 Welcome to another episode of likeable science here on think tech Hawaii. I'm your host Ethan Allen With me today is dr. Michael I care Yeah, I've been assistant professor in the Department of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences at UH Manila. Welcome Michael Thank you for having me And you know likeable science is all about The impacts that science has on people's lives and why people should care about science And I think what you do is just really fits that fits the theme amazingly well So in short, why don't you just give a quick elevator speech? Oh, what do you do here? Sure, um, so I work with plants and their genomes and we try and figure out how We can make plants That are gonna feed us gonna be more healthy gonna be more ecologically friendly and how we can do it on Fairly rapid times timescales and how can we can do it do it with? Climate-changing and with new pests and diseases popping up all the time Critical stuff, you know as we face a lot of challenges including growing populations and drinking amounts of farmland It's it's more important than ever to do this, but let's start out Let's let's unpack that a little bit be sure our audience understands you use the term genomics They are so genomics has something to do with the genes, right exactly exactly so We all heard about genes we remember from high school biology They there are what give us various characteristics like eye color hair color this thing These these types of things talking about plants seed color leaf color things like that But when we talk about gene genomics, we're talking about the entire genome so every single gene that that's present in an organism and What we're also talking about is where they're located what physical structures are there? What's what's next to them? How far are they away from other genes our genes sometimes inherited together that sort of thing Right plants are particularly complex right because plants have huge genomes, right? We have what? 22,000 genes roughly I have 200,000 so plants it depends on the plant they can be they can have massive genome so humans if we go just on regular genome size Humans have a genome of about you know, maybe three billion base pairs Well wheat has a genome of 16 billion base pairs you know you're talking about something five times more than five times the size of the human genome and and and when you're talking about genes you're talking about that same thing five times the Number of genes and that and that sort of thing right so this makes it more complex because you've got a century Weed through all that of those 16 million In essence that's that's exactly that's that's very true You have a lot of weird things going on genomes that are duplicated so that in essence instead of how In humans where you have one copy copy of the genes from your mother one copy from your father in plants You can have four copies or five copy or four copies six copies even eight copies of these genes Which makes it a little bit more complicated and when you're trying to expect what that and what? That inheritance pattern is going to be but we have some things that make it a lot easier to you know We can do controlled controlled mating in plants and also plants a lot of plants not all But many plants can be their own mother and father they can self-pollinate so that that what that leads us to do is we can get We can get a really good idea of what the expectation is For what inheritance is going to be and the other thing that that lets us do is we can we can completely 100% inbreed an individual so what that means is instead of having two copies or four copies or eight copies, right? You essentially have one form of that gene. That's the same Which which really makes it easier when you're trying to do an analysis, right and plus then that plant will always produce plants Exactly clones of itself exactly. Yeah. Yeah, so if you've gotten good characteristics and weather as well And has a good strong root system up with that great fruit. That's exactly all of its offspring will have those same characteristics And that's that's exactly right and and it'll it'll do that without any special manipulation like many people at home have probably Cloned a plant before you know and by cloning a plant that just you know Maybe cutting out an eye of a potato and then regenerating a whole plant from that That's that you've you've cloned that potato or maybe a sweet potato where you've cut a Piece of that stem and then started growing it at your house again. That's cloning that potato It's it which in this case is regenerating a whole plant from a cell without Without any sexual reproduction taking place, right? But now particularly in this day and age when we have Climate change we have soils getting polluted salinated We have as you say pests moving into areas that they didn't before There's more need to sort of you can't just rely on one cultivar one line Maybe Exactly a lot of the a lot of the changes we made in the food system In the last 80 years have been to really homogenize it and that's had some benefits in terms of we've great increased food production But now we're dealing with some of these unintended negative consequences of that real narrow Really limited diversity. It's that that can potentially be more susceptible to to pests and diseases And we're trying to figure out ways. How can we how can we maintain this high level these high levels of productivity without? Without having this increased risk and that's where genomics can come in right because because what you can do is now very Precisely you can you know this part of the genome is related to what makes the food taste so good this part of the genome is related to disease resistance and May and maybe and you can combine them very precisely because you have What we call genetic markers you can imagine those simply as street signs in a city and what you can do is you know the idea of Or it doesn't it can be street signs in a city or it can be different towns on a map Right. So so for example you can say well, I really like this street in Kailua I want that street to be next to Right next to UH Mano, right? We can't do that in in geography We can do that with genomics because when we know where they are we can move them, right? Yes, and