Hey everybody. We are live. This is This Week in Science. Thanks for joining us tonight. Before we get started with the formal portion of the show, if you're watching us live that means you get to see everything unedited. Kiki will be joining us in progress and in the meantime, Justin and I are at the helm. And so if you want to hear the more polished version with the mistakes edited out and we never make mistakes so extra stuff edited out I guess. If you want to hear me rambling on incessantly then this is you've come to the right place. But if you would like a less Justin Rantz tangent filled version that is uh that is a that is the podcast yes this is the podcast version yes yes the audio which is available where you can find podcasts and you'll hear us say that multiple times tonight also because that's several times um great so with that said we're gonna get started just a minute as I said Kiki will be joining us any moment while the train is on the tracks but we wanted to get started anyway in the meantime or or she might decide never to come back she might be like you know she could do that I feel like this show would be uh definitely under the tight 90 in that case but we'll see um she's like you know I've I've I've done enough episodes where are we at episode 928 is that right oh my gosh we really have to start planning for a thousand now is the thing we should talk that's not that's over a year from now yeah well it's a year quickly if we're trying to plan getting um three people plan a year in advance three different drastically different places geographically into one place in common space that's gonna require some planning yeah oh gosh okay we can try I'm just gonna remain very uncommitted to every plan that's made a year in advance it would like that sounds possible that sounds like a thing that could I could do you know in the right circumstances year from now uh huh who knows I mean you gotta manifest it you gotta see for me if I commit to do a thing then it happens but if it's like hey in a couple weeks we should do oh that's not good for me because we're from different parts of california yeah that's true yeah that's what that is I think that's fair um all right so we're we're gonna get started here we go in three this is twist this week in science episode number 928 recorded on wednesday may 31st 2023 you ought to be listening to this week in science hi everybody i'm blair basderich and today we will fill your head with spiders gene editing and curious kids but first disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer for the past many decades science has been hot on the heels of various treatments cures and therapeutic solutions for a long list of diseases gaining knowledge through observations of correlations aided by genetic sequencing data biochemical analysis and a sustained dedicated iterative effort to find solutions most of the time those solutions remain elusive even to the best of scientific efforts just skim through the concluding statements of research papers over the past many decades research into cancer alzheimer's autism parkinson's or stem cells what you will find at the ends of hundreds of thousands of these papers is a passing of the torch a hopeful plea to the fates dressed in professional caveats something along the lines of these findings may provide a pathway for future research to further explore the potential causative nature of correlations observed in our study and suggesting that eventually somebody might stumble upon a key to unlock the door to potential clinical treatments that is how science functions small steps of definitive knowledge gains eventually leading to treatments techniques and cures science is the ultimate long form story which is why we offer it to you in long form installments of this week in science coming up next and happy world otter day to you justin is it that time again it's my goodness the year goes by so quickly doesn't it yes yes uh and good science to everyone listening or watching out there thank you for joining us for this week in science we have a great show ahead kiki will be joining us later on she has stories about curious kids sweetener damage and useful ai what do you have justin i have i have so the whole thing in a disclaimer about the iterative steps and you know a future path to a thing that may be one day i've got actually two stories that have reached the the door key in hand of of unlocking the future of scientific therapies or of clinical therapies through science as well as of course i had to bring in the end of tall story right that's a that's a given and the thing i didn't know about sex education oh yeah is that your fault or your teacher's fault well we'll find out it's west virginia's fault actually okay got it got it um okay and i brought seagulls and spiders just like when you see neanderthal news you news you have to bring neanderthal stories um i saw some more funnel web spiders in the news so i had to bring them so they're they're joining us in the animal corner and then i also have a quick story about silent zoos and no i'm not talking about the animals i'm talking about the humans oh that would be cool yeah as we jump into the show i wanted to remind you that you can subscribe to twist this weekend science as a podcast on your favorite podcast platform youtube or facebook anywhere you see our video or audio please subscribe and that will bring you twist each and every time we release a new episode just search for this weekend science or visit twist.org are you ready to start talking about science justin uh yes great what do you have oh yeah i'm gonna start uh yeah you gotta start he keeps out here okay so let's see what are we gonna start okay this one this is a crazy one so this is researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Haifa in Israel they have discovered that production of nitric oxide in the brain correlates with autistic symptoms it's something that they had previously discovered and and uh and some research and so they decided to kind of delve into that a little bit further so nitric oxide is a multifunctional signaling molecule in the brain so it's doing all sorts of nano trans neurotransmitter work and regulation it's involved in cell survival it's also involved in the the plasticity of the brain and how the vasculature of the brain works it's it's kind of important to a lot of things and one of the things they noticed is that it had there were elevated levels and mice that were genetically altered to have autism so they decided they were going to delve into this a little further in this follow-up study first thing they did is they took regular mice and and they basically increased the levels of nitric oxide they give them a drug that increases that leads to an increase of nitric oxide production and they saw some significant reduction in cortical dendritic spine density which is something that you see in Alzheimer's excuse me autism patients and mice who have been genetically altered to have autism they they then went the other way around they believed opposite and they took genetically altered mice that to have autism which is just a knockout of one or two genes and they used nitric oxide inhibiting drugs and what they found on those mice is that it actually reversed the biochemical signals of the dendritic spine architecture biochemically at least it was reversing the effects of autism they then did a third round to see what the behavioral changes were and so they had these mice who were again modified to have autistic like behaviors and with the same types of genes that are that are altered in humans putting them through the paces they showed this you know lack of interest in novelty versus familiar objects lack of social interaction these sorts of things they again did the inhibition of nitric oxide and the behavior changed so this is in mice however in discovering a mechanism you know first it's a signal of you know biochemical signal that is different that that was observed but then they managed to actually recreate it in experimentation and reverse it so they have found not only a mechanism involved right a causative perhaps it's downstream from the gene so the genes are doing stuff that's going to you know this is pull as a lever over here this changes the amount of gene expression of this which is an editing or or a regulating factor and all these things sort of play into a cascade of nitric oxide going up so that's why mechanism versus what it actually you know finding a gene only tells you so much right that okay we have these genes associated now there's this whole mechanistic cascade of things that happen afterwards that's the really really in this day and age the difficult part to even figure out but here they've identified one did an increase and a inhibition of it in so dramatic effects so they may have found a mechanism towards again this is still in mice you got to do all the human trials and everything else later but to find a single target single drug to possible drug target that can in vivo allow alive do an alteration of behavior of biochemical outcome very huge and so so look for this this is i mean i'm not saying this can reverse autism right but it did in mice that were genetically altered to have it with the same genes that are that are that are different in humans it really comes down to two genes that do that are related to well but it didn't so okay so it didn't reverse autism though because to your point it didn't edit the genes it just treated the symptoms it changed the behavior so so it didn't exactly reverse it because if you stopped treatment in theory everything would refer back right correct and it's behavior in mice so you don't know how much that translates like even if even if even if it was a perfect analog for for humans in this test and they did a clinical trial and turned out it was a perfect analog how how far ranging those behavioral cognitive and everything else affects are in a human compared to a mouse it's hard to hard to predict what that relationship is but uh but still pretty big deal yes pretty big deal so there's you know we often try to trace things like this to the source which is your previous point right like if you could if you could trace this all the way back to the genes and you could you could alter genes so that this isn't an issue that would be yeah option option number one that would be what you'd want to do right and they were working they did the experimentation across two different genes that are associated with the vast majority of autism cases and so by knocking those genes out is how they get to uh autistic behavior in these mice and some of the biochemical dendritic architecture that is similar right so you're treating symptoms you're not you're not you're not kind of reverting the biology back so well you're going one step you're going one step back you're one step back from i'd say symptom uh because it's you are attacking a causative which is an over expression uh of the the nitric oxide meaning that meaning that it is curative with a continued treatment right right but that's that's exactly it it's a continued treatment so it's for mice for mice still it's for mice we're not humans yet it's it's a good development i'm not saying it's not a good development i'm just saying i think science is going to continue to move kind of backwards if we had the ability to edit genes in a living being then yeah we could you know oh wait but that's associated with all sorts of things yeah well go ahead what's your second story so my second story is they did gene editing in live mice perfect what for uh so so this one they they as a proof of concept they altered risk genes that uh normally lead to coronary disease and Alzheimer's proof of concept why not long as we're in there but this is a Harvard University researchers they've just improved the gene editing process for uh the prime editing method something came out a few years ago one of the advantages of prime editing is that the system does not cause double stranded breaks it sort of nicks one side it might do it on both sides but it's it still doesn't open up the whole the the the whole dna l at once and that approach minimizes when it comes back together there's less uh deletions or additions little goofy things that get that sneak in when you're doing something like crisper and it's it's very targeted if you if you know anything about genomics and you see a description with even with like nice images and video and everything it shouldn't work it's it's kind of wonky looking the you know they grabbed they grabbed the the cast nine and they added a this whole this whole extra structure to it and the whole thing is sort of wonky and leads this flap of half a strand of dna flapping