 Hello everybody, we are back Another science evening. It's Wednesday is 8 13 p.m. Pacific time where this is where I am where Blair is Justin is Looking confused. It's probably this way early in the morning early in the morning in Denmark That's right. There's something early in the state of Denmark. I am super excited to Get our show going tonight and to talk about all the science. So let's do that since we are a couple of minutes Haha, almost 15 minutes late. Let's get going Okay, we'll start this show We're gonna start the show in a three a two This is Twist this week in science episode numbers 933 recorded on Wednesday, July 5th 2023 Free the science That's right, I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on the show we will fill your head with slowing shrinking and hunting but first Disclamer disclaimer disclaimer those who fail to learn from history are Condemned to repeat it a plausible yet daunting idea for if previous concepts of the past are any indication The story of humanity is a tale of the damned humans have seldom understood the past and Histories passed down through tradition by spoken word carved into rocks written down on scrolls read from books Contemplated debated in Totten schools are often wrong misleading self-serving or Entirely make it a up one element of modern society has attempted to put a halt to the doomed nature of humanity science Through anthropology archaeology and genetics the true evidence of human migration refutes the endless origin stories that have circulated and shows that we are but one people with a braided stream of interconnected stories Through population studies and medical research and epidemiology We trace the paths of pathologies Pointing out the hazards for telling the risks to understand better how to preserve life based on the missteps of the past in Geology the formation of strange features explained in astronomy the yearly meanderings of stars Reframed in physics the fabric of space and time Entwined in cosmology the birth of our universe revealed in every breakthrough research paper an understanding of past knowledge leads to the current discovery and while Those who do not learn History may be doomed to repeat it. Those who do learn from it are celebrated here on this week in science coming up next I've got the kind of mime I can't get enough I want to learn everything I want to reason happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge. I seek I And a good science to you to Justin Blair and everyone out there welcome to another episode of this week in science We are back again So excited to be here to discuss all the science news from the past week That we want to talk about of course. There's lots of news out there If you really really get into it, it's a fire hose, but we're picking the good ones We're picking the interesting ones. We're picking pick. We're picking the ones worth your time everybody So thank you for being here and sharing your time with us tonight on the show We have all sorts of great news. I have news about space life aging and stinky hands What do you have Justin? I have a tale of people getting history wrong I have a test of evolution and an idea that we've had on this show a few times potential therapy for fragile X syndrome and a hepatitis C Unmasked Unmasked I didn't know it was wearing a mask. We'll find that's the whole story like the Zoro of hepatitis I don't know. Okay. Yeah What's in the animal corner? Oh I'm keeping it simple this week. I have minks. I have bees and I have ticks. Oh We don't like the ticks. We like minks. They're very soft. I have some very interesting tick news this week Okay, great great great great and we always love bees. So okay all the good stories We're excited for everything as we get ready to jump into the science though I do want to tell everybody that if you are not yet subscribed to this week in science So you're just jumping in right now and just hitting this part of the show You can find us look for this week in science on YouTube Facebook and Twitch we're also twist science on Twitch and Instagram and Universadon and we're out there our website is twist org if you want show notes and more information about us and Additionally, we stream live to the YouTube and the Facebook and Twitch on at 8 p.m. Pacific time on Wednesday evenings. That's why We're here now. Okay time to start the science Are you ready? Because I am going to dive immediately Into the fabric of the universe Is it put it put in your earplugs and your nose plugs, you know, yeah I'm gonna get anything out there Right. Well teddy bear material. That's what I'm expecting last night and not last night last week was Apparently a huge week for big physics the big physics experiments were they were announcing all sorts of amazing results Thursday last week. There was a press conference researchers studying gravitational waves announced their latest results which have been looking into pulsar timing arrays to investigate the detection of Gravitational waves and we've talked about this detection of gravitational waves before in the context of the LIGO Virgo experiments, which we know of as these laser beam Infirometers that are located here on the surface of our planet But because those Infirometers are located on the surface of the planet. They are limited to the Resolution that they can get, you know, whatever size of a wave washes past These detectors that is caught Within their size frame. So we're planetary Resolution limited and researchers for a while I've been like hey, what else can we do? Well, we've got these pulsars that are out in the universe and so maybe we can look at these pulsars We've been studying pulsars for a couple of decades now. We've been measuring. We've been got all this data Maybe let's go back and dig into the data and Keep measuring and see if there are any differences that would be on The nanometer scale really they're looking at differences or the nanosecond scale in timing of the light Signature that reaches our planet pulsars are usually these high energy stars that have a very clock-based signature Very easy timing. We know that they're always gonna burst at a and the same integral of time on and on and on but the idea is if they are a wash in an ocean of Space-time in which there are giant gravitational waves Millions of light years across tens of thousands of light years across that have been produced by the merging of supermassive black holes Then perhaps we can start to pick up this larger scale Resolution based on nanosecond differences in how the wave pushes and pulls the earth Towards or away from those pulsar pulsars and changes The time of those waves hitting the planet or how we detect them And it's in nanosecond scales that they're looking at on the distance of light years Thousands of light years. So I guess the first thing was we need to come up with a clock that could handle nanoseconds because that seems like Hey, was that a nanosecond or was that like a million nanosecond? I can't tell the difference It's a lot. Yeah, it's a bunch of nanoseconds, but they're but it the the amount of timing is this very accurate timing that they are using to be able to detect these gravitational waves that are crashing and Like ripples on the surface of a planet or the surface of the ocean that are driven by the wind or If somebody throws a rock on a pond or one rock on one side of a pond and another rock on another side of a pond How do those ripples interact and what happens to the stuff in between? This is another the The data coming through is not necessarily Surprising to astrophysicists they expected they were going to see differences So what the results really are is a confirmation that now we can use pulsars to measure gravitational waves on a massive massive scale with a resolution that is a very high high resolution to be able to determine Supermassive black hole mergers around us to be able to determine How the fabric of space time is expanding to be able to do all sorts of experiments Moving forward to confirm ideas about how space time works and our place within it Yeah Well, so there's a requirement it seems like on this that the Place our pulses be accurate to within nanosecond These are probably a pulsar. It's not quasars pulsars. Sorry pulsars because I can't get like oh Space is really big Start at the beginning space is big. Okay. Yeah, so we have all these little beacons out there that are pinging us Now if they're Completely is synchronous in their pings You know if they're keeping a very steady nanosecond Each individual pulsar is and so we're able to use all the different pulsars I can tell once they they get out of alignment then we might be able to Right is that the idea back engineer Gravitational spatial the stuffing movement over vast distances. Yes, that's exactly accurate Which are big things big things right? But that's the thing is that we have measured them so far to be very accurate and a lot of researchers Like well is this gonna work and then they started putting all the data together and after about 15 years of data From some of these these places. There's the pulsar timing array in I think Australia and the nanograv Who is a that's another go the North American nanohertz observatory for gravitational waves There are is another group out of Turkey and so there are these It's an international consortium of researchers who have all separately kind of looked at their data and gone Hey, we have enough data that this looks like it's really gonna be a thing and we can we can move forward with this Because yeah, the amount of data that they have is just it every year They get more and more and more and it's not just one research group. It's multiple pulsar research groups Internationally starting to collaborate to be able to in the future Pool their data together and get even stronger measurements You know, there are there are questions as to whether or not you know string theory the string particles that are going in and out of Existence whether or not those the string particles have an influence on Gravitational waves and the the movement of space time and this is something that we can start looking at to see how matter dark matter other things influence space time But yeah, the it's it is ridiculous these pulsars spin Sometimes hundreds of times per second. So the metronome actually is a super quick metronome Yeah, and that's why it can be nanosecond or picosecond kind of scale measurements That's super cool So does I now want to know like, okay, well, it turns out like where they're gonna find it. Oh, it turns out that Everything's moving sideways. Maybe we didn't know that before At the whole universe, it's not just expanding it's moving off to the left a little bit Well, we haven't we haven't gone that far. Yeah, I haven't gone that far yet But another big question Researchers have been looking into that data was published this last week in Nature Astronomy is a question as to how Einstein's theory of a general theory of relativity relativity Stacks up against how we see time and things and time move Forward in the distant early galaxy and we've been limited historically by Supernova as our clocks which take us about halfway back in the age of the universe And we've been limited just by those supernovae as our clock And so we're like, okay, well going back about the half the time of the universe. We're not