have many objects in our solar system traveling through space that have been traveling through space in then orbital paths That have not ended up in this shape even though they've probably impacted many things as well. So Maybe not space erosion, but it's interesting nonetheless What would have made a splinter or a shard and sent it tumbling and spinning through space Well, what's yeah, because my stuff that's floating around space it gathers right it does gather dust and things like that Right, maybe that this is having a non-planular orbit around our solar system Not planar. Yeah Not planar non-planar That might have something to do with it It's getting out of the away from the dust More than the other things are because I even when we when we look at asteroids it turns out they're big a lot of More big piles and coagulations of gravel and dust and little bits They're not all these big giant rocks that we imagine them to be Yeah, so anyway, it just this one of these wonderful serendipitous discoveries where The telescope a telescope was looking in the right place at the right time It was the University of Hawaii's pan stars one telescope that is funded by NASA's near earth object observations program Basically, it's a program to look for asteroids and other objects that might impact the earth It was discovered on October 19th And it's normally looking for asteroids and comets kind of in our local neighborhood And this the the defense officer planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson said We're fortunate that our sky survey telescope was looking in the right place at the right time to capture this historic moment The serendipitous discovery is bonus science enabled by NASA's efforts to find track and characterize near-earth objects They could potentially pose a threat to our planet So it's suggested that it could have come from around the star Vega in the northern constellation of Lyra. Oh Wait a second. Wait a second. Hold the hit the brakes. What wait? This is not this is not just a non-planular orbiter interstellar This is my question Ever traveled through space and let's say we're an intelligent No, but that's way cooler than I thought this was even yeah, I'm not just talking about a random ass What you said earlier because I totally missed that You said that that they found it these people that found it were actually looking for Potential collisions For from objects with earth, right? And you said that this object is moving towards us. Well, no No, no, it's not moving towards us. It's in it's passing through the solar system So it's a flyby at an angle. That's being the solar system. Yeah The solar system us really exactly larger us a larger. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so it was it was classified as a comet originally and observations then Didn't really They observed it and they're like, oh, it doesn't really seem like a comet and then it slingshot it past the sun And since it slingshot it past the sun it's kind of, you know, the sun's gravitational field has kind of warped the path slightly but it's basically our Our solar system is on a plane and it is passing through in an angular plane Transsecting our our solar system and it's about now. It's past the orbit of Mars. It's moving past the orbit of of Jupiter and it is it will eventually head past Saturn and then it'll get too far away for us to really look at but We are going to be observing it all the way through Our solar system as it passes and it gets below or out of the plane of our of our solar system as it passes through This the name oh mua mua is Hawaiian for a messenger from afar arriving first And so just we happen to be looking in the right place at the right time to see it. They have likely been other Asteroids from other star systems that have passed through our solar system before but this is the first time we've ever seen it so that makes it a very big deal and because of its strange shape and Potentially looking at all right. It came kind of from where Vega is but since it's been traveling for 300,000 years or so. I mean we don't even know how long it's been traveling Could have been from something else some other star because things have moved around but there's there are many questions to be asked and this can tell us a little bit more about solar formation and Galactic formation even let's go get it No, let's go get it Right, I mean we're talking about sending robots to To far planets and far stars right little robots. It'll be just probes. What if this is an alien probe? Just flying through space picking up information and sending it back as it goes We didn't pick up any signals from that at all, but you know They make it less conspicuous of a shape. No, that's exactly what you would do Well, it's embedded in something that looks like an asteroid, but still you know Isn't gonna has less of a profile so it doesn't smash into stuff Yeah, and I would say, you know, you worry about being aerodynamic except that space is a vacuum so That's right narrow, right, you don't want to be really broad you want to be narrow You won't run into things this could have been a planned design folks In retrospect it all makes sense Yeah, so science you guys that we're just funny talking right now. Don't take us seriously. I mean Science let's talk about the real science. Yes. Yes. Yes of synthetic biology at this point in time. So synthetic biologists we've been talking for years about the potential of synthetic biology to solve so many of humans problems we can Basically put genes into bacteria to break down nuclear waste to break down plastics to do to produce things for us We can we could create these little biological machines Once we understand the language of DNA and cellular Metabolism a little bit better. I mean we're getting there, but What is to stop these engineered bacteria from going rogue? Oh Probably our bodies natural defenses. Yeah, no at this point in time. That's I mean, that's about it, but We really don't have any way to stop them from Going rogue and spreading so if you take a bacteria and you put it in a place to do some job and you've given it some gene It's gonna go do that and it's gonna Succeed at it and it's gonna multiply and it's gonna keep doing that job and oh, yeah There's this thing called horizontal gene transfer where bacteria can transfer their genes to other bacteria And then maybe there's a bacteria that wasn't supposed to have that gene that gets it as well and This is in some situations. It's like that's not such a big deal, but other situations. It could be a very big deal and Researchers have been we don't want to end up in a planet covered in gray goo, right? Not at the top of my list. No, no, you know, we don't want little synthetic Machines bacteria or otherwise creating creating creating and not having an Off-switch when we want it to be turned off so Researchers are trying to figure out how to make off switches or in the case of the Harvard Weiss Institute for biologically inspired engineering that's led by faculty members Pamela Silver and James Collin Collins they are creating kill switches for bacteria and what these kill switches do is when the bacteria are Outside of the parameters that there's environmental parameters. They're supposed to be in The kill switch causes them to commit suicide and they have reported in a New paper and molecular cell to new types of kill switches to address the challenges that they are up against and these are very self-sufficient kill switches and stable in Bacterial populations, so we know that there's a lot of chromosomal Mixing and matching and there is our mutations that arise And so you don't want to put your kill switch in a place that is going to be undergoing a large amount of mutation and change So they've put it in a fairly stable place That itself could be a problem too though, but anyway It gets out and there's horizontal Switch All of a sudden start dying off and then we're the gray sludge that's left at the end of the world Right there's a balance that needs to be held here But so far they're looking at a couple of kill switches that ensure that these bacteria that have the intact synthetic gene circuits survive and Are confined to right now? 37 degrees Celsius body temperature and if the temperature goes lower it makes them commit suicide and They they have a couple of kill switches in seriously This is like straight out of like the terminator or something the first kill switch is called the essential isa the essential isa Is a memory element That allows E. Coli bacteria to remember and encounter with a specific stimulus in their environment and this is derived from Bacteria phages and it either remains silent or reports the occurrence of a signal by turning on a Reporter gene that can be traced by the scientists and the signal can be just about anything and they've used an inflammatory cytokine in their particular study And so they did they figured out how to make sure the memory element is not lost from the genome and And they have this essential isa in one area there's the memory element that stays intact and the essential isa and They have as long as the memory element is intact in the genome There are two bacteria phage factors that control its function that also inhibit Expression of a toxin gene that the essential isa makes So basically memory elements there and as long as it's working it sends a signal to the essential isa That says don't make any more toxins. Don't make toxins But this gene is a little bit leaky and so there's a bit of toxin That always ends up in the cell and then the researchers were like, oh, well, we need a second kill switch That can neutralize the toxin and So they came up with the second kill switch that they call cryo death I like that. Yeah essential the essential isa and cryo death So the there's the memory element and then you've got the essential isa that makes a toxin the memory element says I'm still here. I'm still here doing my job and Don't make any toxin but the essential isa is like ha ha I'm gonna still try and make toxin and then cryo death comes in and Makes an anti toxin to neutralize the little bit of toxin that's leaking out so the cell stays alive But then in particular temperatures cryo death Says nah, I'm not gonna make any more anti toxin and then The memory element might get messed up and then the toxin builds up in the cell and the bacteria dies There was an old lady who swallowed a fly The founding director Donald Ingeberger from the Weiss Institute says this study shows how our teams are leveraging synthetic biology Not only to reprogram microbes to create living cellular devices that can carry out useful functions for medicine and environmental remediation, but to do this in a way that is safe for us all and The researchers Pamela Silver says this advance brings us significantly closer to real-world applications of synthetically engineered microbes in the human body Or the environment we are now working toward combinations of kill switches that can respond to different environmental stimuli To provide even tighter control So I get why they're doing this but but I Honestly think it's unnecessary. I honestly think that the the giant laboratory of Bacteria sharing DNA viruses DNA RNA things are floating around I think when you take into the calculus the millions of unmillions of years billions of years These processes have been playing out The idea that we're gonna come up with