in the wind but at the end of it that's just sort of you know the the repair system apparently takes care of anyway uh they they so they have this thing the problem is targeting it works great in a lab when you're applying it to to a cell and you can edit that cell and that's great but now we're talking about what would we need to do to put it into a living body so the current method of targeting of doing gene targeting is through something called a dino associated virus vectors so these are little basically haul it out viruses that can be can be outfitted to attach to specific parts of the chromosome and they can carry a small payload of dna with them so the payload capacity though is too small for the prime editing mechanism the solution break the prime editor into two parts and send it off on two viruses so now you have a part a and a part b that have to self assemble when they get to the right place and they did it so that's pretty amazing self-assembly within proximity of the gene that they're supposed to edit and then so that was the huge workaround was just one in a series of other obstacles so by doing this I guess there was a little bit of that that wonky system with the flaps and the things attached to each other that I was trying to explain that shouldn't work got a little bit wonkier so they reinforced the RNA scaffolding they switched promoters they then ran out of brooms they added a third virus so now they have a part a part b and part c that are recombining they they optimize this they with a reverse transcriptase enzyme modified cast-9 with a mutation got everything working and then downsized it by picking off parts that they actually ended up not needing got it back down to two now we're back to part a and part b all of this the results were in a mouse model they therapy they were able to the prime editing was able to do 42 percent efficiency of gene editing in the mouse brain 46 percent in the liver 11 percent in the heart this is the highest levels of gene editing in a living creature that has ever been done and it's less than 50 percent of well of well not not 50 accuracy this is the there was no off-target there was no off-target or indels which is you know the deletions or additions but it reached 42 percent saturation I suppose right so if you're trying to eliminate the incorrect sequence right in favor of the correct sequence mm-hmm how much do you need to alleviate symptoms right so what you end up with is so so for instance you have a cancer risk gene okay now what a cancer risk gene is is it's usually a gene that's like that's repairing DNA that's doing it's the superhero gene's expression creating things that are that are fixing DNA when damage takes place so when those are not what we might call wild type or the preferred type when they have a little variant and things aren't working right and the repairman comes out there everybody oh I forgot my wrench oh I don't have a wrench because my DNA has this weird and can't fix things that's what that's the damage that takes place then can become cancer so if you are if you have the the the genes that are going to allow that cancer to form because of this this broken type or altered type DNA it can happen in any of that tissue that needs repair if 40 percent of those tissues have been fixed you've just reduced the chances of that the risk factor that you may have for having you know cancer or whatever the disease is in this case they actually worked on Alzheimer's for the brain which they got to like 40 something percent uh that lowers your risk I would guess by that much uh at least connected to the gene so this is I think one of the biggest like we've had a couple big ones there was a couple weeks ago the the stem cells that weren't getting rejected and we're staying in the macaque monkeys now we have live gene editing in mice we have a potential reversal of Alzheimer's this is a good time science is getting to the end of those paths through the valley of fields and all this sort of thing so again this was as a proof of concept of just getting the model prototype they managed this so I'm excited for the human trials yeah because then that thing that just got discovered that can uh you know mitigate the symptoms by taking out some of the mechanisms you can go back one layer yeah why don't we just fix the genes you can just do both put the genes yeah we'll just do both why not perfect well that'll be very exciting it's like I feel like that's decades of of us talking about it finally getting somewhere Patrick says can we stop curing mice and start curing humans it's mice first it's because mice are the real ones that are actually run then monkeys I don't know if you've noticed I don't even know is mice actually planet earth so so that's why you take the oxygen mask when they fall the parent the one in charge needs to put it on first to make sure everybody else is taking care of at least that's what the mice tell me right yes did the mice tell you about the silent zoo Justin so at first I thought it was a great idea and then I immediately thought you know who's at the zoo more than anybody oh children there's more children at the zoo so let's follow me on this kind of thought experiment um silent in terms of your behavior I am not asking about other people around you okay so how did you feel after going to a zoo or an aquarium or a museum um when you went with a bunch of people maybe you hadn't seen in a while you spent the whole time talking what kind of emotions did you have how did you feel about your time in that space well okay so now I gotta think when did I ever gone to a museum or a zoo to meet up with people I mean I do it all the time I don't know what you're talking about but yeah like almost never uh but I never met up with like your friends that also have kids at a zoo and gone hey how's it going let's walk around the zoo together you've never done that maybe okay no not really I'm guessing a lot of people listening have done that but okay when I do that I can say that when I leave that space I had fun I certainly caught up with my friends I'm happy I spent the day there I enjoyed it but now I want you to picture how you feel after you've gone to a museum or a zoo or an aquarium perhaps by yourself self-paced yourself through the space and not had anybody to talk to about what you were looking at how did you feel when you left so if it was an art museum I actually got to enjoy it interesting uh huh yeah yeah I actually got to I actually walked out of there knowing what I had seen yeah some memory of having seen things versus if I'm yeah if I take kids to an art museum I don't see anything I'm just watching hands to make sure they're not touching things but nobody's running away yeah so this is a study from University of Exeter and they wanted to look at silent zoo tours so they had they ran some special silent events at Painton and Bristol zoos these are all in in England as part of a wider project on the auditory culture of zoos so there were other people around who were talking but these people this particular subset was put through this silent event so they were not allowed to talk to each other and importantly they also had to turn off their devices and not engage oh that stuff yeah so visitors participating were better able to focus concentrate and meditate on specific animals and their behavior which sometimes fostered feelings of intimacy with an attachment to particular zoo animals the silence helped them pay more attention as you were talking about meaning that they got things out of their visits that they wouldn't have ordinarily they were allowed to choose their own paths around the zoo move at their own pace they were but they weren't allowed to talk to anybody and then they had these focus groups afterwards to discuss their experience their silence did affect the pace of their visits they went around slower and they took more time to think and concentrate this also meant that they stopped more often and there were general periods of physical stillness that were not present when they were talking it produced feelings of stress relief tranquility and peacefulness and many participants reported that they felt their silence had affected the behavior of the zoo animals around them so they said that the animals seemed to seemed more comfortable with their presence they were more ready to come close to them than around noisy or individuals and that silence was considered by some visitors to establish points of connection between themselves and the animals so they were able to kind of spend time thinking about what they had in common with that individual and really spend time connecting to the individual animals in the zoo so i i'm not saying this is groundbreaking or shocking you know but i think it's an important recognition of what we use these spaces for if you think about a space as a social space or you think about a space as a meditative space or a space to connect those are very different goals neither is better than the other but i think it's a really interesting idea that i'm going to take to heart i know i when we would travel all the time for twist and i would go i went to the philadelphia zoo i had a i had a long time before my flight after both of you flew out and i walked around the zoo by myself for like four hours and it was beautiful i got to kind of stop and read the signs i wanted to read and i got to go look at the things i wanted to look at and not look at the things i didn't want to look at i was just thinking about those signs because i go to the zoo once a week it's walking distance from here uh and and i i know there's signs all over talking about the animals saying stuff and i was just thinking i haven't read any of those because i know i can't take my eyes off them long enough uh or keep my eyes on them long enough because i got this kid i got to keep watching right who i'm talking to or i'm like going hey look over now you're looking at that you're actually looking at a pigeon there's a tiger if you turn your head you know so i mean i might argue it's a little too soon to do this uh with your little one but when he's a little older it might be interesting to experiment okay for the next 20 minutes we're not gonna talk here starts the timer and see what happens right like i understand you can't tell a young child not to talk at all for an entire day at the zoo that's that's that's crazy and also it kind of defeats some of the purpose some of the purpose of a zoo for a younger child is to say like what do you notice what do you see do you have any questions about this animal so verbal communication is an important part of learning and experiencing a zoo also but i think that ultimately this is an interesting reminder especially if you visit the same location over and over or you're looking for a new reason to go to the zoo or you're going somewhere to center yourself and spend some time with yourself turn off your phone and don't talk and see how it goes i think it's a really interesting social experiment and i would love the idea of including more opportunities to engage in these spaces maybe holding more silent tours for the general public for people to sign up for i think that'd be so awesome yeah and also i think it would make society better but that might just be my my attitude towards hearing other people talk hi kiki hi we are obviously having the this week in zoo silent hour at the moment as i get in here yes yes yes so to close out my story on silence and zoos silence visits researchers say can help visitors to develop new perspectives on zoos and their animals and can also help researchers imagine future possibilities for the auditory culture of zoos and as i alluded to i would expand this to other cultural institutions i think it is also relevant to those experiences so anyway i thought that was a really cool way to look at it i hadn't really thought about it and um i'm going to keep that in mind for my future visits as well yeah i i think i think that the library rules you know the if you're gonna talk you don't need to yell yeah absolutely you know we don't need to hear your your your families or your friends conversations if we're standing 20 feet away from you we don't we don't care yeah someplace like the san francisco zoo they also have a playground so there's yes exactly yeah area where you're where if it's loud time take the kids if there's kids involved forget about it you know they it's even yeah even the japanese gardens they're the very nice meditative places to go but you take kids and suddenly that's so quiet anymore oh my goodness yeah where are we we are still in the quick stories kiki and we just finished all of ours so if you would like to to some of yours that would be amazing i am