really seeing the Reduction in in times Speed relative to where we are right now because as we've as we've seen there have been other experiments We where we've put gyroscopes on satellites put them up into orbit around the earth and done timing experiments of clocks here on earth and clocks up In those satellites just above our planet in orbit and been able to show that there is a difference in relative time Where the time moves slower the further away from our relative our relative position The the object is so that's time dilation and we haven't really been able to Support it as much as we'd like with just supernovae, but now these researchers publishing in Nature Astronomy have been able to Show using quasars, which are a different kind of pulsing Object these are the quasars that are at the center of supermassive black holes And they are the spinning energetic The the spinning energetic Signatures that we can see that shoot out and so they rotate and their beams like like a lighthouse beam Flashes past us as that beam of energy goes past And so they go at it a kind of set speed and we're able to get like okay the quasar we can measure that speed We know where it is and these quasars they can take it back to about a billion years after the Big Bang And with the quasars they have been able to support Einstein's general theory of relativity's prediction of time dilation and in fact about 12 billion years ago or so 11 billion years ago or so there was If that time appears to be flowing a lot slower than time appears to us right here right now You know, I don't think we needed Einstein for that to be honest like I'm Approaching 50 Past it maybe I can tell you things are speeding up Things are oh boy time is going by a lot faster than it was just some decades ago You need to do new things Lots of new things. They're supposed to slow time down. I guess to the human brain. I don't know whatever but But the researchers this is a very novel Ability to be able to take the ticking of the quasars and apply it to a standard clock That can be used similar to supernovae for measuring the speed of time and to be able to show that yay Expanding universe time moving more slowly further away further back from us whoo-hoo another Einstein nail in in that Structure and then the final cool thing that a project I've been following for many many years is the ice cube Experiment the ice cube collaboration down at the South Pole Antarctica these researchers have been hunting for neutrinos for couple of decades now and in their hunt for neutrinos they have taken the cleanest ice in That they could find on our planet, which is this beautiful clean ice clear clear clear with no compounds that They get in the way and they try and they've created these detectors that detect Neutrinos which are highly highly energetic Particles, but that don't really interact with anything so unlike cosmic rays which bump into stuff and then produce neutrinos The neutrinos themselves they come in and if they hit a detector They don't really turn into anything else and because of what they are researchers can figure out where they came from Now we have a bunch of neutrinos that we can track back to nuclear facilities here on the surface of our own planet using machine learning algorithms the ice cube Collaboration has now figured out how to take out the noise of cosmic rays that hit our atmosphere and then create a shower of neutrinos down onto the planet and so they have been able to Get a picture that is their most recent result that they have reported on of the Milky Way, so they are using their neutrino array. They've been able to To visualize a bunch of locations within Within the Milky Way galaxies Silhouette that we can see You know, we're looking at it kind of from the side and there are a bunch of locations that appear highly energetic They don't know what exactly they are They haven't pinpointed them specifically but they do coincide more with the center of the Milky Way galaxy and It's just a very exciting advancement And so we'll be hopefully seeing them clean up the data a bit more get more data on the neutrinos that they're detecting and Eventually be able to get a really interesting picture of the inner Milky Way galaxy and the most active structures within the Milky Way that Go into giving the Milky Way the structure that is the galaxy we live in So so to summarize Yeah, the this past week we may have gene The been able to figure out how to see the structure of gravity throughout space structure of time Yeah identified all the little neutrino emitting objects in in our galaxy Yeah, when and once we start looking at our galaxy that we can maybe look outward and see out of our galaxy But we're yeah, we're looking at big physics this week Spread it out over a year a little bit Laughing I was like ice cube. I mean normally people be super excited about the ice cube neutrino stuff But like the you know Gravitational waves, I mean, that's a big one and they're both announcing right at the same time I mean all this stuff coming out. They're probably all I think it was all announced last Thursday Only so much we can do But yeah moving forward we can hope for many more amazing big physics Results because maybe not many more. I might be like It's a lot but I think we're on like the these experiments are starting to bear fruit that you know We're begun decades ago and or have been building and building and building and we're starting to really see the the data come through and the information come in and so these you know these structures and these pictures of our Universe are slowly starting to make a form. You know come into form come into focus So something very similar is taking place in medicine. Yes right now so We have talked a little bit about prime editing, which is already showing some tests of being able to change Jeans within your body in while you're alive swap them out. So if you had a genetically based or a gene-based Variant disease can get swapped out Curatively You know still five to ten years, but legitimately five to ten years. They tested it and it works in some experimentation, right? There's base editing, which is another way of doing this. There's the immuno Universal donor stem cells. There's a universal Carti cell therapy. There's more and more of this like we're on the cusp of talking about real intervention real therapeutics and real cures for diseases that up till now have not been treatable and So I bring you fragile X syndrome May have a therapy on the way with yet another Method that researchers are using to combat disease So fragile X syndrome is leading inherited form of intellectual disability It's a big part of the autism spectrum disorder patients can present with behavioral alterations hyperactivity impulsivity anxiety As well as poor language development skills seizures Tendency towards the Lower IQ as it is in neurodevelopmental disease So it's genetic disorder that disrupts a single gene Now it's not like nobody's studied this people have worked on this people have tried to do stuff on this It attacks basically one gene fmr1 which is then named fragile X messenger ribonucleoprotein because It's so involved in this one disease that they've been studying many genes though produce more than one product and fmr1 does more than most it's hundreds of mRNAs are being expressed Incorrectly and spliced into white blood cells brain tissues and individuals with fragile X syndrome leading to the large swaths of symptoms and distributed neurological development pathology so researchers have discovered that a large part of the problem is the Splicing of the mRNA so the little bit of mRNA gets copied off the gene and then all this you know genes get Spliced into different mRNAs they go on to then become different proteins Which then can be further modified to go on to do different tasks in the body So one gene can make hundreds of different proteins that all have different tasks And they're finding that it's this miss splicing taking place That's the problem and not the gene expression itself not methylation of the gene That has been previously believed Enter I'm gonna keep messing this up anti-sense oligo nucleotides Which are basically a form of engineered single-stranded DNA That can be used to bind to mRNA Sequences they bind to specific sequences based on how you've engineered them and they can do all sorts of interesting things They can induce degradation. So that little bit of mRNA Breaks down they can modulate Splicing They can do prevention of translation. So it's there this gets attached, but it never gets turned into a protein They can interfere with alternative mRNA processing event processing events Which then can either inhibit or up-regulate the production of mRNA Which then inhibits or up-regulates the production of downstream proteins All right in this case the researchers develop anti-sense oligo nucleotides to form a little patch that sits there on the mRNA and It causes the splicing machinery to skip past the improper splicing spot in the RNA so The mature mRNA is formed without the miss splicing event They did a little bit of collaboration with some RNA therapeutic field experts And they found a two anti-sense oligo nucleotide combo Successfully inhibited the miss splicing as well as Had a little bit further effect. So basically the this led to the production of normal levels of the protein fmrp The absence of those proteins defines fragile X syndrome So as far as the cells that they were working with in a lab are concerned They have a therapeutic cure Okay, so as far as the cells are concerned at this point the cells they're taking they're fixing the problem So that it's fundamentally is saying okay. You have this this miss this miss Translation and you're missing it this one part and so we're gonna Fill it in we're gonna make sure it doesn't get missed and then just the cells will be fine And so now now you just have to make sure that it works in mice and then in primates and then in humans Right, and so they have to move now move forward through all the clinical trials, but Okay, so currently anti artificial any sense I'll let go nuclear tied to therapies are in various stages of clinical trials already Across a wide range of RNA based diseases There's rare skin diseases to very common neurological diseases There's a lot of potential for the artificial anti-sense Oligo nucleotides including potentially hopefully a new name Not so long I'm sure if it becomes an injectable injectable drug or you know something of that sort It'll have a nice proper pharmaceutical title. You can call it ASO Right now for sure or you can go RNA therapy going forward might be okay Therapy is like vague it could be yeah, it's a little broad-sanding. So anyway, this Also, this is the this is the huge part though. This is actually the biggest lesson takeaway. I think from this This is the according to Joel D. Richter who was researcher who lead researcher on this particular project we never would have found this using a mouse model of fragile X The mouse model is a gene knockout Because it simply doesn't have the fragile X gene There is no mRNA that is made right we discovered this Misplacing because we were working with human cells so huge Alert to all genetic diseases that are being studied in knockout mice Uh, have you checked for the misplacing in the actual cells first because