one that's just wreaks havoc all of a sudden Yeah, I mean it's happening now Justin in hospitals and There's already kind of runaway Adaptation in bacteria that we worry about those bacteria getting out and then Affecting other bacteria through horizontal gene transfer. So this is already happening in the natural world So then when you take and you start tweaking things artificially, then you're you're compounding that effect So I totally get it and I think it's it's actually really smart Yeah, I don't know if I I don't know if I see this quite as the same as using antimicrobials to train out Deficiencies and or weaknesses in genes. They're quite the same. I think if I think of anything I'd be more afraid of the kill switches Going rogue then I would the microbe itself because I think there's enough stuff that preys on microbes That that these little these little fellows wouldn't stand a chance in the wider world of what nature has to throw at them I mean, there is that possibility also that outside of the lab many of these manufactured bacteria wouldn't Really survive in the hybrid poodles. Yeah, exactly, but we don't know that Constitution is untested in the actual world. Yeah, and there's another there are a couple of other studies out this week Actually, they're very interesting one from PLOS biology that That another that was published on bio archive dot org and these papers Actually look into a it's a computer simulation not looking at bacteria but CRISPR gene drives that are introduced into DNA of larger organisms like mosquitoes and a gene drive is a very specific a specific Method of genetic inheritance Where instead of like normal inheritance where there's a 50% chance of a gene getting passed along to the offspring in the next generation in gene drive inheritance The gene actually has a bit of CRISPR in One of the gene say is in a male for the gene drive and that has a little bit of CRISPR attached to it And so during the reproduction process the gene the CRISPR gets activated and goes to the other Chromosome from the other from the other individual from the female cuts it and inserts itself into that gene before reproduction takes place so that there's a 100% chance of inheritance of the gene and Thus instead of having a 50% chance of passing something on and it may be You know, it doesn't make it in the population. Maybe dies out with gene drive it There's a higher than 50% chance of passing it on and the likelihood that it is inherited is almost always and so It's a very dangerous Question of if something were tweaked through one of these genetic drives and then There were some stray animals mosquitoes that didn't fit into that somehow were able to Or plants even where we've got genetically modified corn with With various compounds being produced if those through Horizontal gene transfer as we just mentioned for bacteria or other methods if they got into other individuals This computer simulation says the event would have unknown potentially damaging ramifications Kevin Esfeldt of MIT who's a co-author on both papers says we need to get out of the ivory tower and have this discussion in the open Because ecological engineering will affect everyone living in the area And so the question of mosquitoes where everybody's like mosquitoes. It's okay We had this conversation at the entomology conference recently, you know It's people aren't really gonna cry too much about about mosquitoes dying out And if many of them die out the bigger Point of what researchers are trying to do is get rid of malaria So if you get rid of the vector for the malaria and all sorts of other diseases You potentially solve a major human health problem But is it worth it? And so yeah, and so researchers are working on other models of gene drive inheritance there's another that's called a It's called a daisy drive Where it just it's kind of a pushy gene drive, but not as pushy not it's not 100% so it doesn't always get inherited and Another researcher Anthony James of the University of California urnbine says we don't need our genes to last forever Only long enough to contribute to getting rid of malaria Yeah, I think there was another kind of Take away from the entomology conference when we were talking about mosquitoes Which is that one breed of mosquitoes that was here in the United States than another Species of mosquitoes sort of became invasive and upon mating The native species would become sterile immediately first mating so so when you look at these things too You know when we talked about the fears of something like a gene drive that have 50% but almost certainly be inheritable You know, we had an insect on insect thing that was a hundred percent sterilizing One form insect and yet it the the native species has survived and is now making a comeback after being pretty much decimated and replaced But but I think there's an analogy for a lot of what we think is New and frightening that science is doing somewhere in the natural world that has played out That might not be the end of anything It that this is this is a lot of the times it's gonna be a reworking of an ecosystem But if we're if our if we're targeting malaria Which is a really big killer of humans, you know Probably not not this probably what is it's gonna ultimately be worth doing Absolutely, and so and what another researcher who published a paper Also in proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on a different form of a gene editor that uses an RNA guide He he says a thousand children die every day, and it would be unethical Not to use a tool that could lessen that loss but he does say Also a lot of pet owners would be sad if a gene drive went wrong and escaped worldwide worldwide during some future attempt to rid Rid a pest species say feral cats for it But the other side of this too is that you know, we recently learned that mosquitoes are pollinators and so to know how things are going to work out to know for example if Something's gonna get out that then affects the pollinator mosquitoes Or if it jumps to another insect species that is a pollinator The the fallout from that could potentially be even larger if you lose food So I think it's really important to look at the fact that you know Everything's connected in an ecosystem and the earth is one giant ecosystem And so to not do the due diligence of exactly what is what? Has the potential to occur when you introduce something new whether it be a new organism or whether it be a new Climate or whether it be new genes there is going to be an effect So we have to be at least be prepared for what those effects might be Horizontal gene transfer from a mosquito to anything is really gonna happen now That's it's already it's been shown actually there are there are there is horizontal gene transfer that that takes place And it's been shown already in the wild so Yeah, I think it was Yeah I'm gonna look it up in the break Look it up in the break, but the question is that everyone should be thinking of as we move into this engineered ecology Synthetic biology these things that were science fiction at one point in time but are becoming more and more Part of our solutions to modern problems Will they be safe for release into the wild and if they aren't yet what will make them Be will these kill switches be part of that the end of that solution? And those are the answer will still will still always be maybe Maybe exactly yeah Exactly more conversation needed Justin, what do you have? I have spontaneous contractions of the digestive tract Which might Might not sound like the best of things to have but turns out spontaneous contractions of the digestive tract are essential to the digestive process From simple invertebrates to perhaps less simple humans. There are similar patterns of movement through Through which rhythmic contractions of the muscles facilitate the transport and mixing of the bowels contents to its exit point These contractions are known as peristalsis With diseases of the digestive tract such as severe Inflammatory bowel diseases and humans there are disruptions of this activity so recent research from a Research team at the Cell and Developmental Biology Working Group at the Zoological Institute at Keel University Has made it a little prove that bacterial colonization of the intestine plays an important role in Controlling peristallic functions The scientists published the results list issue of scientific reports the triggers for the normal spontaneous contractions of the muscle tissue our So-called pacemaker cells. So these are cells of the nervous system that in a specific rhythm are triggered To sort of emit electrical impulses that reach the muscle walls of the intestines and cause them to contract The impulses occur by themselves their frequency intensity though It turns out a dude do some external influences Quoty voice from Professor Thomas Bosch we did a study Which is entitled origin and function of meta organisms The example of the simple freshwater Hydra has shown us that the bacterial colonization of the organism can affect the contractions of its digestive cavity most likely They do so by modulating the underlying pacemaker signals The hydra is a microscopic invertebrate with a two-blake body comprised of tentacles a mouth and adhesive foot It's quite possibly the closest thing to an immortal on earth That is thought to be completely unaffected by the aging process Pardon me pregnant pause. I had to cough there. I like more complex organisms. The hydra have no bowel There are simple body cavity assumes amongst our things the function of a digestive tract Surrounding tissue also exhibits the typical contractions associated with more highly developed intestines To find out how peristalsis Is regulated in the freshwater polyps the researchers compared normal hydra which had the typical bacterial colonization with those that had their micro microbiome completely removed With an antibiotic cocktail In comparison these organisms without their bacterial colonization Exhibited a reduced reduction in contractions by about half half Fascinating at the same. Yeah, right like Who here has had a like like done antibiotics and then had like a really hard time passing Like after I mean, I know that's correlative that for me like that isn't what this study is saying But that's the effect it had in this very simple intestinal system So yeah by about half the same time the rhythm of the movements became disrupted Some of the breaks between the contractions were much longer. That's the absence of the typical microbiome and hydra compromised the peristaltic movements in the body cavity next The researchers restored bacterial colonization to the hydra Initially, they introduced each of the five most common bacterial species found in the hydra microbiome individually so back into the back into the pop so into the The sterilized or you know anti bite anti back hydra So turns out that these one-offs Individual bacterial colonizations had no appreciable effect on the frequency and timing of contractions, so they did all five one by one in separate Hydra's nothing didn't change it Then they did the joint reintroduction with all five of the main representatives of microbiome together and Let that led to market improvements And the peristalsis that's interesting. Okay, so the anti-bacterial Gave anti-bacterial to a certain group of the hydra decrease their contractions or their gut Chamber motility and then when they