gonna just take this and run with it then everybody i had a story out of uh i don't a whole bunch of big institutions actually gladstone institutes out of the out of the san francisco bay area the brode institute of mit harvard the dana farber cancer institute they all work together to try and figure out whether or not they could get machine learning which we all are talking about these days and we are here on this show also are known for talking about the negative impacts of artificial intelligence machine learning large data sets this particular study though is trying to figure out how machine learning can help us understand how large networks of genes work together to control how cells work and also how mutations in those gene networks can lead to disease or disruption and so they basically gave lots of genetic information to a machine learning algorithm and then they were like hey so um you know we know there's a bunch of data on which genes get disrupted and kind of some networks that work together it's like in the cancer gene family you have certain genes that we know or bracket genes and others that are known to be involved in causing cancer or allowing those cancerous signals to be perpetuated well uh this research which was just published in nature really created a model for understanding how genes in our dna interact and the machine learning algorithm went so far as to not only identify genes in particular networks say related to cancer that we already knew were involved but also identified genes that we had never thought or recognized as being involved in certain cancers before and then to test what was going on they're like okay so let's you know knock out these genes in a couple of mice and see what happens and lo and behold their cancer was not as they they were more likely to get cancer less likely to be treated and um is really fascinating insights so machine learning yeah one one good side here is that um now we can really start to understand how all the genes interact genes that are close together within chromosomes further apart in chromosomes uh and because of the way that machine learning picks up on things in ways that we have not been able to in these massive data sets it can lead us to maybe drug targets or you know other understandings of disease so let me ask this i'm sorry if i missed this yeah but machine learn so this machine learning system did it figure this out by looking at patterns and making an extrapolation or did it figure this out by just processing data and making conclusions from the data because i feel like i slightly different but yeah it that is a nuance for sure um so this was a they pre-trained their ai in something that they're calling it's a machine learning technique that they're calling transfer learning and so they pre-trained their ai on a data set um which is or actually they pre-trained what their algorithm is called which is called gene former and then they wanted to see the knowledge that they were pre-trained on so genes that are known to be involved in heart disease genes that are known to be involved in cancers things that we already knew then they took it and tried to transfer that data that the algorithm had been trained on in a new a new area that it had not been applied to previously so it's as if it's a bit extrapolating it would be taking the information that it was trained on and then taking basically taking that information that knowledge set and transferring it to a different modality or different a different platform right so it's a lot more than an in and out machine where it's just it was able to do computations or assessments that we couldn't do just because we don't have the computational power it was actually drawing conclusions yeah based on patterns it learned right and so that's the interesting and why and why the idea of a uh a gene network is important and why there are certain genes that they're close together on chromosomes and so they always act in concert or because they have other other genes or non-coding DNA that's interspersed in between maybe we don't notice that they're involved but they are involved like we know there are thousands of genes involved in intelligence but we don't know which ones right and so this is potentially you know the kind of machine learning that could start to suss out some of the patterns that we have not been able to see previously wow that's awesome yes so it's making predictions is what it's doing and we do now know some of the genes involved in uh incognition we we have some of them we have some we have a pretty good list of all these things uh growing the thing is i've i've i find interesting about these is is that there are multiple pathways like once you once you get uh start to get the when you're talking about the network of genes that are involved in any one process it's not like there's just it's not is it oh if it could only be just one and sometimes it is but a lot of times there's lots of you know elements involved so we're talking about the BCRA right yeah uh breast cancer related uh gene this is this is the gene that is keeping you from getting breast cancer keeping most people from getting breast cancer it is there are other genes involved though yes yes yes it's it's it's a repair gene now that repair gene is also calling up the the the the the supply depot for for hey i need more duct tape i need you to send duct tape over here and if the duct tape factory is broken well then it doesn't matter that you've got the perfect you know repair gene it can't get the supplies and then the duct tape gene is like okay yeah i'll send i've got the duct tape here no problem i'll send the driver uh to deliver it to you now if there's a problem with just the delivery driver again you can't make the right so there is there is all these interdependencies and so the big one can go wrong a number of things can go wrong it's just all sorts of different places and that's and that's why it's so hard to figure out which part of the network we've seen we've seen through you know here's one list here's the other list let's compare aha okay yeah right but then here's the same list and some of these people are getting cancer and some of these just aren't and it's and then now we're starting to talk about what the machine learning is revealed all those other players that we didn't see in our two comparable lists that are showing up in the hits and not showing up in the misses and that's i think what's good yeah i think it's gonna be really interesting to see how the this kind of predictive machine learning works again in comparison to and also in conjunction with are now our our big data set analyses that have been that are that we've done that have allowed us sometimes to falsely identify certain genes to that because of the way that the correlations work within our big data set analyses so it's going to be really interesting to see if we can use these various strategies together and see how it all works but you know this is it's it this is no silver bullet it's not just going to be like yeah now we know all the networks but it's one of the tools it's going to help us get there predictions and then we have to test them and we have to make sure it's good but it's and then we edit them yes then we edit them and fix them yes and that's the cool part perfect perfect um and let's see where i owed next to what i wanted to talk about was um a slime because i don't know and it just has nothing to do with watching Nickelodeon as a child researchers at the university of massachusetts amherst have published in the open journal i science their work on microbial slime do you know how when you go into your sink or your shower and it has a bit cleaned in a while and you like in the drain area and you're like it's kind of slimy i should really clean that that's not just the microbial mat that's being formed it's the microbes actually producing a slime okay which is also known as an extracellular matrix and you're saying you can clean this clean it don't go to justin's house i learn something every day i thought that just has things where so these these research anyway we're trying to trying to figure out okay what is what good is this extracellular matrix well of course it's going to help to support the bacterial societies that are formed these biofilms it's going to have all sorts of functions and it does play a role in things like antibiotic resistance clogging tubes and medical devices you know there's all if we can figure out how this extracellular matrix is involved in the survival of various species of microbes maybe we could learn how to i don't know have lived healthier safer lives anyway very good if you're too if you're medical tubes are getting clogged by microbial slime i think you have a hospital problem not a micro problem i could be could be a bit back to a different layer of because they should know not to be trying to even that's by the way it's one of the one of the rare instances two maybe three things on the planet that i'm okay being wasteful uh medical devices should all be one use uh disposable diapers but we just last play i was gonna tell like don't fall for any sort of like oh yeah we should be eco diapers now that's one of those things you sacrifice you say as a society we agree to pollute disposable diapers i think that's an important one and then the other one of the courses this is the plastics that we use in research there's certain areas where you just don't want to involve extracellular matrix well yes you don't yeah you don't want to involve these matrices in there so how do we get rid of them well uh researcher at the uh at the university Barry Goodell at um the university of massachusetts amherst says i've always been interested in the microbial extracellular matrix and people usually consider it inert and just protective but he's discovered it functions as a conduit to allow nutrients and enzymes into and out of microbial cells and so its stickiness makes it so that microbes can't clump together it um and so or its lack of stickiness will make it so that they can't clump together so the question is how do they do it and they they determined that it there's a secret ingredient oxalic acid and this is an organic acid that's naturally found and these microbes many of them seem to be using this oxalic acid as they combine it with a carbohydrate outer layer and that creates this microbial slime the sticky jelly extracellular matrix and so the uh the microbes themselves can use different amounts of oxalic acid to minimize or exacerbate the amount of stickiness of this matrix and it'll that will allow more molecules in or out of the cells so be able to absorb more nutrients or fewer nutrients but the researchers say they're hypothesizing that there's also the excretion of molecules through the extracellular matrix that also allows them to attack things or digest them externally and so gedel thinks there seems to be a sweet spot where the microbes can control its acidic level to adapt to its specific environment by keeping some larger molecules like enzymes out while letting smaller molecules readily pass through the extracellular matrix and this tuning if we can control how things like oxalic acid are being controlled by the microbes then that might influence uh uh whether or not we can protect various diseases and you know it's natural quote unquote yeah uh kind of occurs to me this is just also the microbial solution to being stuck on a two-dimensional plane sticking yourself to it or no no the the it's also creating three-dimensional travel within that microbial universe so that you can be separate from your neighbor and stacked up on top and off to the up and to the side or whatever without all having to be surface bound all the time it allows a little bit of uh uh a a microbial city yeah to to form a little bit like a little microbial city it's like a little city but it can that the wall that slimy wall is what either prevents intruders or allows the attack to occur you know how do you how thick do you create the castle walls how how how how how full how dense is your moat how much slime do you have in your moat and my final first interesting kind of story that uh we should all be considering is the amount of artificial sweeteners that we're using in our foods for yeah we love our sugar ah yum sugar people are like oh sugar's bad for you use an artificial sweetener and so we're talking about sugar alternatives this is an alternative and specifically this study out of uh north carolina state university publishes week relates to blenda otherwise known as sucralose researchers uh at north carolina state university previously showed that there are lots of fat soluble compounds that get released when sucralose is