that's that's you know Turning out to be a huge thing and it kind of actually in a weird way. So I've heard about this anti-sense Legonucleotide therapy before Mm-hmm, and it's it's being used some very for towards some very common diseases It's being used for a lot of extremely rare diseases that nobody's ever heard of And now I'm starting to wonder like is it because the labs who were working on that like weren't structured Didn't have access to knock out mice wasn't in the budget. They don't have the space They're working on this niche disease because you know, hey, nobody else is maybe we should do this And because they had to work with actual cells and didn't have the fancy mouse knockout models They were able to see the misplacing and that's why there's so many of The applications for this for very weird like diseases you haven't heard of with a very slim amount of people who were even Getting it and there's ton of therapies underway So just add this one to that list that stack of new Interventions therapeutics and potential cures that are in the pipeline Thanks to science and medical research Yeah, and that we did this one particular disease might be cured will be Fundamentally by this as a treatment and it could also impact a lot of others just as a as a methodology Yeah Sort of reversal effect that's possible. Is this going to be something that's really intervention then allows regular development so that oh You get the word fragile acts The stage and does it have to panic? Yeah, I mean you'd want to get it early I wish I'm sure but yeah, there's a lot more research that needs to be done to see how it We don't know So many Blair I have questions about mink brains. Mm-hmm fragile mink brains. Are they fragile? Uh, yeah, I mean them along with many other animals. We have domesticated have brains that shrink During domestication. This is a phenomenon that is well studied and to this point the expectation was that once you shrink You can't go back So when I'm gonna yeah, I want to drink you're a mink. No You were a mink before too, but this time you're a dumb one. I guess I don't know But so sheep pigs cows basically all domesticated animals mammals specifically have smaller relative brain sizes compared to their wild counterparts counterparts, but American minks appear to be special because the ones that have escaped captivity and have become kind of these feral minks in Europe, you know, they're American minks. They have Regained some of their brain size by being in the wild over 50 generations Yeah, so generally speaking they these domesticated animals do not regain relative brain sizes to ancestral forms even in feral populations But part of the reason that that's understood is that it's really hard to study this How do you study a wild individual a domesticated individual and then a domesticated turned feral individual? All at the same time in large enough numbers to come up with statistically significant Measurements, it's very difficult to do. Yeah. And so Then the American mink is a perfect individual because they were domesticated for the fur trade over a century ago They were bred in Europe then for fur farming and captive animals escaped So you have wild minks in North America? You have domesticated minks in Europe in fur farms and then you have the feral mink that have escaped in Europe So you have three distinct populations. They are not Cohabitating there is no bleed over and so they have these really distinct datasets on top of that you have the situation with mink Where it's really easy to measure the brain case. Why well, there's museum collections of American wild minks the fur farms Obviously get mink skulls regularly Yeah, but via fur procurement Shave them Take the whole skin for this not just the fur. Yeah, it's not like then You also have the fact that the American minks that have escaped in Europe are feral They are invasive and therefore they are regularly cold and because they are cold Because they are eradicated from the wild they have collections of mink skulls over time From these feral populations, so you're able to measure the skull case of all of these different minks And so they were able to calculate relative brain size related to their skull and the brains of captive bred mink shrunk about 25% compared to the wild ones from America, but in contrast the brains of the feral mink grew back Almost all the way to the wild size within 50 generations So the There's a couple things going on are we misrepresenting how this works in the wild or our minks special now minks along with Other weasels because they're in the weasel family as well as shrews and moles Have a process known as dental's phenomenon, which is where they have seasonal changes in their brain size So they actually have this kind of plasticity related to brain size built into their genetics already So it's possible that these minks along the shrews and moles and other weasels Could have kind of special adaptations that allow them the flexibility to grow those brains back to normal size Or it could be that we're just bad at measuring this data because it's hard to get and Everybody has the potential to get their brain size back. We don't know But what what we do know is that this bucked the expectation of how domestication works we're also looking at the issue of Whether or not they're collecting. I mean, I guess they're doing a big broad sample But what season are you collecting the animal in? How old is the animal? How does you know age and Seasonality if we know that the brain does grow and shrink You know, how does that all tie in to the way the measurements work out? Well, and then the other thing is Is Yes, they got back to the size they were at are they using their brain in the same way Is it is it wired the same way that it was originally? So that's the piece. We don't know all we know is just based on size. They're getting the size back but How are those brains functioning? Are they functioning like wild minks or they just smarter domesticated minks now? Did they have to write new pathways like what's happening in their brain? That's way harder to figure out But maybe someday Yeah, I think that's fascinating question, you know, what is the actual change that's happening even though we're seeing the size Come back. What does that mean? Yeah? Great question, I love it. I love studies like this This is what a neat use of all the different the data sets and the different ways of getting all that information together To be able to answer the question at least or at least start to get at it. It's very cool Let's see scientists Have been looking into why aging? Why yeah Why I want There are there there are organisms on our planet Usually they are you know related to our jellyfish ancestors that we you know, haven't Really been close to for you know 500 million years or so 600 million years, but anyway There are lots of squishy water-based animals that Don't like to age that can almost live forever that just keep regenerating themselves and scientists. They're like, okay We're gonna look at you You little squishy water hide tuna kit type things. What are you doing to stay? alive Forever and you know, how does that different from the mammals and other? vertebrates who like to die well, maybe not like to but do die So what's going on there? Well? There's a process in aging which is known as senescence where suddenly the cells start to deteriorate tissues start to deteriorate And it's a period of time of known deterioration and there are certain Thing and it's a really good thing. Yes, senescence is good apoptosis is good Like there are lots of these cell death processes that are really great Like you don't want all the tissues to grow forever. You want there to be stops somewhere If there's problems, that's you get into right cancer territory and all that other kind of terrible stuff yeah, so these researchers were looking into a species of Organism little sea creature called Hydractinia symbiolonga carpus and These are little tiny tunic it type to eat sea creatures that are related to jellyfish and they live on the backs of hermit crabs and They have little little tubes and little fingers that come up from the tubes and they sway in the water And they collect their food into their single mouth that goes into their tube where they digest it And then they probably poop out of their mouths, too But that is not something we're talking about right now what we're really talking about is the fact that if you Were to look at these Hydractinias they have a collection of stem cells that they keep toward their base basal midsection and they keep those Little stem cells in reserve in case anything goes wrong and they can keep growing from those stem cells The stem cells are a very important part of how they regenerate However, those stem cells relative to the size of these Hydra to Hydrectinia are Far away from the mouth region if you cut off Hydrectinia's mouth It will start to regrow itself It will regrow a whole new thing without any of its stem cells and so the researchers are like what's going on there? And so they got into looking at The compounds that were released from the cut area when they cut off Hydrectinia's mouth and what was released there They found there were a number of components that were similar to senescent compounds in vertebrates And animals that go through aging and have tissues that die And so this was a very Fascinating discovery for them because as they publish in cell reports that this This leads to a realization that the processes of healing and aging are intertwined and that possibly aging evolved as a result of healing in the first place and That we wouldn't have aging if it weren't for adaptations and selective mutations that have moved forward because of Healing and survival so no more healing for me. Stop healing Blair. That's it Yeah, but it's oh, yeah, I really appreciate this study because it does Kind of bring that kind of life and death aging and birth, you know into this full circle of Scientific inquiry and discovering that there are these connections Molecularly that can be with senescence that and aging that can be tied to healing and regeneration in the first place and this may give us some very Interesting pathways to go down when it comes to doing things like regenerating nerves or limbs or even living forever Backing to near the secret to allow you to live forever, but there's this there's one compromise you're gonna have to make You have to poop out of your mouth But we're not talking about that Like you also have to give up your bones Those wind those those fan those fan dudes that they're blow up outside of Inslatable to you guys That's kind of what I imagine. Yeah, that's pretty accurate All right, Justin tell me about minimal cells is this like minimal techno Yeah Yeah, sure. Okay. Why not? So a real test of evolution has taken place ladies and gentlemen the simplest possible organism Would be one that possesses only the minimum number of genes just what it needs to survive and reproduce and nothing else this also would make it very Unstable as any mutation could be lethal More efficient the model is the less likely that any changes to it can be good So how did evolution ever get going if life is so precarious in its sort of rudimentary state? Researchers in the Department of Biology at Indiana University Decided to answer that question