introduced individual species back nothing happened. They put all five popular Species back in there and then they had improvement Had improvement not completely normalized though So oddly it seems like it takes the entire village of the microbiome to normalize these contractions They also noticed that an extract produced from the colonizing bacteria Had a similarly positive influence. So it's something that this bacterial Colony is creating that's then having the effect they would say so Yeah, from these observations keel research team concluded That only the natural hydra microbiome Characterized by a balance between the bacterial species present can play an important pacemaker role and peristalsis They discovered that in this case that molecules secreted by the bacteria can intervene and the control mechanism of the pacemaker cells As such bacterial signals can have a decisive effect on the pattern of spontaneous peristaltic contractions We're able to demonstrate for the first time in our simple model organism the microbiome has an indispensable function in the frequency and timing of tissue contractions says Bosch in addition The example of evolutionarily ancient model organism hydra shows us the control of vital processes of multicellular organisms by their bacterial symbionts originated Very early in the evolution of life. I mean that's yeah That's the great big takeaway here is This this symbiosis thing that we got going with the microbiome and the gut microbes Controlling or being involved in our being able to be on the planet and living organism Has been going on since we've had living organisms on this planet appears Yeah, that and that's an important piece of information for us to get so it's the fact that we think oh We're special. We've got this microbiota. You know, how long has it been important to us? Well, as long as we've been alive as long as our as we've been evolving forever Yeah, you don't get we're multicellular and involved. Yeah, we're multicellular little things interacting with like bacteria and tubular tentacled one mouth sticky-footed creatures got the same Well, I I think about when I when I talked to people about koalas because they have a very particular type of bacteria that allows them to digest Eucalyptus, right? That they have to eat their mom's poop when their babies in order to get the bacteria that they need to eat the eucalyptus I talk about the koala like their sourdough bread, right? So you have to you have to get that mother dough in there to get them going We are like sourdough bread that is millions of years old Starting back from uh from hydra. Yeah We had this this mother bacteria that has grown and evolved with us And is seeding the following generation and also and also what's what's Like I mean the symbiosis from going all the way back, but also that that is hierarchically speaking More important in a way or more essential part of our digestive system Then the actual You know evolutionary changes to the structure of the architecture yeah, like It's it's it evolved we evolved around having a microbe That was microbes that were doing this And not the other way It's not like they just took advantage of a nice spot within the digestive tract Digestive tract was designed around these critters being there and doing what they do I wonder though that's a good research. It's a good direction of research, you know to study these smaller Multicellular organisms and look at their microbiomes It's a little precious one. Yes. Yeah That one brand of yogurt that really makes you go because it's probiotic I wonder if it's because that particular probiotic really makes those contractions start happening Let's accentuate the peristalsis there you go And on that note on that note, it's time for us to No, it's not time for us to go. It's time for Blair's animal coroner with Blair I'll tell you right now. I don't have any turkeys for you today I do I brought those for later. Oh good. So instead in the animal corner. I wanted to talk about You know reproduction Shocking change of pace, right? Let's keep it going. Let's keep it. So I wanted to talk about dolphins in particular Something that we've talked about a bunch on this show before dolphins that use sponges So, um humpback dolphins in Australia have been found using sponges As early as the 1980s. We first saw some dolphins using these sponges We found out that they're most likely using these sponges as a tool to feel across the the ocean floor So that they don't poke their poor snoot with anything like an urchin or an anemone Instead they can use that sponge as a tool as a buffer to scare out to kind of smoke out the bottom dwelling fish so that they can then go hunt for those bottom dwelling fish that are Actually higher quality food items and in some ways a lot easier to catch than schooling fish So These sponges were found to be used as a tool Then more recently. I think a couple years ago on the show I reported about how we found there were actually two types of dolphins There were the sponger dolphins and the non sponger dolphins and there were social clicks involved Well, the sponge plot thickens um A recent study from the university of western australia Found sponges used in sexual display They actually found evidence of male humpback dolphins presenting females with large marine sponges In an apparent effort to mate Um, so they actually did over a decade of boat based research on these coastal dolphins across northwestern australia They were all just observational and they found uh quite a few examples of humpback dolphins presenting these sponges to females Along with visual and acoustic displays. This is the first time this is this behavior has been documented in this species And actually in quite a few Species we haven't seen a lot of behavior where there's presentation of gifts. We've seen it a few times obviously spiders We check about that all the time We talk about it in birds of prey males will bring A kill to a female to see if that's good enough for her and then if not they get chased away, right? And so this is um not unheard of but definitely unusual and particularly in the marine world We don't see a lot of this So um, they say that the findings actually suggested an as-of-yet Unrecognized level of social complexity in humpback dolphins, which since we already reported that they have social clicks I can't say i'm too surprised that there's social complexity So The one of the co-authors Said here we have some of the most socially complex animals on the planet using sponges Not as a foraging tool, but as a gift a display of quality Or perhaps even as a threat in behavioral context of socializing and mating So there are even added elements of this They also saw some examples of male dolphins working together in pairs to find the best sponges, which seems very Unadvantages because they're directly competing for females. So there's a lot of complex stuff going on here, but What they see that is pretty clear is that males are bringing high quality sponges to females in In conjunction with mating attempts Next they hope to determine through new research through behavioral observation and genetics whether or not the sponge presentation And engaging in sexual displays actually improves on mating success Hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, I I don't know that I've ever given anybody a sponge But you know Oven mitts, maybe Maybe some nice soaps this holiday season just a thoughtful thoughtful Valentine's Day gift maybe next time Next Valentine's Day, maybe I'll I'll present the holidays Justin. There's there's lots of opportunities for sponges Yeah, I love this idea though that it's a useful tool that the dolphins use that they it's like I'm going to protect my beak while I'm smashing down under rocks and I'm I'm not going to hurt my nose And then I want to hurt their very important nose that senses things Yeah, and so they've got this soft sponge that they use and then it's like hey, look I like you. I'm going to give you my favorite sponge Like a sponge you can protect your nose too. I like I like you Yeah, I'm going to give you my favorite sponge And now from vertebrates to invertebrates the courtship straight to the main show I bring you a story about twisted snail sex So uh previously we've talked a little bit on maybe it was in the after show actually about Jeremy The sinister snail do we remember this? He was a left twisting snail They were trying to find him some mates because the the expectation was And what they had previously observed in the wild all snail researchers had discovered that You have to be twisted the same way to be able to reproduce the mechanics just don't work otherwise And so they were looking for other sinister other Left twisting snails and they found a couple they actually found a mate tomu who actually continued to be studied at nottingham after Jeremy's recent passing very sad, but tomu Actually was able to produce an offspring from their time together And so Jeremy's legacy continues on Tommy who has certainly has recently been preserved lucky Him her as part of a bid to be included in A genome project where they're actually going to do dna blueprints for sinister sales But the reason I bring all this up is that it is all based on the expectation that left twisting snails Cannot reproduce with right twisting snails Well University of nottingham Found that differently coiled types of japanese land snails actually can mate So this actually has a ripple effect on our classification of snails Because generally speaking reproductive barriers are considered species barriers And so differently coiled snails Are therefore considered different species even if they're very very similar because we thought that different coiled snails couldn't mate Correct. And so physical barrier different species Yes, exactly. And um, so this kind of takes it all topsy-turvy. Ha ha twist it all up So what they found was actually that they can overcome A insurmountable barrier of actually their genitals genitals being on the wrong side of their their head So on one it's coming out the right side and on one it's coming out the left side when you try to mate Face to face as they do It things don't line up properly So what they actually end up doing is they twist their genitals So that they can still reproduce Face to face. They're just they just twist around they do some Some yoga, I guess But so in in this case, particularly they were looking at uh, yohadra amoriensis and yohadra k s eta And that's the right coiling and left coiling snails Um, respectively, they had they were supper species now that they found that they can actually reproduce They had to then start looking at genetics And when they looked closer at the genomes They are extremely similar Genomically Which means but they've been mating this whole time and we weren't paying attention We were not paying attention. They've been mating this whole time And they are therefore one species This now means we have to go back And look at snail species again Because there are all sorts of snail species that we have characterized based on coiling So that now we have to reassess. Yeah, but I'm still I'm a little confused. Yeah How do snails Well, remember Justin snails are hermaphrodites So they have male and female elements And so on the sides of their heads and so most Uh, yeah, kiki's gonna look up a diagram. I feel like right now. Maybe um, but so most snails they