ingested and digested and susan schiffman who is uh one of the authors on the study says our new work establishes that sucralose six acetate is genotoxic not just so it's just genotoxic it goes in and it destroys your genes any cell it gets into it destroys your genes they found we found that trace amounts of sucralose six acetate can be found in off the shelf sucralose even before it's consumed and metabolized so this sucralose six acetate is a metabolite of sucralose digestion but it's already in there in trace amounts in the sucralose in your splenda packet and the amount the quantity that we could be safe for us per day we're blowing way past what the european food safety authority has already said is okay um the researcher says to put this in context the european food safety authority has a threshold of concern of 0.15 micrograms per person per day and the work suggest that they've done suggests that trace amounts of the sucralose six acetate in a single daily sucralose sweetened drink exceed that threshold and that's not accounting for any of the um the metabolites produced after the consumption of that drink so is this like is this like uh bad for you like dangerous like in the come on that's not good for you sort of thing or is it like this needs to be removed from the shelves because it's toxic where are we so they we we are in the petri dish testing stage where they exposed blood uh they blood cells and those blood cells were damaged they also exposed gut tissue to the sucralose six acetate and they determined that um when the gut epithelial tissues were exposed to it they found that it causes the tight junctions between the cells in your gut to become less tight and so molecules that you would normally poop out end up going into your bloodstream and no yes so it's it causes what's considered leaky gut syndrome no not that this hasn't been shown specifically in people according to their studies but there is evidence of uh health effects of um of sucralose uh ingestion but the work is what they're saying it's raising a whole bunch of concerns especially uh additionally the not just causing leaky gut the the cells that were exposed themselves um they had a change in activity related to oxidative stress inflammation and carcinogenicity so increase you know we're just talking about cancer problems you know we're just talking about gene networks and how all these little things are independent of each other and then this one's going to just come in there and be like yeah knocking things off the shelf messing up the phone lines i think this is funny because uh when i feel like when splenda first hit the scene the the rumors word that it gave you cancer that's what you always heard the rumors yes yes uh there's no no science but just rumors that it gave you cancer and um this is not that also bad though yes and so it's mounting evidence is uh so they have it it's reason for continued research it is reason for concern it is not you know oh this is doing this for sure for certain but it's also but it is uh opening up a lot of the information that would you know suggest that we really need to be considering it very carefully so perhaps just assuming you you're not a diabetic or have other things going on perhaps just a tiny bit of natural sugars might be better so the the the really tough thing here is the number one indicator almost you could almost diagnose health issues off of weight weight obesity is associated with all causes of death higher than anything else that you would look at metabolically it is associated with human death at a phenomenal scale and it's expected to become a bigger problem as the decades so then you have people who are trying to make wise choices yes by using alternatives to to avoid obesity and if those are also killing people or have the potential right i'm gonna say i'm gonna disclaimer disclaimer i didn't read the study disclaimer but if those are also going to put people's health in greater jeopardy yes diplomatic then then then that's not a solution then it's exacerbating a problem for people who already have uh basically a health condition and so it just goes to show that there is you know a lot out there that if we are making alternatives there needs to be more more work done ahead of time to determine their safety for consumption and you know the likelihood and maybe we can use machine learning to help us with all the chemicals that we want to be making safer as we get old you know as we move forward and i am a big fan i'm a big fan of food science in general however i would like to point out to everyone there are foods that people have eaten for tens of thousands of years that are available in the grocery aisle of the grocery store i i i sometimes question why we need all these alternative foods when we have food already well that i'm i'm just gonna put it all down to big sugar you know it's not it's also food deserts it's availability it's uh disproportionate costs of fresh food that aren't really appropriate there's all sorts of problems going on availability i feel like you can i feel like you can live cheaper on fresh produce than just about anything else so i probably have at least ten studies i could send you about that um we'll talk about it another time talk about it yeah when we have the studies to back up the conversation absolutely we hope that we're feeding your brain well here about this weekend science thank you so much for joining us for this episode of our weekly show if you are enjoying this weekend science please make sure to tell a friend today and take the time to head over to twist.org and click on that patreon link because we can't do this without you we really appreciate your support gonna come on back now with some oh what is it that time in the show that we call Blair's Animal Corner with Blair what you got Blair muted you got muted is what happened you and all the excitement she muted herself what is it spring 2020 in a zoo meeting anyway um for the second week in a row i have brought you current MVPs of the Animal Corner funnel web spiders i just don't understand why you're doing this to yourself or to us just oh man it's just so exciting i don't know what's going on with these funnel web spider researchers but it's all dropping and there's exciting news so this is from james cook university they were looking at the venom which is the thing that makes them famous they are considered the most venomous spider in the world and they have found bottom line that the venom of some of these funnel web spiders vary depending on circumstances that those spiders are going through so um this is important because not only are they the most venomous but those venoms are the most complex of those studied in the natural world that's they might be related those two facts i would assume and so they're valued for medical research because a lot of medicine starts out as venom that's where we get the inspiration for them and so there's lots of research going on with funnel web spiders looking for therapeutics and natural bio insecticides that could be in the venom so they're looking for molecules in these venoms that could be used for human health for pest management for all these sorts of things so lots of funnel web spider research going on and so in this study they examined the venom produced by different species under different conditions they looked at four different species of funnel web spiders they looked at the border ranges spiders darling downs spiders southern tree dwelling spiders and sydney funnel web spiders they were all subjected to different tests like being prodded with tweezers or puffed with air so basically they're trying to stress them out they map the behavior so they can kind of see how stressed out they were and they measured their heart rate with a laser monitor so that they could get a proxy for metabolic rate i didn't know we could do this with spiders that's amazing and it's a much better than going in for actually like a you know check the rate you know because the most venomous spider well through the exoskeleton pretty difficult to do oh come on just flip over i'm gonna just you know help hate your your oh no i broke my leg off oops um so then they collected the venom and analyzed it with a mass spectrometer they found that certain spiders had variations in their venom based on factors such as defensiveness and heart rate specifically with the border ranges funnel web the expression of some of their venom components were associated with heart rate and defensiveness so um the the specific components in the venom changed depending on their i don't know i guess mental state excitedness difficult to exactly use human words on what was going on with them but they were just they were in a different state of mind i guess they had a different focus in that moment the other species didn't demonstrate this so this does seem to be a species specific response which is wild so the use of the venom and the display of aggressive behaviors both have metabolic costs so the question is does one come not compensate but pull resources from the other is it possible that um spiders use behavioral strategies to compensate for costs so basically they increase their metabolic rate when they use venoms they reduce their movement when facing a threat so they're not overclocking their metabolic rate is there some sort of push pull going on with their behavior and their venom related to threats and so fascinating yeah that's a fascinating question is it yeah i mean and okay so we know like with scorpions that the that they have their anatomy is different so those that have less venom they have bigger clip clip yes for pinching their pinchers are bigger right and those that have more venom have the little pinchers you gotta watch out for that tail right so that's anatomical but is there also a metabolic difference right and that's not only anatomical but it's constant for that individual this change from 10 minutes ago to now their venom can be a different concentration or have different metabolic properties based on how they're feeling in that moment so things obviously could impact further exploration and understanding of the ecological role of venom the study on animals with venom if this is something that isn't just these spiders if venom can change depending on kind of excitedness metabolic rate whatever you want to call it is venom research going on in a state where animals are relaxed or where they are excited and does that impact the venom research when from an anti-venom do you need a different anti-venom depending on if the animal was surprised and it kind of happened all at once or if they were amped up and stressed out and finally struck is there a metabolic difference is there a venom difference this this is an interesting yeah yeah that venom could have kind of different states of matter in an individual depending on how they're feeling especially like especially like you said these have very complex venom profiles yeah yeah a lot of a lot of different molecules going to work in there to create that they end substance yeah to kill their lunch or to protect themselves of course yeah or as we found out last week not to be used at all during the spring time when they're when they're mating yes absolutely just hoist the ladies in the air um speaking of lunch have you ever been hey i'm gonna go back to the zoo because this is my personal experience have you ever been at the zoo and you bought yourself a delicious lunch maybe some french fries at a zoo yes yeah that's about the most delicious yeah zoo it depends on the zoo some zoos have delicious food some do not but um you bought yourself some french fries maybe some very questionable french fries but in the end uh as you exit the cafe a seagull swoops down and steals your lunch has this ever happened to you or so I just saw I just saw this happened at the Copenhagen zoo uh with a woman who had bought an ice cream cone kind of thing and had just like just turned around with this with this completely perfect ice cream cone and uh seagull was on the river they swooped down took a bite and flew off and then she just had this look of like what just happened that's like you know like out of the blue seagull attack so yes I see it at the zoo all the very aggressive seagulls the beach it also happened at the beach absolutely the beach is where I have experienced it personally I even had a seagull come up so close it tried to swallow my big toe no thank you not delicious and uh UC Davis campus UC Davis campus the squirrels will steal your lunch well this is not about squirrels it's about seagulls uh but Kiki I have a question when that seagull decided to eat your toe were you eating toes at that time I was not eating toes okay we did have