by taking bacteria with a small genome 901 genes in the wild type and eliminating everything but the core survival essentials to live and reproduce So they got a reduction of 45% drop the bacteria from 901 to under 493 genes In humans we could lose like 98% of our genes. I think we'd still be okay This one 45% drop down to 493 genes a smaller genome at 493 than any wild organism known to science If there's one thing that history of evolution has taught us is that life Will not be contained or constrained a life likes to break free occasionally expands into new territories It crashes to barriers Dangerously Eventually life finds a way right and in a lab in Indiana life did just that So over the course of 300 days the sequence shorty showed off an Intensive mutation rate highest recorded of any cellular organism ever It was somewhat expected I guess because organisms with smaller genomes have been shown previously Do have higher mutation rates and the bacteria they were working with already has an elevated mutation rate So while the rates were faster than the wild type of the bacteria wasn't crazy That crazy faster just faster than the wild type It was allowed to evolve freely for 300 days and then tested along with its streamlined version and the wild type Essentially the wild type bacteria in the streamlined version are placed in the tube The wild type takes over good Data point to the discussion that we've had a few times on the show About why life doesn't seem to de novo be starting from scratch on earth over and over and over again Once niches are filled. There's no way for new basic genome lifeforms to get started They lack the attributes to compete so the wild type versus the the completely Shortened version the wild type just took over the tube Shorten version didn't make it now in the wild type versus the 300-day evolved strain They evolved strain held its own pretty well. So life finds a way and quickly Through 300 days of Evolution in it by itself the bacteria Technically went through about 2,000 generations Which would be 40,000 years of human evolution if you calculate it that way though based on population and mutation rates that small 493 gene genome a New mutation would hit every nucleotide in the genome more than 250 times during that 2,000 generations. So A lot of opportunity to find out what works and what doesn't yeah in that experiment So along the way the experimenter experiment the Along the way the experiment the researchers uncovered genes proteins and traits that are critical to evolutionary performance of bacteria with the smallest genome of any organism grown in pure culture in the laboratory and what researchers are calling the ancestral state Working approximation of minimal cells had significantly reduced fitness with less than the 500 protein coding genes that it was allowing very few redundancies so theoretically It could have maybe should have just gone extinct Instead what they witnessed was natural selection during extended laboratory growth outweighing any deleterious effects of genome disruption and drift Leading to a more robust form within a year. I think that's a that's Very impressive that they that even with the minimal amount of genetic material that was there That wasn't like a constraining factor I mean it was it's a bit constraining in that there's not as much genetic Diversity within the genome to begin with but the fact that there is mutation happening single nucleotide mutations There are insertions and deletions over those 300 generations that Impacted it enough so that the fitness increased it was able to compete the that minimally evolved ancestor or that minimally involved Cell that that version of life bacteria Even though it had just enough to to survive it was able to change and compete and that should give us pause when we think about where life came from in the very beginning and Yeah, and it's a great. I think it's a great example of what again what we talked about about why life doesn't keep showing up over and over and over again because oh You know, you can't compete when you don't have anything But the ability to eat one thing and reproduce There's somebody else who's got that niche somebody else is gonna fight you for it and they got skills the other one is that This didn't have like you were just saying this didn't have a Population with which to keep it safe like oh you're different than me and then at first, you know It starts they are all starting the same and it's mutation evolution Completely ran the show in the beginning and that may be towards the end now You're like running into other successful versions within the population that are that are becoming this more robust form That's able to survive But it shows that that mutation Evolution and selection from that is very powerful actually much more powerful Those early stages. Yeah. Yeah that those early stages as long as there's enough there Then there is enough to grow and compete and to I mean, I think it would be interesting to see how much you know, how much longer does it take how many more days of Evolution would it take on the minimal cell to get to a point where it can out compete or really? Really truly compete fitness wise with the non-minimal cell the original wild type Basically how to get how long would it take that question with the mink brains, right? How much how long would it take before it got back to that kind of wild type version? And when it did get back to the wild type, is it just like the wild type or you know? What are the differences so we can see that filter right there? I think that could be cool and then that's the other thing is like these didn't have any competition But each other right you I mean so they're like We're just gonna grow and see who's better at growing in this space using the same resources Still probably a pretty friendly competition compared to going out into the environment where there's all these other strange Bacteria and viruses and creatures that are out there trying to get you I don't think it would have done as well there. I'm just guessing without any exposure to any of that before Probably would have failed even worse But but did really good holding on its own against this wild type more advanced version of itself, I guess, yeah and I think this Pulls right into my last story for this first part of the show here research out of MIT the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week chemists at MIT were focused on bacteria for their paper that was just published looking into Looking into photosynthesis and the efficiency of photosynthesis and in their study They were looking at the photosynthetic reaction center these light harvesting proteins that are involved in the light harvesting complex to figure out how you know efficient photosynthesis is in plants and in bacteria and why it's so efficient Why can't we do photosynthesis as well? Why you know, what do we need to do to make it make it work well and very often when we're putting together our photoelectric diodes and the and the Solar panels that that we're constructing everything's in a crystal lattice. It's all neatly ordered the crystalline structure allows the Electrons to flow very easily. It's all makes sense but the big news from this study is that when they tried to control the size of the membranes and the Distance between the proteins involved in the light detecting the light gathering structure in These photosynthetic purple bacteria They found that when they made it nice and ordered that wasn't as efficient as when they just let biology be messy And so photosynthesis was better and more efficient with disordered Just wherever it goes kind of placement of these of these proteins within Within the membrane. So it's a that's awesome. That's like entropy is the plan. Yes It's really it's the researchers themselves commenting on this study They say ordered Organization is actually less efficient than the disordered organization of biology Which we think is really interesting because biology tends to be disordered this finding tells us that may that may not just be An inevitable downside of biology, but organisms may have evolved to take advantage of it Evolved to take advantage of disorder, right? Yeah, why bother folding your clothes just throw them in a pile You're wasting your energy Disorder your array your disarray is going to make your life more efficient It's I've seen a lot on social media lately about doom baskets. That's exactly what this is about like why are you? Why are you putting all this energy in to creating order where it's not required? If it's not required, it's a waste of energy Right and that is specifically, you know the chemical aspect of what they're looking at and the Thermodynamics of it or the you know, how does the energy flow? That's right disorder It's better in biology. He he which I think is so much fun Well this Ordered disordered twist program. We've been here for you and we're so glad that you are here joining us for another Episode if you're enjoying the show, please tell a friend about twist today Oh, and while you're talking with your friend about twist Maybe take some time to head over to twist org and click on that patreon link Click on that patreon link and then you can choose to support the program moving forward because we are listener supported And we would really very much love your support $10 or more per episode and we will thank you by name at the end of the show Additionally $15 and more and you'll get a new sticker with twist art art from Blair Fun things from twist moving forward. We hope that you do decide to support us. We can't do this without you Thank you for your support Right it is time to come back now to that part of the show That part of this week in science that is filled with animals Blair's animal corner with Blair What you got Blair, I got the buzz on bee homes. Oh Bee homes. Yes Okay, so I've yeah, there are hives that is a thing many bees and wasps live in colonies of several thousand individuals But there are also Solitary bees so when you see things like bee hotels that people make these are used usually for solitary bee species Or for bees who don't have a colony or a hive of their own, excuse me One of one of these solitary bees is the horned mason bee osmia Curnuta I was saying that wrong They choose a nest site they use usually will use existing cavities that can be abandoned nests of other bees It can be wall cracks It could be artificial nesting aids like the bee hotels that I mentioned before which are usually it could be you know pieces of bamboo or little wooden Dowels that are hollowed out any number of things But they like their little nooks and crannies But the question is How do they know? What their Cavity is which how do they know which hole is theirs? when they go out and they they pollinate and they they munch on on nectar and then they come home and How do they know which hole is their home? And so previous studies have suggested that it's all about vision They recognize it based on how it looks that one's mine How we usually tell yeah Vision right yeah such in such number on it and the and the mailbox shaped like an elephant. That's my house, right? So I'm just manifesting for my future house. Anyway That was the previous studies that they all said that was based on Vision but research researchers this week They were skeptical They thought