had they Transfer both at the same time so Imagine if you will there's the the coil of the snail shell the head's coming out this way. Hello. Here's the little snail head and then Down here. There's the male bits and on this side. They're the female bits And so when you go up face to face Male is it female female is it male on either side of the head? So therefore if they're twisted the other way And you have you normally have your male Uh elements on your right side, but now they're on their left. That means your male Elements are touching or near each other on one side and then they're the females are up against each other So they have to now it appears they do a nice twisting They do a little acrobatics to make everything line up right And so remember snails they're The whole torsion the whole twisting of their body Um, it actually means the back of them That's not where waste comes out. That's not where their reproductive tract is. It's all up near their head It comes out near the front. That's just their foot That's coming out the back quote unquote foot right Um gastropod stomach foot. So their stomach is on top of their foot So yeah, so it's all kind of near the front, which is why they go like this face to face When they reproduce Oh so That was snail sex 101 basically what that means is that that we now have to go back We have to recategorize snails that are categorized solely based on their torsion And we have to start looking at genetics much closer with these snail species Once again, this is just another case in the um In the long line of stories that I have brought to this show that essentially all it says is We classify species Based on categories that we invent And so when we say things like reproductive barriers make species and then we have Uh animals that make hybrids and those hybrids are actually able to reproduce and then you have Left coiling snails and rough right coiling snails that are actually reproducing as well It it it kind of muddies the waters it clouds these barriers these um These parameters that we make So like uh nature finds a way nature finds a way Nature does not put things in boxes. Nature doesn't want to say anything about our stinking characteristics Nature doesn't care that we have to rewrite invertebrate biology textbooks everywhere now. Geez I think it's great. I mean this is yeah, we just we just learned something new Yeah, it'll change the way that we look at snails And their twistiness from here on out. We won't discriminate. We won't categorize them into separate little boxes no longer Yeah, I'll actually wait to see who's Who's mating with whom? Yeah Absolutely Just just don't use snails you sinistral snails who are saying that you can't find a nice right coiled snail To settle down with don't believe the hype new sinistral snails you shoot for the stars And on that note it is time for us to take a quick break This is this week in science and we will be back in just a few moments with more science news We have lots of great stories I've got some turkey for you because it is twist giving and I have another story following on the heels of Justin's Microbiome and gut story. I've got some more of that ahead Digestion and turkey. That's what we're going to be talking coming up here So stay tuned. This is this week in science Hey, everybody. This is this week in science. Thank you so much for watching listening for Engaging in the world of science with us This is our show and we're so glad that you are here enjoying it with us It is that time of year. 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I know the best podcast science this week in science Help them get take their phone from them and help them Install or subscribe to twists on their phone Make it happen But really We appreciate all of you who are here with us and who are helping us by listening and by watching and being a part of the program We really could not do any of this without you. Thank you for your support Of treatments from holy man leaves me slightly queasy deep down in the afternoon And we're back with more this weekend science. Yes, we are Justin what you go wait. Nope. Nope. Never mind. I have Pause it. It's time for our segment this weekend. What has science done for me? lately That's right. What has science done for me lately? Oh, so much so much. But you know what? Minion tedward lakute Has written in and says what has science done for me? Drugs that simultaneously fixed my depression and my insulin resistance Which is fabulous. Yes the science of pharmacology is amazing Our ability to be able to target systems of the body With pharmaceuticals to be able to help people function in everyday life and continue to lead Active wonderful lives That is an amazing addition Seriously, that's wonderful. Thank you for writing in tedward Everyone out there. I need you This is your this is the time I know you're going to be doing all of your Thanksgiving gratitude Platitudes Writing things down. I'm thankful for this. I'm thankful for that. I have gratitude for this. I have grat You know what I need you to do? Include in there What you are thankful for about science. What does science do for you? Every day every week. What has it done for you lately and send me a message on facebook I need it. I need it I do I don't have any more scheduled I got nothing. I got nothing scheduled right now I need I need somebody to write me Who has not written before To share something that science has done for them lately Come on. You can do it. Otherwise, it'll just me running on about how much I I appreciate dishwashers I They've got to be better. Although I do really love dishwashers Now if we could just get a robot to bring the dishes from the dishwasher and put them away Oh, come on now Blair But that is science and so everyone out there. I need you Send me your messages on facebook facebook.com slash this week in science Find us leave us a message Please I need you to fill this segment of the show. I don't want it to go away. Do you? I don't Help me keep this going Help us be inspired continually All right, Justin. What do you got? I have quite possibly the biggest story of the year Yeah, at least I think so. Okay, don't oversell it While we are all the center of our own lives Nevertheless, the most abundant life form on the planet is not us Nor is it fish fungi insects or even bacteria but Bacteria phages Bacteria phages viruses that in fact bacteria are the most abundant life form on the planet Bacteria phages aka phages are everywhere including The food that we eat and are responsible for the majority of global genetic diversity Phages constitute integral components of our gut microbiome They carry a rich repertoire of genes and apart strong selective pressures on our bacterial hosts as we mentioned Uh before on this show in the past newborns are born with a robust viral phase Constituent that predestines our microbiome to be beneficial in building our immune system And throughout our lives our bodies are frequently and continuously exposed to such high numbers of phages that For every gram of human feces There are several billion phages leaving with it Important to note that basic understanding of microbiology tells us phages do not Well, they do infect prokaryotic cells like bacteria But not eukaryotic cells the eukaryotic means the cells that you and I consider us That is not what the u stands for That's what it means to me Frequently and profusely penetrate our persons They have been detected in the blood and serum lung liver kidney spleen urinary tract and even in the brain indicating the capacity of these viruses to cross The blood brain barrier which the more we learn about looks less and less like a barrier The gut is the largest reservoir of phages in humans And while there are a few routes by which phages can hypotheta possibly enter the body Via leaky gut where cellular damage at sites of inflammation allows the viruses to sneak through by way of trojan horse whereby A phase infected bacteria is engulfed by epithelial cells and a few other ways in which there is supporting and contrasting evidence for possible mechanisms, but What if there were a more direct less complicated method of human infiltration at play? Enter phage researcher Jeremy Barr of Monash University In melbourne Barr's earlier research Showed that phages might naturally help protect us from pathogens studying animals ranging from corals to humans You found that phages are more than four times as abundant in mucus layers Like the ones that protect our gums and gut than they are in the adjacent areas Hanging out in mucus enables these phages to encounter more of their bacterial prey As a result Barr showed the viruses protect the underlying cells from potential bacterial pathogens providing an additional layer of immunity And his recent research His team showed in a lab dish setting that human epithelial cells such as those that line our guts lungs and the capillary surrounding the brain Take up phages and transport them across their interior The transport mechanism remains unknown, but the researchers spotted viruses even enclosed in vesicles within the eukaryotic cells The cells Consistently took up phages on the side that would face sort of outward and release them on the opposite inward facing side so it would be like from a gut lining if it were an actual, you know human gut model from the gut part that's facing the stuff that's in your stomach Into the interior of your body Aka Transytosis of bacteriophage and while they did this a mere 0.1 percent of the time Doing so it all changes our basic understanding of some microbiology and is still good enough for an estimated 31 billion Transytost Bacteriophages a day In an average human host 31 billion A day Yeah So bacteria phages Are not only crossing into Our cellular space from the outside. They are also potentially getting into they're getting into the cells They're in our bodies. They're doing they're there and maybe they are helping protect us Maybe they you know, they're they're in there in our mucus. They're helping to attack bacteria certainly So that's an optimal place, but in our gut, maybe they're helping to protect us as well from errant bacteria What are they doing inside our cells though? right, so Are these vesicles going to dispose of them or are these vesicles? What are they doing there? Yeah, and it could be that these were just some that were caught in them in the midst of being trans cytotost Yeah, and cytotize like they were maybe they caught them On the way through Got stuck. They don't know corals light electron microscopy And cell fractionations revealed that phage particles were capable of accessing Endo endo membrane compartments of the karyotic cell Chemical inhibitors suggest that phages transit through the goglia apparatus before being exotized ex exo exocytosed Before they leave yeah before they get pushed out of the cell Based on these results researchers suggest the human body is continually absorbing phages from the gut Transporting throughout the cell structure and subsequently the body these results reveal that phages interact directly with the cells and organs of our bodies likely contributing to human health immunity and and and Potentially represent an unexplored totally third external genome Wow, yeah Yeah, it would be unexplored at this point We've we've just been I mean our last couple of years of this show have been Oh, the the biome The microbiome the genes