food and we looked like toes it may have may have been a zoo french fry so the reason I asked there's finger sand which is I don't remember um a recent study on the herring gull which is a type of gull in the UK wanted to look at how these gulls um associate what what food is good with what food is not if they pay attention to what humans are eating and if that impacts their behavior and how um they decide how kind of bold to be in their food stealing decisions I really want to know where the seagull that tried to eat my toe well let's let's explore that shall we explore this a bit yes absolutely so previous research has already shown that urban herring gulls adapt their foraging behavior to human activity patterns so they will come for food when humans are around because humans bring food they increase their attention towards a person in possession of food we've all been there and that they prefer food that has been touched by a person compared to food that has not so they know that we like the delicious stuff so we already know all that but this new research was looking to see if birds could not only track objects handled by humans but if they could compare the objects in the environment with those being manipulated by a person so can they say that person over there is eating a hot dog that trash can I think I see a hot dog must be delicious so can they make the connection between humans eat hot dogs there's a hot dog I'm gonna eat that that looks like food okay so they placed two crisp packets you know it's a study from the UK crisp packets of different colors yes thank you very much for translating of different colors on the ground a few meters see again UK in front of single or small groups of gulls on Brighton Beach researchers sat on the sand held a third crisp packet that matched the color of one of the packets on the ground and recorded the gulls response so their research was to sit at the beach and eat potato chips you're welcome master students what a great gig um they of course also observe the the the gulls and as they hypothesized they would choose the crisp packet that matched the color of the one they were eating 95 percent of the time amazing yes I want what you had exactly so this suggests that the gulls possess the ability to identify and compare objects within their surroundings that human is holding a blue crisp packet I'm gonna go for the blue crisps they're probably more delicious the gulls seem to observe the forging choices of others specifically people in this case and use the information they obtained to decide what to eat now where this is weird is that herring gulls have not evolved alongside humans in fact as far as researchers can tell their urbanization began 80 years ago that's recent oh my god yes whoa so this isn't a co-evolution this is an extended period of exposure to humans this most likely is the result of a broader more general behavioral repertoire they have been able to watch and mimic foraging behaviors of other animals and now they can then apply that to us and our junk food essentially so this this shows seagulls as unlike we usually like to think about them smart versatile adaptable they have been able to adapt these forging behaviors that they have to urban environments and use really impressive observational skills and behavioral flexibility to do that um what what's what's also interesting about this study is that they looked at the ages of these guys so uh you can always tell a juvenile goal because they are brown and then when they are adults they turn yes they're hiding from predators when they're adults they are kind of though the white and gray variations that you're used to seeing in the various kind of gulls around 80 percent 86 percent of the pecs to um to the the chip bags came from adults even though the population that they observed was only about 46 percent adults so the grand majority of these guys far outweighed the adults far outweighed the juvenile so does it mean that stealing food requires a certain level of boldness or does it mean that the adults just were pushing the the younger birds out of the way for the chips or is it that it takes a while to learn the behavior and absolutely yeah yeah that it's just not I mean yes a certain amount of bold boldness and perhaps it is I mean I don't know enough about herring gull behavior specifically but the boldness of a bird is more likely to be I imagine uh increased as it gets older and and knows more and survives better you know it knows what's wrong and what's not yeah yeah absolutely so I'm I'm also kind of wondering here now though if this is taking a cue from humans or if this is competition strategy the idea being oh humans like the blue ones why better eat the blue one first because I don't want them coming after my blue one because of these these chips laid out on the beach you know these those are mine that human over there is eating other blue ones uh uh I got to get to that one first because otherwise the human will want it yes yes well it's like that's what the other ones I can eat anytime because the human doesn't I don't know that the human would even eat that hmm so that's interesting I will say based on what I read um it's not a question of which packet they packed first it's a question of which packet they stole yeah oh would it be still you were I don't see anything here about any individuals returning well because that wasn't part of their study it doesn't I mean eventually those tell me that tell me those three other chips stayed there at the end of the day and then I'll be like why then then those birds starve without seeing humans I don't believe it but I do believe that they would see uh they would they would see a competitive thing for that food type and go after it that makes more sense to me than like I wonder what the humans eat I should try that too I feel like it's more of a competition strategy because you would see that in in competition with other birds yeah and that's what I would say is that it's not necessarily an either or it could be a both that it could be if there are men if these are these are social animals these birds they um you know they have their chicks usually in large colonies there's lots of birds they they are competitive with each other and other birds they're probably watching paying attention to a lot of things and so there is that cue of another animal is eating this particular one I'm going to go after it and get it before that animal comes back and gets it or because before another bird comes to get it because we now know that one is good so there's definite there could be learning there could be boldness there could be competition involved and thank goodness my toes weren't there that this time so let me also remind you though that again these guys have only been around humans for about 80 years just um humans we don't we don't usually have a bag of crisps that are poisoned and a bag of crisps that are not which is why I think it's easy for you to kind of draw that conclusion that it's a it's a competition thing but if you're observing animals you could eat a snail that is poisoned or a snail that is not you could eat a frog that is poisoned or a frog that is not you could eat a plant that is toxic or a plant that is not and so I also think there is a huge evolutionary benefit to seeing a particular animal is eating a particular type of thing and knowing that's not gonna kill me yeah no I get that but I mean also because of the lack of uh of association with humans and all of this I would be more interested in seeing an experiment where they had like I don't know worms bread and chips and then you know something that's taking uh eating pretending to be the worms maybe and then they go after the worms I feel like it would be the company you would compete with you would want to compete with what the the resource that was under competition then knowing you had those other ones that did not seem to be under uh competition yes the only problem is you have to find three foods that are of equal value because uh desirability if if golds love worms your experiment is not going to work exactly this is why it would be difficult there's just why we could just use different colored chips and see if they did oh wait that's what they did it's what they just did oh my goodness well anyway uh point point being um um the understanding the reason that urbanized animals go after certain types of food can be helpful for us coexisting peacefully and it can be help for educating the public especially because just saying don't feed the birds is not an effective strategy if they are gonna go for whatever you're eating um and so that that's something to consider but I also think this is this is a good opportunity to look into the intelligence of some animals that we have once again underestimated called stupid assumed to have a low IQ because they do things that we think are dopey but really they have a pretty complex social understanding to be able to do what they do so I'm with you right there yeah this is I I think I think gulls are fascinating and they are they are predators they are scavengers they are social there's so much going on there and we went birds don't trust that vacant expression there's something going on behind those BDS yeah like I'm a velociraptor do you know that that's that gull is sitting there and in its mind it's just going I'm a velociraptor I'll eat your toes and your ice cream cone and your blue chip packet oh my goodness this is this week in science Justin what did you want to talk about oh it's it's that time again okay so uh oh what did I have here uh there's so the oldest synthetic material on the planet the a manufactured substance that that didn't exist in in nature was made by a multi-step process we might associate with intelligence and where you can this is uh researchers at abhart carls university in Germany they looked at they looked at birch tar in ancient neanderthal tool it was used as an adhesive to attach different tool parts together from some samples that are 200 000 years old and they wanted to know how they achieved making their their birch tar and basically they what they did was they ran their own archaeological experiments where they created a extracted birch tar from wood with different methods one of the methods that had been out there that had been proposed that it was just be a natural fire and then the birch tar leaks out under to rocks and then neanderthals came by and just found the substance and scraped it off and so what they did is they tested you know what a natural fire might look like what cooking the wood in a in sort of a fire pit and then of various sorts of above ground with a with a hole underneath and underground and all these sorts of things basically what they came to is comparing the chemical analysis of the birch tar that was 200 000 years old with the the different five different methods they used to extract the one that was closest was an underground basically earth oven distillation process well now this is this is sort of significant in a few few ways cognitively this is one of those things that you know humans were supposed to be the first ones to have a multi-step process where unseen things are taking place in this case like an earth oven or underground with this this theory of mind that has to sort of exist to explain this to another individual the the multi-step process that has to be involved the sort of exacting setup of the process because again once it's going you can't adjust it you can't turn the wood or anything it's all it gets out of sight and apparently this all took place 100 000 years before current modern humans had done anything like this the the closest this sort of closest fire use for modification in current modern humans is in South Africa about 40 000 years later where where humans were thought to have been heating rocks before napping them before turning them into tools so 40 000 years after meandertals were making synthetic materials through a distillation process and an earth oven humans heated rocks so they could smash better but would it necessarily need to be an earth oven or could it have been you know like i don't know how how some people they do like a goat's goat roast or pig roast where they dig a big pit and they put get coals in it and it just is a slow heating process underground and not so the things that they could tell is that it wasn't above ground it wasn't in a just a fire pit or a natural fire situation because there was low oxygen at the time of heating that they could tell from their chemical analysis it was a couple of methods that could have been utilized for doing it underground sort of like a like a roast like you're talking about there was enough mineral infusion