there was something else going on and they did chemical analysis and they did some behavioral experiments to show That bees also use old factory cues at their nest entrances They have These old factory profiles. It's the same as they have on their cuticle, which is the outside of their shell and so When they got rid of these old factory cues on their hotel rooms or homes or whatever you want to call them The bees became disoriented were really had a hard time finding where their house was So all factory cues are an important part of this not just visual cues so they're using multiple senses for orientation and Most likely this is not the case just for these this one species of bee It's probably true for lots of solitary animals that find homes and claim them as their own and So of course this has implications for protection and support of bees which we're always talking about They're pollinators. We got to save them So we want to make sure we're not accidentally Masking the way that their homes smell if we have our bee hotels in our backyard You don't want to be spraying those down all the time Changing the way they smell any of that stuff But that also means that There's more study to be done. They want to find other solitary nesting hymenoptera, which are bee-looking things The scientific way to say that So they want to find other solitary bee-looking things and see if they also do this and use the same cues Because chances are they do and then how can we help? maintain those call those Populations, but also if they're pests There are also hymenopterans that are pests So if you have a pest is that something that you can kind of weaponize knowing how they find their home Weaponized home finding. Yeah. Well, I mean it'd be like if you want. Yes, I'm hiding It would be as if you want you want some You want a bee or a What is it a a hymenopteran? solitary hymenopteran to take whatever I guess pest management Substance back to its home to kill its young or you know, like we would how would we want to get rid of the? the murder hornets which I believe are They don't have large hives, but Yeah, or just also if you wanted to discourage the murder hornets from being in your backyard if you could somehow mask the the olfactory cues around where they were living then that might discourage them from hanging around right so There's some kind of hanging fruit involved and there's some more complicated stuff for sure it well, we know a lot of wasps and other Hornets bees do use visual cues. So if they're I don't know this gets at What is most important if the olfaction is the only thing can they you know, even though they might recognize it visually? Can you just confuse them just enough so they just don't go home? And they don't get past exactly just enough to just provide just enough doubt The idea though It's like oh just get him out of my backyard. We're gonna go somewhere Your neighbors are gonna have the murder hornets Where I was like Only if they have a good hotel for them. That's right. Do you have a do you have a solitary pastime anopter in Hotel is that what you're putting together on your property? I actually see this I see that the opposite. I see this as being a a form of beef theft That will take place. So this is a real thing like in in farm country. Yeah, we have California has 85% of the United States bees come to California at some point for the massive Pollination season they're trucked. Yeah, they're trucked all over the contracted out And so you have these beehives that are set up all over on on farmland these little boxes and occasionally there's there's Be wranglers or ready to be wrestlers will go and steal people's bees. I believe they're called beekeepers They're wrestlers, yeah, they're there their beekeeping suit is just an all-black Over the screen at the bottom And so then it may how he's much easier is that job if you make the really super attractive Smelling home the single in a bunch of empties or whatever and then all the bees are like, oh, I guess that's where we're supposed to go and then You got yourself a bunch of free bees Potentially so so just a reminder though that this is solitary bees, right? So this is not our hive bees Yeah, so right so at this time based on the science we have that would not work on the honey bees I see I see a black market coming for be wrangling or be wrestling Be wrestling you be wrestling. I Can't go any further My other story the story I was really excited to bring tonight is Kind of a weird deja vu for last week So last week for those of you that last time on this week in science for those who were not here last week for example Kiki, I'm gonna catch you up. I did story About see elegans are nice little Neema tody wormy thing That can hit your ride on migrating or just on insects via magnetic fields So they can jump Crazy fast just they can they hitch a ride on the on the electric field Between them and like a bumblebee Bop onto the bumblebee and then they can hitch a ride on the bill. So see elegans. Yes. Yeah little nematodes Yeah, yeah, like nightmare inducing leaping ability. Yes If you thought that was a nightmare Justin, I have something even better for you this week. Oh good. It's tix Jumping static electricity. No Yes so this is a study for University of Bristol and They wanted to see how tix are getting on to individual animals because they don't have A physical Sorry physical mechanism for jumping So they can't jump So how does the tix get from the tall grass? Onto your leg or onto your dog or onto the rabbit or whatever it is Unless they're brushed up against very specifically, right? And if they were waiting for that they probably wouldn't be very successful parasites So the mechanism these researchers believe For how they're able to make contact with hosts that are beyond direct touch Is static electricity? ooh Yes, so this is uh To the researchers knowledge the first known example of static electricity being implicated in the attachment of an animal to another animal And so for any of us that had shag carpet growing up or played with balloons in our hair or had Would shuffle around in our socks. We were very familiar with electrostatic charges and how they work But uh, this also happens to animals in nature when they rub against grass sand or other animals And that charge can actually be pretty high Equivalent to hundreds if not thousands of volts So that's uh more than you would get from Don't do it, but more than you would get from sticking your finger in a sock. So So it can be you know, it's short-lived, but it can be pretty strong electric charge And so researchers wondered if the tix could be lifted through the air via electrostatic attraction onto the animals So for starters, they use statically charged rabbit fur and other materials They brought them close to the tix and they wanted to see if they were attracted Um, and so that this is what you're about to see if you're watching the video Uh, they were rapidly pulled through the air across air gaps of several millimeters or centimeters They say it's equivalent to humans jumping up several flights of stairs Yeah By these charged surfaces So then they wanted to look further I'm just think it's not jumping. It's being attracted to the top of the stairs. It's they were Yeah, suddenly you're pulled. You're pulled. Absolutely. You're yanked now Now, but it's not just like there is in that video at least The little tix puts up its little forearm things legs whatever those I don't even know it's in the front of the tix like Like So they like raises them up Right before so it must be sensing the pull of some in some way Or is it bracing itself? Right, so anyway, um, so then in this next one, this is what kiki's showing now They use the previous measurements of the typical charge carried by the rabbit fur To mathematically predict the strength of the electric field that would be generated between an animal and grass So they were actually wanted to see kind of what would naturally happen by an animal brushing through the grass and creating static electricity Then they they then placed tix underneath an electrode with an air gap in between Increased the charge of the electrode until the tix were attracted onto the electrode And by doing that they could determine a minimum electric field strength that they needed And it was well within the order of magnitude predicted by their calculations So it is highly likely that tix in nature are being attracted onto hosts by static electricity So what can we do with this information besides never go outside again? You know for me I work in parks now, so Uh, that's not an option and in fact, I'm hiking through tall grass pretty often So I can't not go outside. So knowing about this What can you use you could take a dryer sheet and Rub a dryer sheet all over your clothing or your hair to reduce static There's also an entire field now of research available for anti-static spray That you can apply to yourself to your dogs to farm animals That you could try to reduce tix getting on you But this is also a way you could like drag a grounding wire behind yourself Yeah, like this cars that you see they've got the little thing that's touching the the road Or like when you're you're building computers You always want to have the anti-static mat with the you know, you're grounded So that the static doesn't build up when you're building your computer Yeah, but I think I think also this is just a really good educational moment to explain to people Why they have to wear long socks? They shouldn't wear shorts when they're out in the grass Even if they're walking through grass That's not as tall as their socks, right? So I got my high-top Hiking boots on I'm not going in tall grass. Well, guess what? If you're walking through grass at all You're creating a static charge and therefore tix could get sucked onto your legs No matter what you're wearing. So if you have long socks and long pants You are infinitely less likely to end up with a tic in contact with your skin Right. So yeah, so if you understand the mechanics, it's not just kind of tick reach me It's I'm physically creating a charge that sucks tics onto my body I always imagine tics as existing on tree branches and that you walk underneath the trees and they drop on you from the sky Absolutely they're like parachuting down So the other thing on to you is that this likely also applies to other parasitic species. So Does this happen with mites? Does it happen with fleas or lice? That would be excellent to know if you can spray your hair down with Anti-static spray when you have a lice breakout in your child's classroom Will that reduce The likelihood that you'll end up with lice in your home. These are all really great questions that are kind of The door has been opened to look at that and the next step for this particular research team to your point Justin is to see whether tics are capable of sensing the approaching electrostatic charge Of their perspective host and if they alter their behavior at all. So is that hand movement? Because they're sensing it and they're trying to catch it is the hand movement because they're sensing it And they're trying to brace themselves It or is this just do they get thrust upward and there's no choice in the matter whatsoever? Yeah, the way the way it looked to me my interpretation was that it was Kind of bracing for the move but getting