within our microbiome within these microbial We have to factor into that everything we know about biology. We have to factor in Everything we know about human health to these microbes That are here and now now there's billions of viral phages Penetrating our bodies doing we don't know what with genes that we aren't accounting for And their activities are going to take us to a whole other layer Of understanding human health, but whatever you're doing phages Don't stop Probably related to me being alive right now Have fascinating New thing of what do we need to know that we don't know No, what do we need to know and it's far too soon to jump to speculative conclusions For scientists, but we can do that like all of the all of these things that we've sort of started to figure out like wow a disease that's actually Caused by maybe a constituent of bacteria being missing or the you know All of these all these different angles and directions that medical research has gone in the last Four or five years and now we find out there's this whole other playing field that we weren't even looking at and and now to start even I don't even know how you would start with there being billions of these These phages coursing through us, but But now we have to go like do they do they I mean they end up in our blood and our cells our tissues What do they do? Are they in our brains? Are they all because there's a massive connection between our guts and our brains? So are they involved in that as well Is there problems if you don't have enough phages as this leading is this a connection? Are there correlations between diseases and the types of phages or the lack of types of phages or that that's a whole like no No new realm of science opens up from this one Study, this is awesome. That is fantastic. All right, everybody lots of graduate projects out there in fact In in phase not bacteria phase anymore, but the human phages That are in our cells wow big so Really interesting piece of news and another story for the gut and microbes and the brain according to an article out of the scientist by jeff asked jeff acts i can't pronounce her last name axed jeff axed She has she went to the society for neuroscience meeting this last week in washington And came back with a bunch of stories related to the gut brain connection uh researchers at the university of north dakota reported on a study In which they looked at the gut microbes of mice with Alzheimer's like disease pathology and healthy mice and they found differences between the two groups surprise surprise in the microbiomes and then they tested Uh for gut leakiness and also inflammation markers for inflammation and they've they found that when they treated them with probiotics The probiotics decreased the gut leakiness decreased Uh inflammation and also increased memory performance Yeah, so this is an Alzheimer's type, uh animals in another study from the university of kentucky researchers compared the microbiomes of uh diseased and healthy animals mice that had the apoe gene in various variants And this apoe gene we've talked about before is linked to Alzheimer's risk in humans And they found that there were differences in the microbial profiles of the mice with the different apoe gene variants So maybe these gene variants Have some kind of association with the gut microbiome or maybe it's the other way around I don't maybe they're connected some some way that way another one parkinson's disease researchers at the vancouver coastal health research institute Talked about exposing rats to a compound called beta cetosterol glycoside Which is a neurotoxin that can cause symptoms that are similar to parkinson's disease in lab animals and it led to levels Of a marker of inflammation called cd 68 going up In the gut And so the researchers said inflammation in the lining of the gut may be indicative of parkinson's disease development As much as it brain inflammation And then the question is chicken or the egg which comes first university of bordeaux institute of neurodegenerative diseases. They took cellular masses called Louis bodies that had been purified from people who died of parkinson's disease and they uh, they took those purified louis bodies and injected them into either the brains Or the guts of monkeys now louis bodies can be used as a marker to To diagnose either parkinson's disease or other related disorders like the one that robin williams died from And so they found that when they injected these louis bodies into the brains or the guts of the monkeys either treatment caused pathology that was Indicative of parkinson's disease in both tissues so inflammation in the gut and Uh aggregates building up in the brain and neuronal death After two years So basically if they put the louis bodies In the gut It caused inflammation in the gut and the brain if they put the louis bodies in the brain It caused inflammation or death in the brain and the gut So the the researcher says today we're left with the question of the chicken and the egg. We don't know where it starts Although I always have to interject it. It's always the answer is always the egg came first There were eggs before chickens. I'm just saying it's I know people use chicken and egg because it's a funny old joke, but yeah Yeah, so brain gut degenerating brain and maybe diet is involved Researchers also showed that valeric acid, which is a metabolite of fiber interferes with the aggregation of alphas and nucleon in the formation of aggregates suggesting that diet gut microbiome interactions might contribute to Parkinson's disease as well So quite a few things coming out as people start looking and digging deeper and deeper and deeper We're just in this show alone. I mean with these stories that from these are all of course abstracts and the research is Being published and peer reviewed as we as we go But these other studies like the one you've talked about with the phage and also earlier In the show, I mean, it's just every show we've got something just about it's amazing And we weren't remember just if uh when we started the show We were starting to talk about the genetic links between things and and that was going to be it right It was all once we deciphered that our own genome like then we would have And then oh, but then there's these epigenetic effects and oh then it's bacteria. Oh, and it could be viruses and it's such a huge complicated thing just to be a human and you don't even know it's all going on Yeah, do you have another story? Yes, uh, this is uh, where is it? This is national national institute of health scientists and collaboration at case western reserve university school of medicine have detected Abnormal prion protein in the skin of nearly two dozen dead people What makes this a specialty of note? Cause of death for these individuals was crutchfield yakub disease Crutchfield yakub disease is an incurable Ultimately fatal transmissible neurodegenerative disorder in the family of prion diseases prion diseases originate when normally harmless prion protein molecules become abnormal Gathering clusters and filaments in human body. I think they do some sort of unfolding action too Reason for this process is not yet fully understood The accumulation of these clusters has been associated with tissue damage that leaves sponge like holes in the brain Human prion diseases include fatal insomnia crew Excuse me get some in straw slur shinker syndrome invariant familial and sporadic crutchfield yakub disease sporadic A crutchfield yakub disease is the most common human prion disease affecting About one in one million people yearly worldwide other prion diseases include scrapey and sheep Chronic wasting disease and deer elk and moose and bovine spongiform Encephalopathy aka mad cow disease in cattle Most people associate these prion diseases with the brain Although scientists have found that they can have these they get you can have one of these infections and other organs uh prion protein Can problems can affect spleen kidney lungs liver sporadic crutchfield yakub disease has been known to be transmissible by invasive medical procedures involving central nervous system in the cornea I I didn't know like that's how you could catch this right And this study scientists also exposed a dozen healthy mice to skin extracts from two of the crutchfield yakub disease patients And they all developed prion disease The study results published in science translational medicine raised questions about the possible transmissibility of prion diseases via medical procedures involving skin and whether skin samples might be used to detect prion disease Which is really the fascinating thing. I think researchers from nih's Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases were co-leaders of the study Which included many collaborating groups. They stressed that the prion seeding potential found in skin tissue Is significantly less than what they have found using brain tissues It's a thousand to a hundred thousand times lower on the skin samples than in brain tissue samples But uh, yeah using a test for prion diseases known as real-time quaking induced conversion Scientists analyzed skin tissue from 38 patients 23 who had died from crutchfield yakub disease and 15 who died of completely different causes They were able to correctly detect abnormal prion protein in each of the 23 who had died from the crutchfield Yakub disease sample and they didn't detect it in any of the non crutchfield yakub disease group So ta-da, this is a fantastic test then they used humanized mice for their experiment This is mice with some kind of functioning human genes cells tissue organs. That's they've been hybridized a little bit Scientists exposed the human humanized laboratory mice to their brain or skin extracts from two of the patients All 12 mice inoculated with brain tissue develop prion disease as did all 12 inoculated with the skin extracts Though they point out that the skin group took 400 days about as opposed to the 200 days to actually develop the disease The group also reported that brain degeneration in both groups of infected mice was similar Study authors say the results to generate discussion about potential surgical instruments contamination risk And maybe you know doctors washing their hands Perspective I mean they're already I mean they've been talking about that for years and years and years You know surgical instruments that they they know that there is some transmission risk after these kinds of diseases are If they if they catch it and they they operate they do something They have to throw away those surgical instruments very often. They know that now They know that they can't just wash them normally that the that the prions don't come off They know that simple hand washing isn't just going to do it Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, what else is what is this telling us so much more? I mean this is So it's in the skin too. We we know but so far we haven't ever really seen Like transmission from touching that's never been something that has been documented before so But we didn't know to So so kiki question Normally when we're testing for prions in people Um for these sorts of diseases Do you have to take brain tissue samples if you're testing? Yes, usually Or a so that's really the benefit here, right? Is that you can test for these things? Spinal fluid so you can test for these things potentially from a skin sample Using real time quick induced