in the tar that they could tell it was in contact with earth so it was it was it was a buried process but the controlled oxygen in it the low oxygen controlled environment requires a fire to be able to continue to heat and do extraction without burning up anything so is there any way to tell the difference with what they've found in their whole process of of figuring out how this could have worked um you know as like a fire as as tool use making creating using heat and creating the birth chart versus oh there was a forest fire and they were able to scrape the tar you know off of the birch trees as the oxygen oxygen levels in the tar the that they could tell that they were exposed to at the time of heating the oxygen levels only work for underground they did not match the any of the above ground scenarios uh the other one is there's no suit infusion uh okay so so it was it was also it was heated in a way that wasn't under the uh where the wood was not burning wood of the fire yeah or under the fire yeah what am i saying no above the wood would not have been above the fire where the suit would have infused as the birch tar was coming out so it was heated underground likely with the fire on top of it yeah so fascinating a very specific process which also then has to be you know to communicate teach train uh pass on uh an intricate manufacturing process like that you also have to sort of have an idea of why you're attempting to achieve it now i always have i always have some you know when when they're thinking oh this is so thought out and well understood the other possibility it's just windy it's just windy and fires are bad when it's windy so you dig holes for the fire right so as you do stuff when you're going to do a prolonged fire you might you might do it underground and it would be hard to find that evidence in a cave well you know so you know the other thing is we talked about a while ago about the neanderthal trophy hunting where they collected skulls right and then these skulls were also placed in found in these caves around the area of the fire which would have made them look really cool right so so you have all these sort of interesting aspects of the way neanderthals were utilizing fire in a much more complicated uh intensive way yeah then prior humans yeah you know i was there's a there's another study out that's talking about that looked at the cognitive differences between the way neanderthals invented fire which is they did the flint smashing you know the striking to make the sparks fire versus current modern human populations in africa invented the whole drill and the dry wood and with the little string and you pull and it makes the fire with with that friction yeah and that's that's considered the technologically more advanced version but it also might not be i was thinking it might not travel as well in in the eurasian environment where it's damper and wetter you can walk anywhere with your wet rocks and once you're smacking them together they're going to spark whereas if you had a couple of sticks with you and they got wet uh you're doomed yeah so so it also the the cognitive dissidents in the fire making tool kits that they used yeah also actually kind of matched the environments really well so it wasn't necessarily because of cognitive differences or abilities to conceive of things it's maybe just accessibility the materials to to do it and then you can also imagine neanderthals accidentally inventing fire because they're constantly making the stone tools and napping stones together and then one sparks they so they didn't have to go and like oh take a couple bones and smack them together no that didn't work well let me take a piece of wood and this this small pheasant and hit those together no that didn't work your experts at stone work and so they easily figure out which ones make the sparky things and then you know the technology goes and i've just learned just this evening as a result of this study that apparently birch tar is uh is has is used as not just an adhesive also a sealant and in medicines that it has antimicrobial properties as well which is fascinating since we've also know that the neanderthals were potentially doing medicine type they were healing each other if they could and you can also buy um birch tar essential oils because i guess that's a you can get any kind of essential yeah that's true you there's also birch tar soap for eczema i have no idea about these things okay antimicrobial thing is very important too especially just if you're just using it as an adhesive or if you're weatherproofing your loincloth whatever it is because it's not going to get uh fungicide i mean or it's not going to get uh organically decompose on you you know uh it's not going to melt in the in the rain in the dampness it will survive that and it's not going to decompose and be ruined so anyway just more evidence that neanderthals were at least as intelligent actually the story i didn't bring which was about the napping versus the the drill to to make fire kits uh they ultimately suggest that the cognitive abilities required to do those things because modern humans and neanderthals were separated for 500 to maybe 800 000 years yeah must pre-exist we're very likely not convergent evolutions of cognitive ability but more likely a sign that the longer deeper history ancestor also was capable of communication and cultural uh passing on of knowledge and complex stuff well animals do that exactly lots of animals do that yeah well to to a degree yes that's why we don't talk about tool use in terms of human intelligence anymore now we have manufacturing synthetic now i got a whole other list where we stop using tools because any animal can use a tool that's not a sign of intelligence blare that's just what animals do last story talking about cultural education and being able to pass down knowledge marshall university study found that virtual sex education tool that uh were they created or was created improved reproductive health knowledge scores and measures of self efficacy among adolescent girls this is published in the journal sex education researchers found that sexual health knowledge scores on a validated scale increased among participants along with improved measures uh regarding of understanding of their birth control healthy relationships sexually transmitted infection prevention so they kind of took a test before and after this was conducted on uh females age 14 to 18 participants answered questions about past experiences with school sex education programs they completed an online curriculum at uh www.w whatever this website marshall teentalk.org is the site covers a range of sexual health topics rather concisely it has some short animated videos and then there's a post survey that reassesses participants sexual health knowledge and according to jenny used associate professor at the marshall university school of medicine senior author of the study adolescents use websites and social media for sexual health information therefore there is a great need for accurate evidence-based online reproductive health tools marshall teentalk was designed specifically to provide local adolescents an accessible and accurate resource for reproductive health that they can trust this study validates the website as an effective teaching tool so that's awesome i can see the value of a vetted sex educational tool the young people can access without having to sit in a class full of awkward peers or awkward gym teachers right that's my question though is this study measuring it against no sex ed or is this study measuring online education versus in-person sex it so that's what caught my attention because 30.3 percent of participants reported that they had never had sex education classes in school now i'm just a liberal country boy from a rural university farm town in california but i thought sex education was a mandatory part of school because i had multiple classes growing up well it depends if you're public or private it also depends if you're if your parent has signed a waiver to remove you from that class which all parents have the opportunity to do yep and it also depends on the laws in the state that you so very important county school district because i i was wondering where in modern america first world developed country america is 30 percent of people 14 to 18 not receiving sex education yeah that's a thing where is that possible and so america is there so well the answer the answer because it turns out this is where marshal uh university is the answer is west virginia is a place america in 2022 yes one of the place is a place where young people are being severely undereducated so in a place like that especially but also elsewhere i guess where people have questions or interest that they educational want their information there's straightforward trustworthy online source i can see how this would be extremely helpful but this might not be it because one thing that you will not find discussed anywhere in the conversation or the education about stis or or birth control options or any of this is there won't be any discussion of abortion and the reason there won't be any even in the informational resource links to abortion is because abortion is completely banned in west virginia as of september 2022 marshal being in west virginia is likely just adhering to local law information yeah uh there's a there's one minute one minute that discusses lgbtq orientation it's not negative it's not really that informative either uh and but there is at least a link in the resources to advocates for youth that may lead to a path to a future where more information is accessible but no mention of abortion so while the website could be a good resource for the 30% who are receiving no education in west virginia there's still not getting a go on that local law has got it censored and then the next thought i have is you know tennessee did away with sex education they also have the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the nation wow what i didn't know i didn't know uh but what if they so is this this resource that they've created for to reach rural youths who aren't getting sex education then can also have to remove stuff if a law is passed well it depends i mean there's there's really interesting stuff going on in relation to and i'm going to connect this in i promise uh to the tiktok ban in montana because um if you can find a state where there aren't all of these uh restrictions and you publish an online sex ed course that's authored in there like in california for example but it is accessible to all 50 states anyone can google it and watch it right that's great there are weird things going on right now related to exactly what you're talking about when there are specific there are state specific laws that prohibit or censor specific internet content so this is really the question i think that that we will see this is where this is where science and politics mesh is like can you impact access to information um can you have a sex ed course that covers things like abortion and lgbtq issues um that anyone can access or can you put firewalls in certain locations that prevent that information from being accessed yeah certainly from schools uh from private uh private internet uh networks there those firewalls can be put into place much harder to do on a statewide larger level um but yeah i think that is a huge very important question to be asked the information could always be out there um you know and there are always there are whispered networks already for you know various people put together informational networks and resources and get the word around but it just makes it a lot harder to access yeah and so the point i guess what i came to is i applaud the idea of this uh why is it in west virginia well they're made well because they have a need right because they have a need i get it but but this needs to be in a state where you aren't having to censor your information if your information is meant to get to you and i'm gonna guess i'm gonna guess this is not the only place that this kind of information is made available where there there are many more websites in many other places put together by different organizations different universities this is just we've we've learned about it because they published the findings related to how how well their online tool worked so they've they've done a study and they published it and so that's why we know about this one in particular and so it's great for us to be able to talk about it in the sense that this is in west virginia and what else is going on there that in other states where things are more accessible that this tool is or tools like it are probably available accessible but maybe the