ready for the landing, you know, like Like they're like, okay, uh, I am ready. Let's go Right. Yeah, so can't do they know it's coming. That's a great question. Yeah, so that's no, but they know Yeah, yeah, hopefully we'll have more on that later. And so that is my second week in a row of Electrically charged jumping Organisms onto other organisms. I love it. I can't believe it. This is this is a whole Area of study the static electricity realm, you know, just electricity in the air on us between There's so much that we haven't looked into I love it Justin, what do you have? I have uh, the entire history of evolution To to the origin of the human species It's like a long show. No Yeah It's a long story. Yeah But this is this has been rewritten in just the past few years and likely we'll go through a few more rounds of revision Before we approach something resembling The actual past The pause for one moment as a child makes noises in the background Uh, what was I Just let me know when you need the elevator hold music Justin. Yeah, we'll play it right now. Okay. Okay. Yeah, so so the latest version Of what we thought we knew but were wrong about archaeological evidence from across human history It's a little bit going back into prehistory is challenging the whole Men hunted and women gathered trope turns out men hunted and also women hunted And I'm shocked Yeah, what what there was better division of roles and There wasn't any Everybody did Well, part of it's always been a little bit silly like, you know, men hunted and women Gathered it's always been like the part that actually used to throw me was like so men walked past a bush Covered in berries and went oh, I wish I knew how to pick those All right, too bad. I can't Uh, I gotta find a woman. She'll know how to get those berries off of that bush So part of it's just never made any sense whatsoever But I honestly took for granted the thing I'd been, you know Justin told that I've been I've been thinking about it though as the men are out hunting and they come across the berries and then eat them Themselves and don't share them with anybody. Oh the women Go like I crave sustenance because I'm doing this hard hunting work Never mind the women who are raising all the children. That's easy bringing it home They don't bring it home. They're bringing the the hunting Provisions home only the women can't eat the foraging provisions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Okay, sorry to interrupt. No, that's perfect. I didn't I'd never considered it that way so researchers researchers analyzed data from 100 years of 63 foraging societies from around the world including Pretty it looks like everywhere north south america africa australia asia the oceanic region. I don't know what got left out Women hunters were identified in 79 percent of the analyzed societies regardless of their status as mothers Hunting by women Found in the research appears to target game of all sizes, but most often large animals Analysis also did reveal That women were actually involved in teaching the hunting practices Often employed a greater variety of weapon choice in hunting strategies than men There was some division of sexes involved in that women were more likely to hunt in groups Whereas men were more likely to hunt either One or two Like solo or maybe just with one hunting partner Women were also more much more likely to hunt with dogs Suggesting interesting that dogs may first have been a woman's best friend Interesting Yeah, so all the findings suggest that women were skilled hunters had an interest and a very Involved instrumental role in the practice authors note that stereotypes about gender roles have influenced previous archaeological studies with some researchers reluctant to interpret objects buried with women as hunting tools, but rather ceremonial Of course, right Or or the other way around identifying female remains as males Based on weapons or hunting weapons being the great So they call for a re-evaluation of a lot of past archaeological evidence caution against misapplying the idea of men as hunters and women as gathers in future research and one of the things that I also kind of find interesting is we one of the theories of language that has uh sort of been offered out there from time to time was the importance of of communication in an organized hunt for a group with an organized hunting strategies to be able to coordinate and communicate all of what's going on During that hunt and if it turns out that men were hunting by themselves Didn't really need to develop a whole lot of communication skills But if women were hunting in groups and with dogs, there was all sorts of communication signaling and everything else with men and Maybe they're all hunting together right Yeah, but it might mean that women are also not only in charge of the They're responsible for the domestication of dogs more so than men, but also maybe more heavily involved in the invention of communication You're saying women are better at communicating than no No, I'm not. I'm not saying they're better I'm saying that they may it may have been their idea Yeah all along so Where did this idea originally come from that men hunted and women gathered? When did this happen? Oh, that's obvious. That's obvious that came from men. Yeah Anthropologists Well, like like white men in like in like tweed jackets with elbow patches This is but they came from before tweed jackets when men were wearing nothing but uh togas Oh, got it. We started those guys. These are pretty old ideas but wonder that one of the uh, one of the interesting things is along the theme of Not knowing history Uh, almost everything that we think we know historically turns out to be absolutely makity of nonsense passed through some filter of One or two historians who are like, yeah, this is probably how it was. Sure. Why not? I'll write it down and people will repeat this for the next Yeah, because the patriarchy or the bible or any number of things. Yeah Is that what he wrote in the book? So now everybody has to believe it Yeah, it's kind of how the power of media Was once upon a time my final story for tonight This is uh researchers the University of Copenhagen have figured out how hepatitis C avoids the human body's immune defenses so that can persist Go around kind of seems to go away and then uh comes back with another chronic reinfection And there's a few people who've got hepatitis C apparently 50 million people worldwide something in that ballpark So when it it causes inflammation scarring of the liver Uh, when you have damage to an organ You need to repair it and every once in a while those repairs go wrong and then that leads to cancer. So it's a Terrible awful disease evades the human immune system and spreads throughout the body But how it does it has been eluding researchers Despite the fact that it is one of the most studied viruses That causes a pathology on this planet. So University of Copenhagen and The hospital which I can't pronounce despite my youngest child being born there Child, where were you when you were born in his little hospital? That's the best he'll ever know From me at least Anyway, they teamed up and they discovered the virus just puts on a mask By donning a mask the virus can remain hidden while making copies of itself to infect new cells The mask cloaks the virus In the form of a molecule that is already in our cells and in everywhere. So it disguised disguised by this molecule our immune system Is confused the virus Looks like it's something harmless. So there's no reaction the camouflage being used by the hepatitis virus the mask to hide in our cells is called fad a molecule composed of vitamin b2 and ATP so fad is vital for cells to convert energy the fad molecule's importance and making this familiarity throughout ourselves makes it ideal camouflage because It's conserved to the point where it's ignored entirely It's on the team. It's on team bodies so much So that there's no there's no checking of credentials fad at any point In in our immune system The researchers turn to arabidopsis Okay, boom. We're now at this teeny tiny little plant that's been researched Probably the best researched plant genomically out there There's an enzyme for arabidopsis That is known to be able to split the fad molecule in two Using the enzyme the researchers were able to split fad and prove that hepatitis c virus was hiding inside What's really interesting is that this is a despite all the study. This is the first time it's been seen And it's likely not the only virus that's using this technique So there's a lot of viruses that hide out in the system that are chronic that last, you know or super long time, which is kind of weird because Uh virus has got to infect other cells to exist. So how can it just be kind of disappearing and then reappearing? They uh Yeah, they find it basically it's kind of wearing it like a mask almost sounds like a hat like one end of the The virus Is is being covered by the fad material and the other ones out there are looking for other cells to infect But as long as it's wearing the hat or the mask it doesn't There's no reason for the body to think that it's weird at all. And so The body goes. Hey, you're cool Yeah, you're part of the whole system. I like your hat. I have a hat just like it We like yet. We like can I borrow your hat? And so then they connect with the hat and bring it on in and then hepatitis c gets access and Can can be on in there, right? This is a quote from yeppa vinter Right one of the researchers on the project all RNA viruses have the same need to hide from the immune system And there's a good chance that this is just the beginning now that we're tuned to this trick It opens up the possibility of developing new and perhaps improved methods of tracking and treating viral infections in the future so medical science One more thing that we're probably not gonna have to worry about Hey, look, it's another the whole thing with the kids of tomorrow, right? They're gonna look back people had viral infections genetic based diseases Well, how do you have a genetic based disease? That doesn't make any sense. Just fix it and you put in the thing you take the And gene editing and then you just fix it Just fix it. We'll do everything easy as pie. I think I love the idea that this is a way to potentially look for other You know intruders how many hats how many masks are out there that are essential to cell function that become You know a costume that allow Bad things to get entry and not One even at the same one could be used by other viruses. They've just they've just now as we are speaking and maybe last week Uh, uh, discovered that this is a place where a virus can hide and We don't know what that could be all of them It could be all of the chronic viral Reinfections are all hiding in the same place. It would be a great. It's a great hiding place if you think about it Hide all over they could be everywhere. I mean this could explain a lot of a lot of things for diseases and various factors Going back I've got a couple of stories to end this show on uh Blair was talking earlier about the Sense of of uh of how bees find their homes possibly we're talking about recognizing Different different things there have been some great stories throughout the show um You were talking I don't know a lot of things that we were discussing but I have some