and and we can use the mechanisms of plants to do that So that's what happens during sexual reproduction parts of the genome get reshuffled when you have when you use different parents It's it's a different combination and you can just look for combinations now that have the Beneficial The beneficial structure that you like right which is and again in plants This is something we can do because from a single from a single cross You can get hundreds and hundreds of seeds and because we have this ability to self-pollinate and generate and which are clones You can actually generate thousands and thousands of offspring from the exact same two parents right right and so you use the term domesticating players so I Know plants of course have evolved over time and we have certainly had a hand in that right most we most certainly have and just as we Domesticated wolves in the dogs as it were we've domesticated these wild that's exactly that the exact same process is Taking place and actually all of our food plants come from all over the world So if you could show us our first slide here this map is That are The actually the slide the map of where the food plants come from Yes, so what you're seeing here is we're seeing 64 of the most grown plants all over the world And what you're seeing with our little cartoons here is where these plants came from so if we're looking at North America here blueberries strawberry sunflower, right, but then if we're looking at if if we're looking at at At East Asia, we're seeing a completely different set of plants in terms of Where we're seeing citrus we're seeing rice. We're seeing all completely different sorts of plants and independently all across the world we've domesticated plants and now what we can do is we've moved them around just as we've Moved around the world as people and now we have these complex pallets that we really really like from all these different places Yeah, and and so what we can do now is because we know how this process has occurred We can take these favorable characteristics and say oh we want this this plant that looked like this to to To be to now we can modify a related plant or or or a wild relative to do that All right I mean for generations people have cross bred plants for desirable characteristics But what you're doing now is much it's a much more precise sophisticated and more rapid way of doing that That's exactly right so people for tens of you know for more than 10,000 years people have been been doing been doing this You cross plants you you look at all of their offspring and then you save the seed from the best one What plant breeding does is we try and systematize this so we know based Based on genetics right the idea of what we expect our ratios our segregation ratios to be We we and so what we can do is we can say we'll need to grow this many plants to find the one that we like And that's gonna and then and then what that lets us do is instead of just Looking in the field for this one looks really really good what we can do is we can say well we need this plant to We need this plant to be resistant to this disease the genetic inheritance is controlled by two genes How many plants are we gonna need to grow to make sure we have resistance? Well is that disease resistance gene? Close to orange genetics. We call that linked. Is it linked to another gene that? Will have a negative effect on safe flavor Well, then we need to do how big of a population will we need to grow? Then to find an individual who has our disease resistance, but not the gene for bad flavor Yeah, and and we can figure that out and then we know how many we have to look for and then because we have the genetic markers We have our street signs. We can we can say Well, we want we want King Street, you know to be next to Waikiki Or you know and so we can do that and find the individual who has that unique combination, right? And these days I would think with some of the new technologies. You can actually Literally do that and pull pull genes out and stick them in biological There are techniques to do that some of those Don't always end up making it faster. Okay, there are amazing tools for understanding gene function and and sometimes they those tools are what you need to do and but but some you have to Each situation calls for a different form of technology and you have to think about what type of technology is most appropriate for that situation No, no exactly exactly so Yeah, so this is what what you really be able to Look and do sort of what has been done But to do it on a bigger scale to do it multiple kinds of planets More quickly more robustly to get more of those plants out quickly and begin to put them into different environments and spread them around if you want Right, and so so one of the major things we face are These extreme climate events and so if you look at that the slide number two here What we're looking at here is a map of all the environments that that say Sunflower that sunflowers live in in across North America We know they're from North America and what we can do is say this particular sunflower species lives in this Crazy environment it could be a saltmarch. It can be a desert literally growing out of a sand dune And then we can ask the quest what we can say is I'm in this crazy environment Well, let's cross this wild relative to sunflower to make sure that sunflower now is going to be tolerant of being under water for two weeks and and You know plants are weird species boundaries don't matter so much to them, you know, and so you can have a Completely different sunflower species cross with the sunflower See the sunflowers that we grow for seeds that you needed a baseball game and some flowers perfectly happen Happy to have that happen It happens in nature and we can use that process that happens in nature to our benefit as humans Excellent We're gonna have to go to a little break here, but this is this is great stuff I'll when we come back me will get dig into some of our specific projects that your lab is working on Mikey counter here in the tropical plants and soil sciences department at UH Manoa is my guest today here on likeable science And we'll be back in one minute Hello, I'm Dave Stevens host of the cyber underground This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers. It's