information has already been more available in the first place and yeah i think comparatively across different tools and different states and different you know areas i think that would be an interesting study to see what what are we going to find when we look comparatively and i think also this is a this is a reminder to parents of children that are entering an age where they need to learn about these sorts of things to know what your school district is teaching know what your state allows in the curriculum and if you don't agree with that to find alternative resources to provide to your child because in the current day and age that we are living through you cannot count on the government to teach your child the complete sex and story you have to find out if that's happening on your own you have to know what your local government is is yeah if politics are getting in the way of health information and mostly you know i'm also disappointed because this is a perfect website for a father with daughters like oh it's time to have that talk there's a website i'll be back in an hour at two and a half hours i'm gonna actually be on vacation you can ask your mom any follow that like this is like you know there's tough things and and communication which is and and also i can't leave it to myself i'm going to get it wrong i'm going to get that you can't you can't count on just parents to know when an educator who's focused on it those of us who went through sex ed decades ago may not have the exact right information to provide to our children right and the reality is we love to think that we are the teachers the ones most responsible for all the information that our children are coming to use in their lives but really more often they're relying on their peers and on the educational surroundings and yes media the internet and all that kind of stuff um i mean but we wouldn't want to second guess ourselves here about all this too much or would we i'm always second guessing myself and that could be genetic Blair oh no yeah and ancestors going back even further to the i don't know how far back because this study looked at mice so uh it could have implications for people but these researchers were supported by a grant from the national institutes of health and their published study was it was called arc regulates a second guessing cognitive bias during naturalistic foraging through effects on discrete behavior models they looked at um 1609 forging excursions by mice and normally you think okay the mice are going to go out and they're just going to look around and they're going to be like oh look there's some food i like that food i'm going to eat a little bit of it that's great maybe i'll take some of it back to my little home home base whatever i'll go back to that spot oh there's still food there i'm going to go to a new spot oh the look around they found that the mice that they were looking at as they foraged in this naturalistic laboratory setting of course it's not a real setting but they found that they had 24 behavioral sequences that they did like building blocks over and over again that they had specific sequences of behavior that were used in their foraging and the the mice foraged and kind of put the sequences of behaviors together and like in between the different sequences that were hardwired they'd do something spontaneous like go a different direction who would do is but then back on to their foraging sequence that's the next foraging sequence that they're going to do um and together it they found that they had never seen this before or determined that there were these repeated behavioral patterns because of the way that there was a spontaneous behavior it made it seem very very complex from the outside um but what they found is that one of these behavior patterns was a second guessing behavior and the researchers found that there's a gene that we've talked about before called arc arc is known to be involved in learning and memory and there are many interesting research paths specifically focused on this protein or the or the protein that the arc gene produces they got rid of the arc gene and six of those 24 spawn not spontaneous but stereotyped behavior sequences got shifted and it short circuited a second guessing behavior like oh i've seen food here before maybe i'm gonna go here no no no i wish i don't want to go there i'm gonna go something else so these mice that had originally been second guessing themselves about where they wanted to go and find food suddenly they weren't second guessing themselves they followed through with their original plan they followed through with the original plan exactly does that mean that they does that mean that they stopped the little spontaneous interludes they were different no the spontaneous interludes were were a little bit different so but the what they think is that everything else the memory even though they altered arc they got rid of it the mouse the mouse memory still seemed to be fine and learning still seemed to be fine it was just the second guessing of what they were going to do next was the thing that disappeared right so i guess in a sense you could say that that's spontaneity is something that was also short circuited because instead of following through to like the next obvious place to go look for food because you've seen it there before already you know that maybe a mouse would be like do i go left do i go right do i go left do i go right do i go where i know where i know there's food already do i go someplace where i don't know there's food now the mice wouldn't do the spontaneous choice they would just do what they already knew um but uh the researchers say that what they think this is is that this second guessing is possibly partially genetic and that the decisions that we have second guessing because it adds more novelty which could allow for more exploration and it could have been advantageous to mice in the wild or you know the animals in the wild to not necessarily go with the sure thing but to second guess and to you know mark the the the other circle on the multi-choice test so so this is right now when i wish i had uh time to go and try to research something on the fly now i want to know right now if people who have no internal monologue have a have a different arc gene that could be very interesting because because that's where my second guessing comes from it's all internal dialogue it's all i'm going to do something a little voice imagine you know you keep saying you want to go left instead of right why don't you try it today yeah okay it's internal without the internal dialogue i don't know how i would second guess anything how would you even i don't even how you do a first guess but second guessing definitely is off the table right so the first guess is guess is that you know you've gone and you've found food somewhere before so there's just no choices there no there is no do we have chinese or mexican for dinner tonight there's just chinese because that is the only thing and there's no you know second guessing or you know i probably i'm not going to go into other food-based stuff because you know anyway it's good enough analogy it's good enough analogy yeah but you don't the second guessing is um yeah i think if there's there's no other option why do you have to have an internal monologue yeah i don't i mean i i'm i'm insanely curious about people without an internal monologue as it is but now i want to see if the arc gene is involved huh yeah that would be interesting be interesting to see all the different kind of connections of what's going on in the brain with the with the arc gene because you're right it's i feel like second guessing is a really complex behavior very complex yeah i mean so there's a lot going on there in this particular study it's you know very simplified it was like oh look mice don't always just go to the spot where they found foods they go to these other patches that don't necessarily have food that they've you know or that they know might be empty where are they going back there and like what's happening you know why are they second guessing their choice when they know there's food someplace but there may or may not be food someplace else why are they second guessing it is it i mean we know the arc gene is involved in memory so are they just fault is it a faulty memory like maybe there's some food left or like maybe sometimes because of different seasons and different plants that you know i've got a suggestion grow more i don't know i got a suggestion there too uh you know foods very likely where you where you just found it but the other spot seems to have a competition to it it's the blue chip all over again you know i'm going to go i'm going to go to the contested food spot just because you know that's the that's the one that you got to be there at the right time for the other one will be there it's fine i can get that anytime but the other one might be time dependent or competition dependent so if you go take a look i was thinking it's more like a gambling behavior like you're taking a risky move right right um known reward or yes is there maybe yeah do i cash out or do i put it back into the machine do i go again put it all on black yeah i think i think it's very i think it's all this is all very interesting and yes it's studying mice and maybe one day we'll understand this second guessing food choosing of of mice but it could also help us if we can figure out how the arc gene is working more specifically with within mice maybe it'll give us some insights into things like gambling into our second guessing into how we live our lives and i don't know from now on though whenever i'm second guessing i'm going to say this is totally just because you know this is evolutionarily advantageous whatever choice i make whatever choice i mean it's fine it's good um and then final story final story final story uh blare especially but uh every actually everyone pair according to a new study out of the public library of science one plus one published today may 31st researchers out of uc sandiego and out of uh the max plonk institute for evolutionary anthropology in germany have found out that kids not goats human children are more curious than other great apes they compared two to three year olds against gorillas and chimpanzees and bonobos and orangutans on a little task in which they had two cups and the two cups had grapes one of the cups had more grapes than the other cup now for the great apes grapes were awesome for the kids they had to switch it up and they got stickers instead instead of grapes because apparently oh i'm sorry and i said two to three years old it was aged three to five years old but um apparently three to five-year-old humans like stickers more than they like and i don't know whether this is because the adults who put this study together were afraid of the kids choking on grapes or whether the kids really like stickers more than they like grapes but anyway that's just one little thing in this study um one cup was transparent the transparent cup had fewer of whatever the reward was than an opaque cup that was right next to it and over and over and over again this is basically gambling right it's a certain choice of a small amount of grapes or stickers or oh what is in that cup i cannot see into do i choose it do i invest in a savings bond or do i bet it all on the ponies exactly and over and over again the apes bet on the safe choice while the kids up to 83 of the time um they went for the the cup they could not see kids over and over and over we're like i just have to see behind door number three alex man that's tough though you know what they're thinking you know what they're thinking though i really hope there's grapes in there so this is my problem with this is that it's stickers these animals are betting on something vital to survival food but i mean they're treats they're treats but it's still it's a different value item because it has caloric qualities and these so the and of course these are not wild apes that they've gone out into the wild and done this these are these are zoo apes these are apes that exist in in habitats where they're very well fed so if we'll think about this like from the arguments we've had over and over again about the marshmallow test right this is you know these are apes that are very well taken care of they are not afraid of starving right and you just yeah i feel like it's tough because i also feel like human children generally speaking do not have to fend for themselves to eat oh i did oh boy i did oh my goodness let me tell you generally speaking it's three to five year olds right and and it's also it's so so that's the other problem like stickers are just for fun it's just fun so you'd be