fun stories that kind of fit in with these already Publishing out of florida international university in plus one Researchers have uh done a small study. It's not Huge study although the headlines would have you think it's a huge study but these researchers are investigating how the scent of your hand Or the scents that are left because of the odorant molecules the bacteria the sweat the Subatius secretions that come off your hands that you leave around behind you How easily they can identify Individuals and this is for purposes of forensic science For by the hand Yes, or or by the the scent the hand leaves behind by the scent the hand leaves behind Okay, got it. Okay, and So in this in this study, they got people to hold on to Little cotton things and leave their subatius secretions and hand Leaveings all over the cotton padding And then they put them through mass spectrometer to determine What was there and then they started putting together a statistical model that could help determine Who was leaving What behind and in the process of what they were what they showed with their multivariate regression modeling They were able to based on 18 individuals within 60 that had been sampled 18 of the individuals Had uh stated whether or not they were Male or female so we're just looking at the two genders specifically and they've They had gone through and gotten gotten uh data with the mass mass spectrometer of all the compounds that had been left behind by the various Individuals on those little cotton pads So we've got all sorts of odorant molecules like octenol tetra decane Linolul phenol Tridecane pentadecane like all sorts of naphthalene all sorts of things left behind from people's hands and Instead of looking exactly at Certain compounds they started doing this multivariate regression just saying okay We'll just use a couple of these factors and then once we add in a third factor Let's see where we can go and they determined that with just three Factors they were able to Tell specifically between males and females in the grouping that male and female hand sent prints are completely Recognizable that when they started diving into the samples. They uh provided very Very identifying gender-based Fingerprints Because hormones because hormones probably Is it is it or And it's I'm going to spec it before you tell me if we know we don't know they didn't they didn't look specific They didn't have enough individuals I know painting with some broad brushes related to I gotta figure it out. I've got a hundred percent figured out. This is easy. This is Hold on side, but whether or not they wash their hands. Yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna guess No, that's not what well, okay. Yeah, so that and This is very this is very much just based on my experience with all humans Every single one of them Uh, I don't know a single man who uses hand lotions Or puts lotions on their faces or puts lotions on their skin or uses a moisturizer or does any of that But I don't know a woman who doesn't I know a lot of men that use hand lotions because they work With their hands and their hands are cracked in a mess and so they use hand lotions Okay, so okay. Okay. There can be some I'm not saying one of the things that they did in the study with the brush They made sure people did not wash their hands for one hour before the study But I do not know if they told them not to put on a lotions or anything of that sort Well, and did they use scented soaps or any of these other things? But yeah, so But they were able regardless these individuals Nine of males and nine of females 18 individuals out of 60 They were able to with like a 96 almost 97 percent accuracy identify the gender just based On compounds that were present. They didn't break it down to specific compounds And they so that that would be the next step of the research is to actually start putting together Quote unquote a fingerprint of the hand sense But you know and this is with people who identify Specifically as male and female. So we're not even opening the box of you know The the the diversity of gender identification and how this could you know chain What would happen if you'd actually look at things more complex with more complexity, right? And the chat room is completely correcting me Men in the chat room or husbands or who use lotion lots of lotions. It's apparently just me However, I'm now I'm now jumping on to Blair's side bet I want to go that route with the hygiene because There was something that I hadn't noticed Uh before but I have a antiperspirant, you know an underarm deodorant kind of thing that you put on Uh, it's in their cabinet and I for the first time noticed that it has 48 hour protection Uh is listed on there and I go and I realized like the only reason You would need 48 hour protection uh antiperspirant is if you don't plan on bathing for 48 hours And then I'm thinking I wonder how hour How many folks look at that and go, you know, this will give me another 48 hours On top of the 48 hours because I don't you know Yeah, I don't think I'm I think Blair's hygiene hypothesis. No, no, that's I didn't actually take that seriously I thought that's where you were going But what I what I was expecting this story to be about was about exactly what you said Kiki like a fingerprint, right? Like being able to use it in court to say like Your hand smell is all over this crime, right? But it's but if it's only if they've only so far figured out Male female that's not because that's the first thing I thought of is like if you change your diet If you change your soap if you're uh, if it's hot versus what are the things? Like if you're a woman if like where you are in your hormone cycle Like all these things could impact the chemical composition of what's going into The sweat that you're releasing on your hands. It seems like it'd be super variable It seems like it would be but apparently with this small sample size They and people who identified specifically male or female. They were able to get that discrimination very strongly in their data So, uh, you know, could this potentially be used down the line for forensic analysis of crime scenes I mean at this point it's probably better to use the scent detection of a dog You know at a crime scene looking at oh you left behind a scent. Okay dog Fido figure out which of the people on the lineup smell like this, you know um, that's probably a more highly Accurate methodology than using of this at at this point in time I'm probably easier than trying to wipe down for sebaceous secretions and take it to a mass spectrometer to get the data to be able to do You know, there's a lot there. So Yeah, john hogan. I don't know how many people like shaking sweaty hands I'll just leave it at that But yeah, I did my my inside joke to myself about this whole story though is like is this giving another meaning to the phrase smell my finger? Anyway Just smell my finger. It's fine. What was the first meaning? Yeah, where was that finger? What was the joke? No, it's something I'm sure it's something pretty insane. It's another meaning. I I don't think I understood the first Run at smell my finger All right. That's why I should just keep these inside jokes inside and just keep them inside the key key brain Uh speaking of brains researchers are trying to make monkeys smarter Well, I mean the end the end goal is yeah, it's okay. We gotta make all the monkeys smarter really though the the study Put together by researchers at Yale and University of California San Francisco published in Nature Aging This last week is attempting to investigate molecular components Uh of uh our metabolism that might be involved in healthier aging potentially trying to find treatments or new drugs or supplements that could lead to Uh improving memory especially as we know memory is supposed to deteriorate as we get older Especially if we're looking at neurodegenerative diseases are there ways that we can Hold that deterioration off and keep memory strong and cognitive function going at youthful levels for lifelong They used a compound called clotho clotho who is also known as the Greek goddess of fate in this This this molecule this protein is produced by the kidneys and it circulates in the blood It doesn't cross the blood brain barrier, which I think is really fascinating But in multiple studies has been shown to impact memory and cognitive function in mice in worms like c. Eleganz Um, don't think it has anything to do with static electricity But uh somehow clotho which is produced in the kidney It helps keep us healthy and it impacts factors that then go on to impact the brain and boost cognition So these researchers wanted to know how clotho influences Primates not just mice. So they started with mice and injected the mice with um injected the mice With clotho and they showed that they were able to get in a change in Using rhesus macaque clotho clotho that had been isolated from kidneys of rhesus macaques uh, they showed that they were able to Increase the brain activity of the mice with an injection of clotho and also improve the The performance of the mice when they were choosing between two arms of a y-shaped maze very simple tests But they showed that there was an improvement in the mice and so they were like, okay It works in the mice. Great. So now let's take The clotho that we've isolated from the kidneys of the rhesus macaque and actually give it to Rhesus macaques and in giving it to the rhesus macaques They then showed that they were able to get Up regulation and changes in the serum levels of clotho in the macaques And so they showed ah this baseline level of 10 micrograms per kilogram. That's great. That's working That's what we're going to use and so they moved on to Doing behavioral tests on these rhesus macaques after they had injected them with the clotho And they showed that the rhesus macaques actually improved on a test of memory So they had a very simple test of memory that The macaques had to determine where some food was in a tray They cued them and then tested them on this this test moving on over a month or so and they showed that Even after two weeks even though the clotho deteriorated in the body in the serum within about 48 hours The impact on memory and cognition lasted at least two weeks, which was how long they were testing the monkeys So uh the monkeys the macaques They got a little brain boost from a little bit of clotho now. Will this work in humans? You know Will it even be something that will be useful in humans? We don't know I'll try it. How does it work in the brain? I'll try it. We don't know. I'll try it. You're like I'm in I'll be the guinea pig Anything that can make me smarter like I was like I'm desperate to be smarter than I am Like I really remember your memory, right? Oh if I had a memory I would be un What's the word? Uh Just a memory to make me more Like a word that means like better, but uh in a larger, I don't know But that's why I need it because I can't remember anything Yeah, and so the the question is, you know, what kind of dosage could be used in humans This is rhesus macaque clotho. Could we isolate it from human from humans and would a similar dosage work Um, is there an impairment of function at a certain dose level? So there are lots of questions about clotho and I mean honestly, it's how does it work? Why does it work? What's actually going on