just kind of scare you out of your mind So come join us every week here on think tech Hawaii calm 1 p.m On Friday afternoons, and then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube Just look up the cyber underground on YouTube all our shows will show up and please follow us We're always giving you current relevant information to protect you keeping you safe. Aloha Aloha, I'm Wendy Lo and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock live from think tech Hawaii and On our show we talk about taking your health back And what does that mean? It means mind, body and soul anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier Is what we're going to be talking about whether it's spiritual health mental health fascia health beautiful smile health Whatever it means. Let's take healthy back. Aloha And welcome back to likeable science here on think tech Hawaii. I'm your host Ethan Allen Dr. Mikey camera is here in the studio with me We're talking about plants and genomes and domesticating plants and building better plants basically exactly and he's been explaining Sort of the general terms on how we how we do this in modern techniques that they're being used now to get a lot of better plants But his lab it's really big lab You can have a lot of people working there a lot of different projects are doing some very specific things that really like here to Direct you to Hawaii, right? Yeah So we have we have two projects that are a lot of fun. The first is Working with chili pepper So if you can show our slide here, so peppers are unbelievably diverse So we what you're seeing here is all these different shapes and colors That sizes and and and it turns out there's actually a huge variation too in how nutritious they are We're all familiar with the The difference in the heat right of our peppers from our sweet peppers to our super hot peppers that Well, you know, I like pepper and I like some heat some of those are they just kind of hurt I mean some of them, you know, they use as to make the pepper sprays even pepper sprays for elephants And the aren't my correct and thinking a lot of that that heat that we perceive is actually a It's a defense it's a defense it's a defense it's a defense mechanism I mean and one of the big defenses it's against were mammals birds actually who spread a lot of the seeds of peppers They can't they have no receptors for the heat of the capsaicin, which is what gives all the heat but one of the things we found is that we there's a huge amount of Nutritional tons of vitamin A tons of vitamin C and even a lot of folate But depending on what type of pepper you get you can have ten times the amount of Nutritive value in one variety of pepper relative to another type of pepper and so One of the things that we've been really thinking about and trying to figure out is okay. How can we? breed only amongst those peppers that have really high nutrition So that when if we release a new type of pepper for you to grow We only make crosses between those types that have high nutritional value All right, so we eat peppers that are really better for exactly and also can we eat peppers that are? Pleasant to eat across a wide range of different heats a Wide range of different heats and also a wide variety of preparations You know and also where you wouldn't have to eat so much pepper that you'd get sick of it in order to get Nutritional benefit right, you know, I'm you know, you don't want to eat five peppers at a sitting But if you can eat half a pepper, you know, that would be great. That's that's something to be really nice Yeah, so that's that's that's great and at the same time, of course you'd be looking at other characters Right, it will grow well here in Hawaii. Exactly. Well, exactly and one of the big things that we worry about are of course pests and diseases, but also building on the work of Those sunflower maps that you saw we've done similar mapping in in in pepper and are looking At across the gradient of where peppers grow. They're they're native to Mexico The tropics are same latitude as as Hawaii and what we're looking at is okay. Can we find those that are particularly? resistant to drought and then and then are those ones that are resistant to drought do they have those same? nutritional characteristics That that we that we want and also some of the same taste characteristics in terms of do we have the right heat profile? Do we have the right sugar profile so that you know, you don't get end up with something that can withstand drought But you know tastes like cardboard You know, I know they grow peppers and a lot of the US affiliated Pacific Islands And so again, you might want to look at salt tolerance for your pepper Exactly exactly and one of the things that's been pretty interesting. We've we've we've some of the Hawaiian peppers that have been here and some of the peppers that have been sourced from the Pacific Islands We we like them hotter here than a lot of people do on the mainland, so it's very it's very It's interesting to see how you have these regional preferences and what and what are Characteristics that are that that people want which is why we do breeding and why we do it at a local scale As opposed to having one type of pepper that we're going to grow across the world Sure Now this this shows the relationship of science and culture right exactly cultures like different kinds exactly Flavors of hotness right and again because everyone has this every culture has this intimate knowledge of plants They do these selections Intentionally and unintentionally by by just what what seeds do you choose to save? Which which plants become the ones that you want to keep growing year after year and even just survive in the culture and this is and Because we've seen it happen so many times throughout History in so many different cultures we everyone feels very comfortable with with this idea of you know eating and growing food Sure sure you also you got another project you you mentioned with sweet potatoes, right? Yeah, so this is this is a really cool project Where we're looking at The we're doing two different things with this project one. We're looking at The Hawaiian sweet potato the all the sweet potato that have Hawaiian names and we're asking the