conversion. Yeah, that's that that's I think that I think that probably is the highest and best From this study, right? Is that you don't have to get a brain sample from somebody don't have to get yeah You won't you don't have to be as invasive Just taking a skin sample. Look, I gave my I gave my skin to some hot glue this week Oh, well done. So yeah, that you know, it's it's it's all the time skin samples. No problem Yeah, medical treatment intense crafting potato potato Yeah, so okay, so it's not as it the the prions the folding it's not Uh seen as at great as great a concentration as in the brain tissue But it is you can see it there in the skin and and and also just to be clear The mice in this study the humanized mice Were inoculated directly into their brains They weren't just like they weren't just rubbed Right with the skin and then got the the z so again this get that skits at that question of the The blood brain barrier that we've talked about for so long being How much of a barrier is it if you're injecting directly into the brain and then there is a Outbreak or there are cellular effects in the skin Now that is that's something to think about Right. So that's that was the thing I was trying to like think like is it being expressed out to the skin Or is it just mean that there was That much contact That it finally found a way in further like that's There you're right. That is like the big Big story there How is it both places? Yeah, getting to all the different tissues Yeah, if you go if if you inject directly to the brain and not to the rest of the system How is it moving through the entire body? I mean prions are Uh, these prions are pretty small But maybe that's what it is, but so and I don't think that was established So I don't think that they established that in this like they inoculated the mice But they didn't I don't think they found it on the skin of the mice. I didn't see that anymore Right. It wasn't represented there. So so the question is right. The question is still how the how the The dead patients had it both In the brain and On the skin Yeah, they found that what they were basically Testing was is this going to have the same toxicity result? Is it gonna Replicate the disease if this these skin samples are inoculated into the brain For these mice and it was But there is no evidence that transmission it could occur just be Touching because they haven't done that and they didn't And they haven't seen it yet Yeah, it seems like they should like have like at least maybe they they did in the study and I'm not reading it Here But say whether or not they found it on the skin of the mice afterwards It might not have been long lived enough. I don't know one wonders if it's a one-way mirror situation Right, so they can exit the brain can't get back in but can't get back in It's the brain drain Right. Yeah, we can go from the brain to the skin but not from the skin to the Maybe. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see But you know what's going to be moving from the kitchen to the table Um tomorrow for Mashville in the United States pumpkin pie. Yeah for you Blair But for many people in the United States, it's all about the turkey It is all about the turkey the poor Turkey that Well, I'm not going to talk about the turkey that actually is making it to your tables I'm going to talk about wild turkeys And this isn't not the bourbon. Oh actual wild turkeys the birds that live there are wild turkeys There are turkeys that live in nature Not grown by man There's one that lives in my parking lot. They're like all over Davis This is before we get to sorry Davis is inundated inundated with wild turkeys To the point our friend Roy named a beer at his brewery downtown tom For one particularly aggressive turkey that was actually going after people and chasing people downtown But this is great because what's happening right now Turkeys seem to be having these wild turkeys seem to be having a little bit of trouble So turkey populations across the united states during the 19th and 20th centuries declined Precipitously and at one point there was known only to be about a million turkeys in the united states now conservation efforts that began in the late 20th century Brought those numbers back and so starting about like the the 80s to 90s or 70s 80s in there turkey numbers increased And numbers actually hit a peak of over six million birds now these are estimates We don't know exactly how many birds but the numbers have gone up, but not this year Now they're starting to go back Down something has happened and the wild turkeys are on decline and now Because the numbers have come back up. Of course hunting has been reinstituted But it's not hunting's fault Right a lot of this The researchers say there are multiple factors that The game laws that are in place right now are probably not the biggest part of it That the game aspect of this is the part that has been helping them grow so much because hunters are really You know here in the united states are really interested in actually bagging a turkey They're not interested in going out and sitting around and not seeing anything because there are no birds there so we want to Make this they want this sustainable, right? anyhow, uh Risa pennsylvania game commissions wild turkey biologist mary joe castellana says the population was on such a rise And it had such momentum for a long period of time that as managers. We just didn't see it coming and what they think the issues are is that uh in the last 15 or so years the drop has occurred because Maybe there are new threats to these to the wildlife the lands landscape is changing so young forests where during the The breeding efforts and the the growth efforts that game managers were involved in they take turkeys from one area And they would move them to areas that had suitable habitat for them So turkeys like young forests where there's lots of underbrush and brambles places. They can they can hide Places they can uh, they can breed and they can have their nests safe from predators But what has happened it's been 15 or so years after the beginning of those efforts those 30 or so years now the Forests have matured and so there is less underbrush. There are less brambles There's less places for them to hide out and so in the spring and the fall especially they're Really coming under a lot of pressure from predation So the changing landscape is a part of it But climate change is also a big part of it as well Severe storms are more frequent during the spring time And when those storms are more frequent these turkeys are more likely to die off And it's the weather can destroy nests. It can also Make the birds of themselves really wet and when they get really wet they get really stinky And so they're more odorous and predators can find them because they their smell is stronger But young birds the poults they uh, the young birds actually well they get wet and cold and start Crying to their parents and so the young birds are too noisy So you're just going to get eaten up Oh, man. Yeah Poults make too much noise and they get eaten They have also so and additionally a lot of the trees and the The That form the basis of the ecosystems The trees are moving and the trees are dying as well. Um, a lot of trees Are the beach trees especially which are great forests for these birds have diseases like beach bark disease There are grazing pests like invasive gypsy moths and also white tailed deer That eat and damage a lot of the the tree habitat that these birds rely on also, uh predator numbers have gone up Recently so there's an increase in the top predators and so the birds are going down. So maybe this is simply just a predator prey Back and forth interaction the predators are going up the bird numbers are going down Maybe when the bird numbers go down further the predator numbers will fall and the birds will come back up But there are more issues even turkeys also have another potential stressor Which is called lympho proliferative disease virus and it's a tumor causing condition found in about 55 of wild turkeys in new york state alone They don't necessarily show symptoms However, so it's not really Indicative of whether or not they're going the the disease the virus has an impact on the health of the birds But it could be the kind of thing where if the birds are healthy if they've got enough food If conditions are right the virus doesn't do anything But give us strong storms a lack of food Not enough shelter and other stressors and maybe that the virus can suddenly become Uh more detrimental to the bird's health So there are a lot of questions About the future of the wild turkey in the united states Right now the numbers are good the researchers and the uh game managers are in no way saying that this is an alarm Call but they're looking at the numbers and they want to be very careful not to get To the low numbers where the turkeys once were We need our turkeys. I mean come on the wild turkey really should have been the american bird. That's right Benjamin Franklin was all about it Yeah We we get the bald dumb bald eagles. No that Well, this is all about you know conservation dollars monitoring populations And noticing when things change before they've changed so much There's little to do So I think that you know as we change landscapes as we remove predators Then you need hunters to thin out populations so they don't overpopulate So that the sick individuals don't go on to create a bunch of offspring that then make sick individuals But also as we build cities right that kind of divides habitats, which is why turkeys need to be relocated When or did back then because they couldn't get to the new growth because there were cities and freeways in their way So exactly. So this is this is a perfect example of management of a wild species working well That absolutely is and so the it it can continue to work well. I think they're just kind of going. Hey, oh, there's a little hiccup We don't know there's a lot of factors involved, but we're going to do what we can Yeah Yeah, but they've done great so far and even though you scoffed at me at the retelling of this I watched a a flock They heard a gaggle a gangle a murder of turkeys Uh, wait for a green light a buffet. I think it's called Wait for the light to change green And then went across the crosswalk at a busy intersection in town right next to the dmv And so like I always thought this was the dumbest animal in the world But they they seem to be surviving in an urban setting Quite well strengths in the chat room asked me if cats can kill turkeys And I don't think so. I think they're too big the babies. Maybe but uh full sized, uh turkeys seem to have no fear of cats There was actually uh one turkey that was also living Not far from here in the parking lot where I work Where also is housed some sort of animal outreach groups feral cat feeding station Where there's like a half dozen feral cats that these ladies come in and keep fed and have a little shelter for them and Turkey hung out there around a half dozen cats with no fear And also noticed at one point Uh had taken down a snake for its its dinner So These turkeys are I don't think cats are messing with turkeys at least not the full grown ones Go turkeys. Yeah All right. Well, let us finish this show. Uh on the on the game of the big game Tip do you want to go on with your story blare? Sure. Absolutely. So, um in light of yes hunting and