there? Like why impact clotho? I mean, it's one target But it doesn't even cross the blood-brain barrier. So I mean is it If you impact clotho and does it have just better general effects? Just for health. Does it impact other things than memory? Is it just generally good? Why don't we target? I mean, I guess it's easier than targeting something within the brain and trying to get past the blood-brain barrier So that's um, you know an aspect of It would be an easier Application of the of a drug if that's what they needed to do but yeah a boost in the memory of macaques So but it's it's I'm sorry Generated in the liver and the kidneys and the kidneys. Okay. Yes Yeah, it circulates in the blood. It was discovered in 1997 in at the National Institute of Neuroscience in Tokyo and Originally, it was determined that Mike mice who were knockouts who had no clotho had A lot of aging they had like a what they called a syndrome that resembles human aging early on said disease heart disease cancer cognitive decline organ failure All sorts of things and if clotho Was reintroduced to those knockout mice then they lived They lived longer and the clotho was actually able at the the doses they gave the mice They was actually able to improve their life and extend the life lifespan above normal mice So hey Blair. Yeah, you want to you want to join me in a completely unstudied experiment where we See if I can get smarter and you can live longer Let me think about it She's like i'm making a person right now. Come on. I got other things If you had asked me two years ago the answer would have been yes immediately. Yes Now she has to think for two Yeah, it's what you it's what you gotta do. But yeah, we'll see clotho. Are you going to Are you going to be there for us as we age to improve our memories? Who knows might be something that's included in a uh, you know nutrient supplement pack sometimes soon Un unregulated of course unregulated exactly. Yes I think we've done it. Have we made it to the end of the show? We made it Yeah, we made it through everybody We made it through the wilderness We made it through the science And we've come out the other side Into the into the afterlife of the show And it is time for me to say thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to everybody who has been a part of putting the show together Thank you to all of you who are in the chat room right now over in discord here in youtube twitch facebook wherever you are Thanks for joining us and for chatting And I want to say thank fata specifically for your help on social media and show notes Identity four. Thank you for recording the show Rachel. Thank you for editing the show I'm having all sorts of things right now gourd are and lore others. Thank you for monitoring those chat rooms And of course, I would be remiss if I Spent a day not thinking our patreon sponsors So for july I would like to thank These twist patrons craig potts mary girts treesa smith richard badge kenton northcote wrick loveman court george corris pierre velezarb John ratness wami carl cornfield chris wozniak bigard chef stad hal snider donnan styles a k a don stylo Alley coffin reagan donmundus pig steven albaran deal my shacks two pollock andrew swanson fredis one oh four sky luke paul ronovich kevin bearden noodles jack bryan Carrington david a youngblood shon clarence lamb john mckay greg riley marquesson flow steve leesman aka zima ken haze howard tan christopher rappin Richard brendan minnish johnny gridley glimmy day burt g burton latimore Flying out christopher drier rtm greg briggs john atwood rudy garcia dav wilkinson rodney lewis paul rick ramus philip shane curt larson Craig land and sue duster jason olds dav neighbor eric nap e o adam mishkan kevin parochan erin luthan steve debel bob calder marjorie paul d disney david simmerley patrick peccararo And tony steele Thank you all for your support on patreon And if any of you out there want to join us on patreon head over to twist.org and click the patreon link On next week's show We will be back wednesday 8 p.m. Pacific time and again 5 a.m. On thursday central european time broadcasting live from our youtube and facebook channels and from twist.org Live Hey want to listen to us as a podcast perhaps well you try to make your own candles that smell like your hands Just search for this week in science wherever podcasts are found if you enjoyed the show get your friends to subscribe as well For more information on anything you've heard here today show notes links to stories. We'll be available on our website twist.org Where you can also sign up for a newsletter Of sorts. Yeah You can also contact us directly email kiki at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com Justin at twist minion at gmail.com or me blair at blairbaz at twist.org Just be sure to put twist twi s in the subject line or your email will be pulled via static electricity Out of the universe we'll never hear it or see it or read it. It'll be gone. The static lecture is just It's gone Or you can ping us on a pulsar where we are at twist science at dr. Kiki and At jackson play as well as at blair's menagerie. We love your feedback If there's a topic you would like us to cover or address a suggestion for an interview A haiku that comes to you tonight. Please let us know We'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news And if you learned anything from the show remember It's all in your head This week in science This week in science This week in science, it's the end of the world. So i'm setting up shop got my banner unfurled It says the scientist is in i'm gonna sell my advice Show them how to stop the robot with a simple device I'll reverse below the warming with a wave of my hand and all this is coming your way So everybody listen to what i say. I use the science This week in science Science science this week in science this week in science This week in science science science science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news That's what i say may not represent your views, but i've done the Do you have a plan? Does everybody have a plan? Does anybody have a plan? No, no plans This is the after show everyone. We have not planned anything My plan is to go to bed. Yes Well, we did a good job. It's 10 o'clock right now and that would have been a one hour and five minute show itch You're about 15 minutes over 50 we started about i mean we started about so it was a one hour and 45 minute show Yes Yes, thank you math. I was thinking 90 minutes Yeah, tight 90 90 minutes I did I say yeah You said one hour five minutes. I was like I meant I meant 105 minutes I got things. Yes. I was had the right thought but I said the wrong things Like that math doesn't math kiki Oh, my math doesn't math so often I try I really do try I am not smarter than a fifth grader Hmm. Yeah, you definitely are Yeah, possibly I've done some more How was our fourth? Did you enjoy the fourth? Sure Sure Justin wasn't Denmark. It was the worst like I have never Spent anywhere where fourth of july I was less celebrated than My house maybe if you had been here Yeah It's I mean the dog hates fireworks. So that's not fun and uh I can't do anything but waddle around my house at this point. So you weren't excited about Going out to like some uncomfortable Park. No, I didn't want to sit on grass for several hours At this point in time Go to the bathroom in a porta potty Yes, hey, I think if I'm reading my Hebrew correctly, it's Pamela is asking in the chat Are you yes? Yes? I am due very soon About less than six weeks now I guess Less than six weeks. This is very exciting The countdown maybe sooner on we have no idea maybe later. Yeah, we don't know Yeah, maybe august is the due date Hey Yeah, that's so exciting Whatever whatever happens. Yes, Justin. You probably have to go and Justin Blair wants to go to bed and the thing is Yes, I'm gonna have to go for the next three weeks. Yeah, I I mentioned that to keep you before Yeah, you mentioned it before the show. So I need to have a conversation with Blair before she has the baby about what she wants to do Yes, and then I'll talk with Justin about What we're gonna do. Hopefully the baby won't come in the next three weeks. No, if it does I have other problems. Yeah, I'm not ready Things are not ready. Oh, can I just from uh One parenting person to another You're never gonna be ready No, yeah, obviously before ready than I am right now, which I would prefer There's no there's no ready mentally. Sure fine physically. No, no Not things in the bag ready, there's no ready Yeah, there's roll with it. Well, that's not very supportive advice, but no, but it's but it's the it's it's the right way What you need is what you need is a pack of bag that has everything in it Which would be like shower shoes and soap in it like I I just haven't done that yet No, you need a shower soap. What are you talking about? No, I have my own private shower shower shoes. That's that's very nice. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, you're gonna be all like Now I've had a baby. I'm gonna go take Justin for dirty. Oh, well, yeah, no, that's true. Yes Yeah, all right. I need to like how you have plans just be ready to throw them all away That's the point is you make a plan and then you go and then what happens happens, but I have some ideas All right, Justin. Well, I may or may not see you again for several months. We'll see Yeah, I hope you uh, uh, I hope this show is uh, is okay without me I like Pamela's comment in the chat. She got pregnant for the first time 10 years ago this week and still preparing And she has three kids Hi Pam, it's a pleasure watching Yeah But anyway, yes, you got to go you're gonna be gone for three weeks And three weeks and then Blair will be gone. Uh, and so in the meantime, Kiki, uh, Let me put it this way chat room minions Twist listeners and followers take good care of Kiki while we're gone Oh Thanks. Yeah Everybody's gonna take great care and I'm gonna have one of you For a while off of it. You'll you'll alternate. So it's gonna be it's gonna be good Blair and I are gonna be like all animal and Brain bird loving over the next couple of weeks and then you'll come back and we're gonna be like all evolution And medicine and stuff. And so it's gonna be it's gonna be cool We're gonna have different folk foci. It'll be awesome. There you go Yeah We'll go through it all. I hope you have a wonderful three weeks, Justin And yeah, Blair, what is it? It's not vacation. It's not vacation. It's a complete and total lack of child care Yeah, yeah, I know I hope you but I that's why I'm saying I hope you have a wonderful three weeks I hope I hope I'm an eventful I yeah, I hope it's I hope you get sleep And You can do it No Good. Good morning, Justin Good morning, Justin Say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair Good Good night Kiki Good night, everyone. Thank you all for joining us for another episode of twist. We will be back Blair and I at least next week And we hope that you will join us then as well. Let's keep up the science everybody Justin's still gonna be out there even though he's not gonna be with us here. He's Yeah, maybe who knows it could be a black hole for the next three weeks We don't know what's going on until he comes back and then we see what happened Anyway, we will see you everyone. Stay safe. Stay healthy. Stay curious And stay lucky