question How different are they from? sweet potato that are They don't have Hawaiian names because as a canoe plant were The hypothesis is that the germplasm that has retained Hawaiian names Is unique and different because it was it should be of the lineage of Those sweet potatoes that were initially brought here and it turns out based on the genetic data that we have from screening Again these genetic markers across the whole the entire genome looks like that's True the whole high the Hawaiian the plants that have retained Hawaiian names Seem to be a genetically distinct pool really compared when you compare them to samples that are found in herbaria and samples that are Found in the the the national plant germ plasm collection So sorry about the two specialized terms an herbaria is a museum for plant specimens and where you can go and we can You can sample that plant tissue and get DNA off of it. You can also Measure all the characteristics of the preserved specimen and the NPGS are Seed banks where you store either seeds or cuttings of plants so that we have a record of The living plant libraries And sweet potatoes are pretty tricky I guess there's been a lot of debate over where the origin was whether it's South American or Pacific Island And they've gone back and forth, right? So sweet potato is one of these really interesting plants the the wild Species that a sweet potato is now found in South America But the question of when did it? Leave South America how long ago was it human was it human mediated transfer was it transfer? that was By the by the plant itself through tubers, you know floating across the ocean or was it brought over by Another type of animal that's still very much alive in the Alive debate. There was a great paper that came out last year where they sequenced an herbarium specimen that had been collected by Captain Cook's expedition to Hawaii and so they were weighing in on the debate and It's I recommend you guys read the paper it was it led to a lot of Discussion in the scientific literature without a clear conclusion, which is part of the fun about it We don't know the answers. We're still it's still why up in the air and up for debate And I heard something recent the sweet potatoes themselves are really Across between two different completely really different plans. There are genetically modified organism rather nature, right? So sweet potatoes are really really crazy plant first of all. It's what happened is you had two different species Cross and then you had a genome duplication so that myosis And and sexual reproduction could work. So it's actually what we call a hexa ploid And it's actually what we call an auto aloe hexa ploid, which means It has two genomes from one parental plant and one genome from a third parental plant so that it has three genomes And it's it's it's quite complicated And then the other thing that they found in sweet potato is Sweet potato takes on genes from bacteria in the environment So so in these these back these bacteria that infected with plant disease oftentimes the plants survive But the bacteria is inserted different parts of its DNA in So it becomes a natural a naturally occurring transgenic plant. Yeah, exactly. This is it's a very cool plant Excellent excellent very excited. I'm sweet potatoes a very important food Exactly and and one of the things that's really cool because we found these genetically distinct Plants that Form the different lineages we can now start asking questions. What are the differences? What are the differences in nutritional value? What did what did? Hawaiian select for in the past was there What were what were we know historically from the from the newspapers certain things that different cultivars were used for? And now that we can see that well These are likely the ones that were being talked about in the Hawaiian language newspapers From the 19th century. Well, maybe these same practices that were used We can use for them again, and maybe maybe our farmers can get a price premium for them Yeah, exactly for instance ones you would think sweet potatoes here in Hawaii would have genes for sort of a long stable storage Right because they had to come on long ocean voyages and not Start going bad not start trying to grow right you and you would you would also think that they would What you'd also think is because You know Hawaiians were great plant breeders you I would have thought once they got here They would have selected for a lot of different things and you see these different uses again in in the in the literature, you know, some were used for For for food for very good tasting because they were very very sweet others were used as you know kind of Well, we'll say this is the one that that yields. Well is very stable You can store forever, but maybe it doesn't taste great You have other ones that were used to make to make beverages out of so you have all these different uses Some were medicinal types, right? And so so the question is now. Okay. What can we dive in and figure out? What's what what are these uses? What are the what's the genetic basis for these uses because it's quite likely that that that in this unique germplasm We probably have some unique diversity. Yeah, this is great stuff You begin to see that the real richness and what you're mining here, and this is wonderful You're doing this and wonderful you're bringing up a Cod rays of students to show learn the stuff to love it as you obviously do. Oh, yes It's a lot. I should I should you know mention the two the students working on this Elizabeth Aurora and Todd are really the ones leading the sweet potato push and they're you know, they're the ones doing all of the hard work I just get to talk about Isn't that like Well, this is this is all excellent stuff. This is very exciting to learn about your work I'm so so glad you were able to come on the show. It's a short note. Yeah. Thank you very much for that and I hope maybe we'll get you back and you can talk about more of your stuff. I love to. Oh, yeah, I'd love to so excellent so Mikey counter and Talking about genomics implants and thank you, sir. That's it's been a real pleasure. Thank you so much And I hope you'll come back and join us again next week for more episodes of likable science and I think that kawai