the difference between hunting and poaching as we all know is that Hunting is legal and poaching is illegal. So poaching is the hunting and trafficking of animal products of endangered or protected species and in the effort to save endangered species reducing Poaching is a huge part of that story for some animals. It's the main stressor on their species like rhinos and We can do our very best to catch people here in the united states who own things But really to fix the problem. You have to take a step back You have to prevent people from selling them before that you have to prevent people from entering the country with these smuggled products And before that you have to prevent people from leaving their country with these smuggled products The problem is that customs officials and us fish and wildlife officials that are looking for these items Have to do it by sight and you can look at something and go That really looks like a felid bone. I don't know if it's a tiger or a lion or a jaguar I'm not sure. I'm going to hold this. I'm going to send it back to the lab. I'll let you know But other things can go right by and it's very difficult to tell the difference between A piece of plastic that is tortoise shell colored and an actual tortoise shell item So how do you tell the difference with the dna? Of course so a recent Presentation at At a at a site ease conference. So that's the convention on the international trade of endangered species They was actually done by international barcode of life, which is a dna processing Organization they actually created something called lab in a box Which is a portable dna barcoding kit This in theory would make rapid species identification possible for port of entry and port of exit Within just a few hours so they could detain a person who is exiting or entering a country Look at their items right there in the airport Figure out what it is. And so this could really change the game for Reducing trafficking So this also works in conjunction with eyeball Working on their dna database because this is all based of course on being able to match the dna to dna that they have So they are developing this database and then from there they'll be able to use this portable dna system Scaining system so that people in ports and airports will be able to See this when it happens. Yeah That's great real-time analysis. Yeah, so what has science done for lions lately? There we are Maybe it'll help catch the poachers and the bones before they cross the borders Um, yeah more cool science What was I going to tell you about oh remember that story a while back where I talked about the Whistling and the choruses up in our atmosphere Our upper atmosphere Yeah, so there are waves Of high-energy particles. There are waves in our van allen belts That that sing that give whistling tunes and chorus way there are whistler waves and chorus waves and these different kinds of waves and researchers have been like what do these waves Do What are they're making this noise? There's these waves high frequency You can you can hear these waves of energy in the van allen belts our outer atmosphere What is going on and so uh researchers just took some data from nasa's van allen probes mission And the firebird to cube sat Now I like to study a lot because it's a cube sat a little tiny satellite Cube sat a little tiny satellite up in space not a big honking satellite. This is a little deal Together they showed that a common plasma wave called a chorus wave In space is likely responsible for the impulsive loss of high-energy electrons into earth's atmosphere And known as whistler mode chorus The waves are created by fluctuating electric and magnetic fields And they have rising tones and it sounds kind of like chirping birds and these rising waves Possibly are the source of accelerating electrons that then shower down toward our upper atmosphere and cause the auroras that we see Now there's researcher erin brendemann who's at the university of minnesota in minneapolis Said observing the detailed chain of events between chorus waves and electrons requires a conjunction between two or more satellites There are certain things you can't learn by having only one satellite You need simultaneous observations at different locations And that's exactly what the van allen probes plus the firebird to cube sat allowed them to do the firebird two cruises that are height of three hundred ten miles above the earth and uh Together with the van allen probes the van allen probes initially observed chorus waves From their van uh from where they were and then the firebird two cubesat Saw the micro bursts of these high-energy electrons And so together taken together the data Confirm that these waves play an important role in controlling the loss of energetic electrons from those van allen belts That encircle our planet in radiative energy And then so it's so neat and then moving on the other sound front uh researchers are trying to Figure out a little bit more about how we can uh engineer our environment to be better for bats And they've determined that There are certain surfaces that echo locating bats might mistake For other things and might lead to more and more collisions So the researchers showed that echo locating bats perceives smooth vertical surfaces as open areas uh oh Yeah, so hi hi rise buildings with large glass windows Yikes Yeah, and so this uh, I mean we don't have tons of bats in our cities But there are bat populations that live within cities and this could be having negative impacts on their survival uh the researchers Found that these vertical surfaces they mistake the smooth vertical surfaces as clear flight paths and This is likely as a result of their acoustic mirror Properties so it's everything comes back sounding exactly the same the smooth service doesn't change The acoustic signal that the bats are sending out at all So maybe we can put some bumps. Yeah make everything bumpy put some bumps on our windows I don't know just an idea might help with bird survival as well because if you make it easier to see visibly also Maybe fewer birds will run into windows, too That's another thing that we put those stickers on windows to save the players So now we need to put up some bumps to save the bats Bumps for bats stickers for birds Bumps for bats Yeah All right, everybody. So this does bring us to the end Of our twist giving episode of this week in science. Thank you so much for listening Thank you for watching if you're watching Thank you On this Thanksgiving eve that we are producing this show Really appreciate the fact that you are here with us Listening wherever you are and we hope that you are having a wonderful day or night To yourselves and we're grateful for you being here Very truly I am grateful and I'm grateful to my co-hosts for For making a great show every week Thanks you guys don't know where I would be without you guys. Yeah Probably in bed by now It's true Very true I would so I go to bed so early unless I'm Binging on something on the on Netflix, but That said Thank you, especially among our chat room chat room. You're here every week So good to see you and the comments that you make. Thank you Identity for fada and brandon. 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It's this week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science I've got a laundry list of items I want to address From stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness I'm trying to promote more rational thought and I'll try to answer any question you've got The help can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop one hour a week This week in science is coming your way You better just listen to what we say From the words that we've said then please just remember it This week in science science This week in science This week in science science This week in science This week in science This week in science I I meant to do this in the show, but I did find some horizontal gene transfer information Yeah. Oh, yeah So what I was remembering was in college. They actually got some genes from humans to pigs With a bacterial intermediary Yes, but I think there was one but yes, it was Wolbachia That's what I remember Wolbachia Um And the mosquito Yes, so then they found that they also found um vertebrates The study I found they were not specific about which vertebrates, but vertebrates to ticks Horizontal gene transfer and bacteria to fish Oh, wow Yes Whoa So it's all over the map Yeah The horizontal gene transfer it is an issue in that uh for For it not to be taken in especially with mosquitoes Intakes that are blood sucking organisms and the bacteria and the parasites What's the chances that that's the one gene that transfers? I mean, it's not like whole genome transfer. We're talking like Come on people It's a numbers game I mean We're just going to take this toad that eats crickets We're going to drop it in australia to eat the crickets that are eating the sugar cane What could possibly go wrong? It's just a couple toes That's a macro thing. What what you're saying is not man. I mean, that's not patterns or patterns No patterns or patterns when you introduce things there is always the opportunity for a domino effect When things are not are not are introduced to spaces where they are not supposed to be It's more like touching toads will give you warts is what I'm hearing No, that's more what I'm hearing. Yeah. That's not what we said. That's not based in any fact at all No, exactly. That's my point like yes introducing your well you she used the toad scenario, so I followed but the idea that you add invasive species Yes, that is an immediate and negative Component What you're talking about is a gene transfer of a specific gene from one species to the other That to me is like rubbing a toad and getting warts. Yes, you might get warts But it probably has nothing to do with how many toes touch nothing whatsoever the chances of acquiring the toad bumpy Gene because you touched it and that's what you're afraid of is redunculus And that's what I'm talking about when you're talking about like, okay So there've been a few examples of gene transfer We're talking about a very specific gene being the thing that transfers out of all the many that could and that gene taking root and having a deterioral effect Numbers people They are a number that the numbers are to think about you're right. Absolutely, but at the same time it's like What are the percentages that any one mutation is going to lead to the change in an amino acid that leads to an evolutionary change down the line Those are numbers as those are big numbers as well Very small numbers and as it may be You need large You need large instances of it's not one single mutation. It's many individuals having a basically the same mutation And we're We're filled with little gene snippers. We have bacteria. We have virus in our bodies that are responsible for Genes that are not ours that are currently in our bodies. So it's a process that's ongoing that's constantly happening It's a stirring of the pot This is something that's not coming out of nowhere Yeah, it's not coming out of nowhere. Yeah, I mean I think Yeah, I think I think this is one of those things I mean when you're talking about plants and the possibility that pollen is going to Leave an agricultural species and end up cross pollinating with a wild species That is a concern. I think that we need to think about the horizontal gene transfer as well It is a concern is one of the possible avenues of gene transmission that can lead to Lead to a domino effect that you were not Not looking for Absolutely one of those things I'm lacking systems thinking always causes problems, right? You have to have it's the systems thinking that's that you have to look at everything You're looking at this little tiny thing because you want to solve this problem, but you can't think about it on its own It has to be part of it I mean the fact that you're talking about these snails who were previously separate species Who are now considered the same species? You know, that's this that's the same kind of thing if we're talking about all this Agricultural species and this wild species, but they're separate. They're different No, not necessarily We don't decide what the barriers to reproduction are Yeah, nature biology decides Geography and biology decides, you know, yeah, yeah absolutely Yeah, so it's an it's it's an interesting question and everything's connected man. Everything's connected and gene drive gene drive technology and I'm tugging at strings all around me that are connected. It's just playing that she's playing that the connected harp The harp secured of ecology Good night My spine right what that was that was like a Real like a flattened or were you on your side? No, that was me looking straight Wow My spine goes down and then it goes And it takes a quick turn before it goes back down and it's a very significant curvature But you're standing okay Yeah, but it it explains a lot of my back pain issues How about your hips does that mess with your hips it messes with my hips? Yeah, so I have scoliosis that messes with my hips significant scoliosis And then I found out that I've also got spondylo lethesis Say that five times fast, right Otherwise known as spondy, which I for saying spondy But spondylo lethesis It means it's a a slippage of the vertebrae So my uh down at right at the lumbar the lumbosacral region I have a vertebrae that's slipping On top of the other ones and my back doctor told me i'm not allowed to jump anymore You love to jump stop jumping knock it off You love jumping My love jumping I'm not jumping You have to be able to that's like telling me I can't yell anymore. I know no more shouty blare. No more shouty blare Good night fada. Thank you Hey, pamarack many many people Suffer from scoliosis. It's a it's a pretty common thing actually but um the severity of it is the The consideration how severe it is whether or not it requires surgery But different studies have shown that people who just do yoga and stretching and conditioning can live As pain-free or like have the same or Sometimes better outcomes than people who go down the surgery route That's great. Yeah, that's good to know. So basically This is why i'm going to start an exercise channel next Great Dr. Kiki's stretching hour Yeah What if you combined the two you're like you're like then The the prion goes into the brain Let's switch and switch Messes with protein folding Okay, let's go to the back And we recently found Oh, Pam, you have an inversion table. I've always wanted to do that I always afraid of getting duck in those though I just wonder what it would do for my back to just not have gravity pulling it down to my feet all the time but to Hang upside down and let all everything rush to my head That would feel amazing. I'm sure just go camping on a on a hill And then sleep down. That's right. Yeah So much Yeah, I just want to I want to hang up so I need to I need to find a way to hang upside down more often I think that would help a lot I also need to find a way to convince my husband and son that they need to massage my back more often Oh Yeah, yeah I'll just pull out I'll pull out the the x-ray every once in a while and say see this I hate them. It's your fault. This is why I need a back rub right now Oh, that's cute panoramic. Chelsea just said that's Justin, but where's Sufi? That is sweet Oh Yay, that's right. I need people to walk on my back. That's exactly Crack crack crack No, that can help that's nice. I mean, I don't know if it helps with your particular condition, but That's nice. It feels nice. Yes. So I'm not getting surgery. I'm going to enlist people to walk on my back Maybe more like my small six-year-old I'm going to get more massages And if you see me moving around and and stretching suddenly you can just get up and follow along and stretch with me But expect my movement and stretching everyone's and I'll I'll disappear because I'm touching my toes Just that's what I'm doing while I'm here What does surgery entail for scoliosis? If you have scoliosis, that's degenerative and the curve is getting worse What they do is pretty much put a metal rod through your bottom through your vertebrae so that it doesn't deteriorate and curve anymore Oh my gosh So it limits your mobility I need this to say you can only do this kind of thing. Yeah, and then you're like There's no curving and Yeah There's a lot of this No more back bends you get a metal rod in your back. You're not doing any more back bends Oh yuck Oh, that is a big bummer So, yeah, I'm gonna have to watch my jumping Limit my jumping no jumping lots of stretching Gosh, I wonder about that too because you're saying that That doing that stuff is is equivalent to and sometimes better than the surgery, right? So It I wonder if as a as a result of getting a rod in and reducing mobility it causes Some deterioration issues that you might that even an average person might not have because you have the ability To stretch in a way that you can't otherwise Like it would just it would it would cause a lot of I would go Yeah, I'd go in version table and yoga Yeah, like as like seriously as possible Before I would I would take that option. Yeah, it's interesting though because of the way The I I have everybody says yoga is so good for your back. It's so great. I actually get back pain after doing yoga Yoga does not help me I don't know why that is I don't know what are you trying too hard or are you an overachiever? Yeah, I mean, I'm I like I like high impact stuff. So I'm like, I'm gonna go to I'm gonna go to kickboxing and I try and do high impact yoga. I'm like Like they tell you like stretch until it starts to hurt then back off a little bit. I do the same thing. I'm like If this hurts more is gonna be better. Yeah. Yeah, I do the same thing It's always better 210 australian dollars for this inversion table foldable What's that like? That's nothing. That's like four dollars and 50 cents. I know there's nothing at all. We can do that probably find one here in america Oh, dale poko that sounds terrible Oh That sounds awful morphine and epidural injection Panoramic doesn't like us making fun of Don't tell them poca to shut up. He's sharing like He's sharing something very personal Why are you beating up on dale poca? We're making Uh Yeah, um You'll be happy to know I got my pie in the fridge You got your pie in the fridge. My pie is on the stove downstairs and I'm hoping the cats didn't eat it while I was doing the show Yeah, but I I'm excited. I totally did a periscope about this earlier because I was so excited Um dairy-free pumpkin pie It still has eggs in it because I didn't do the egg replacement. I didn't make it vegan but You can use they have sweetened condensed Coconut milk no way. Yes And it's almost it tastes almost exactly the same. There's not um, it's not a strong coconut flavor Like you would expect it's not a strong coconut flavor. It's that caramelly condensed milk consistency. Yeah and um Yeah That's amazing and I made a a crust using vegetable oil and no butter Look at you go Can we go? Yeah A crust that my um dairy allergic Relatives will be able to eat. Yay Yeah, I'm excited. I want to eat this pie. I want to taste it And I have to wait until tomorrow and I keep looking at it. I have to wait. I have to wait Maybe I'll just take a slice out of it. I don't have to wait really. I mean I made it Yeah, uh, yeah tonight after work and before twist I Made pumpkin pie and I baked it. I made apple pie and I did not bake it. I'm gonna bake it tomorrow Nice I made biscuit dough Then I'm gonna bake tomorrow and I made whipped cream Yummy Good work And then I did all the dishes which was a feat in itself There's a lot of dishes from all that Yeah, it's a lot of dishes. I have a sink full of dishes downstairs that I'm that need to be done Before all the holiday and gets underway and I have to I have some work to do still tonight Before going to bed But yeah darn it the holidays. It's just all this Housework stuff. Yeah, I just saw a lot of that, isn't it? Yeah, I mean I love it. A lot of like hurry up and get ready to sit That's why I always feel about that. I love Thanksgiving, but it does very much feel like a rush rush rush rush rush. Sit Yeah Yeah I don't know I I need I would like at some point Maybe I was saying telling Justin before the show I'm feeling really ready To take a vacation That is so long That I get tired of being on vacation That's the kind of vacation I want. I don't want one of these like Five-day long vacations where you're like just getting into it By the time it's over Yeah, no, no, I want one that's and like a real like Real vacation. Yeah, I haven't done that since I don't know how I'll leave my husband and son behind Yeah, that's that's key Yeah, I don't think I've done that for 10 years Over 10 years Yeah, no, I know for a fact I have not I have not I don't even know what that is a walk about. I want to walk about. Yeah So you just walk into the bush and don't know when you're gonna come back Identity four. Isn't it wonderful? You're getting to do what you like to do. It's your music studio. It's gonna be great Yeah Oh Okay, you guys I'm gonna go do work You guys go sleep. I hear Justin with his coldy cough during the show I know and you can't blame me for it because we weren't in the same room. Yep. No Blair didn't get him sick No, but um, I think I'm going out. Anyway, um, of course you are Our friends in town. Yeah, it's one of these kinds of nights, baby. We'll see. Um I may just open a bottle of wine and invite people to come here That's good. That's a good idea That could be funny. I'm already in my sweats, but I opened a bottle of wine. Come on Happy twist giving to both of you. Happy twist giving. I'm thankful for you and you and all of you Seriously, I'd love the fact that we get to do this every week so much. Thanks. Yeah Yeah, Dale Poco is coming over to your house by the way. Yeah, come on down. Yeah, here we go All right, everybody, thanks so much for watching and come back catch us again next week I know that in canada Thanksgiving is already over for you in australia. They're like, what Thanksgiving Is that I know other countries Have your own days for giving thanks and having gratitude and I know that the american holiday has some debatable early origins as to uh, the I don't know the the the virtuosity of the the holiday and um, I just want to say Beyond all that it's nice to have a day for thanks And we have that tomorrow and I'm starting it tonight and I want it. Yes Strength happy sponge giving thanksgiving Sponge giving we're not me all your sponges There we go. It's a whole new song that's coming right now You ready to go Say good night player Good night players. Say good night, Justin Good night, Justin Good night Good night everybody. Thanks so much. We'll see you again next week