like what could be in there a different toy more stickers less stickers i don't know i don't i know i can't see what's in the cup i have no idea yes listen i'm maybe maybe kids just had many reasons for doing what they did it just look on the outside looking in it seems like a false equivalency to me based on the value based on the quality based on what there is to win or lose out of the deal it's also it could also be a very uh what are kids like i don't know they like stickers where i put those in there kids go crazy for them do they really oh yes and then the kids looking at a bunch of stickers going that's not fun enough that's not interesting enough i don't know why did they use marshmallows or chocolate chips or you know a food item at least anything other than a boring sticker that will go star stickers i used to like knock it off so the last the last phase of the study so the last the last phase of the study for the for all of the chimps and kids they um let they gave them an idea that okay there's just more of whatever is in the transparent cup in the opaque cup basically we're like look you could see everything and the children kept engaging in some aspect of exploration to get their choices and the great apes once they knew there were more grapes in that opaque cup they switched their their strategy and they were no longer risk averse and they only went after the opaque cup so it's so i think the risk aversion aspect and what you were talking about there with like uh survival based yeah reward or you know what what is there anyway the the authors are like well of course this means humans generally are you know going to be more exploratory unless risk averse and of course that's why we're so successful no that's not what they said but anyway so the other the other thing is the human intelligence and human environments especially now are so much more intricate there's so much more to to explore i mean if you had too much curiosity as a young gorilla i i imagine you would go insane with boredom because there's only so many leaves to turn over there's only so many what you think you would most likely end up dead there's like you think the jungle is boring is that what you're telling me right now like why are there so many ants to watch compared to the level that of of intricate novel things that a human child can interact with in a day and still be hungry for more yeah i think a jungle oh wow i think you are in the wrong universe on this i think a jungle i think a jungle can be very boring have you ever i've got how much time have you spent in a jungle without cell service where you're like yeah i've seen enough jungle i think i feel like it would take me it'd take me maybe a day or two not being from the jungle wow but it no i would be spending my time trying not to get killed that would be pretty much what i would oh you left the tent see there's the difference between you and me you let you actually went out into the dry state what you're describing is the enrichment we put in enclosures for animals yeah to replicate the wild scenario like that's what we do to ourselves that's what we do our children we enrich our children's lives because it is boring compared to the wild that's what you're doing you are stimulating behaviors and mental sensations that nature did before we domesticated ourselves and put ourselves in boxes yeah that's what you're doing yeah and there's and there's definitely still exploration that's happening but i but the question is why is it a higher percentage of human children who are more likely to engage in the exploration in this particular study than the great apes and is this something that is really a difference between our primate relatives and uh you know the human brain and is this curiosity and exploration one aspect of our development as humans that is right really different and i think that's a question that deserves a lot more study yeah not whether or not the if that is what they tested let's just say that is what they tested and that is what they found i don't think it that's a result of us being more advanced or any of these other things i think you hit the nail on the head talking about trying to not die in the jungle um we don't have selective pressures to prevent toddlers from risky behaviors anymore because by and large we keep them alive so yeah you attach the bookshelf to the wall so they can't fall over um we don't feed them grapes unless they've been sliced so they don't choke on the grapes oh yeah um exactly yeah so we're not selecting out the ultra risky behavior anymore we're yeah so really all that's happening is like adaptive radiation where we're allowing risky behavior to happen untethered because there's no pressure on that behavior except except that i would i would go into the deep well of human history and look at all of the diversity of survival strategies that humans have and in environments that humans have adapted to and i would compare that to gorillas who have the last bit of their rainforest goes away are gone from the planet i mean they're going to go panda bear in terms of i need this and nothing else but you're also i think you're changing um adapting to an environment versus adapting an environment to you which is what we buy no no no if you're going back if you're going back into i'm not talking about current modern uh human history i'm talking about going way back where you would have a fishing subsistence uh versus a uh a forest gathering subsistence versus hunter-gatherers who are hunting different prey i mean humans well that's the question how those toddlers do on this test we don't know which we can't i feel like they'd be fine but i i i think that humans exploratory explorative nature is part of the human intelligence that gained all this knowledge by experimenting with that cup that was a mystery and i don't think that that is why science is an animal intelligence uh hi i think you're gonna lose on the comparative animal intelligence they're just as curious about everything and they're just as exploratory and they're just as i don't think so but the reason is the question is why and so what are the what and in the last sentence of the abstract that the researchers have put in there i mean they are still arguing that these differences are are definitely there but they say they mostly lay in motivational dispositions to explore the unknown so what are the motivations for exploration is it real like cognitive brain differences or is it survival and risk aversion and or maybe humans have started adapting to these safer environments where they can be more exploratory there are so many things that we do not know and there i would totally 100% agree with Blair because i think one is food and the other is a resource that you can get anytime you want if you're a kid you can get stickers there's no not there's no stakes yeah totally agree yeah explore ah stickers i got five of those at home yeah five sticker books let me see what else you got and if i cry i'll get those anyway i'm gonna get like this you're not i'm gonna i'm gonna wind my way into the treat if all else fails i hope nobody's gonna cry right now because i think we are all out of stickers the science sticker cup is empty for the night yes and we've made it all the way through the show thank you everyone for being here for another episode of this week in science i would love to send some shout outs to our chatters everyone in the chat room thank you for joining us and chatting definitely thank you to gourd and aran lore and others who helped keep those chat rooms very wonderful places to be fada thank you so much for your help with show notes and social media it's awesome that you help with that identity for thank you for recording the show and rachel thank you thank you thank you for your editing work and of course as always i cannot forget i must thank our patreon sponsors thank you to craig potts mary guertz therese smith richard badge kenton northcote rick loveman george corris pierre velezarb john ratna swamy carl cornfield chris wozniak vegaard chef's dad house niter donathan styles a kth adan stylo ali coffin ragan don mondes steven albaranda myshack stu polyc andrew swanson fredes 104 sky luke paul roenevich kevin reardon noodles jack brine carrington david youngblood shon claren slam john mckay greg riley marquesson blow steve leesman aka zima ken haze howard tan christopher rappin richard brendan menish johnny gridley chelmy day flying out christopher drier arty on greg briggs who's on a boat please don't get attacked by orcas john atwood rudy garcia david wilkinson rodney lewis paul rick ramis curt larson craig landon sue doster jason old stave neighbor eric nap e o adam mishcon kevin perich and erin luthan oh and by the way happy birthday adam mishcon steve develop bob calder marjorie paul disney david similarly patrick fecararo and tony steele thank you for all of your support and if you would like to support us on patreon please head over to twist.org and click on the patreon link on next week's show we will be back wednesday eight p.m pacific time or thursday five a.m. central european time pick your show either one same thing broadcasting live from our youtube and facebook channels and from twist.org slash live hey do you want to listen to us as a podcast uh perhaps while you sequence your genome i don't know just search for this week in science of our podcast or 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 the stories will be available on our website www.twist.org 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 t w i s in the subject line or your email will be spam filtered into an opaque cup that all of us are too risk averse to look inside i'm so sorry about that you can you can also hit us up on the twitter where we are at twist science at dr kiki at jackson fly and at players 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 during the night 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've 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 a shop got my banner up for old 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 global warming is coming your way so everybody this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science science i've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that what i say may not represent your this might understand do you understand i'll never understand it you'll never understand do you understand i'll never understand all of it no i hope not i don't think any one person could ever understand all of it but to understand some of it we are so so lucky thank you all for watching being here i don't know justin went off to get more coffee probably yeah he says he wears his headphones around i could tell yeah he's listening he's listening just not talking thank you laura d thank you very much for being here and enjoying the show and fada who's there who's there sonny nox john hogan thank you for enjoying the show got you gamer got out of there a while ago else is still here sorry for my lateness tonight oh quite all right we missed you of course but guess what you got all your stories in so i was able to get them all in there no harm no foul i'm glad i was able to bring them there they were interesting stories i'm sorry i missed your discussions though oh that's okay it's okay probably would have made the show too long anyway it was already so long i like i have to go to bed yeah it's late but i want justin to come back so that we can say the things oh there he is wait here oh look there he is where did he go there he is hey so i'm sorry no wonder when last the last month or so we've had a story about stem cells that were not rejected mm-hmm auto immune whatever a resistant stem cells we've got today you missed i don't know if you caught what was in the run down there but a in vivo editing gene editing that showed a massive improvement yeah between those two specifically like i think in terms of broadcasting like oh we figured out how to broadcast things through through the air and then we were like oh wait now we can go to space and beam the beam that information down and then we took a a wire and ran it from house to house to house and then use that and it like and now we're now people are using the internet which is still wires connected and everything but still it's not the necessarily the cable network unless that's what your internet runs off of point being like which of these do they compete to cure things i mean stem cells is restoration of tissue i guess versus genes is prevent it would be a more preventative uh i don't know i mean i mean yeah they definitely have their that you need both for sure they have their uses and then i mean in vivo editing you can edit stem cells right so those edited stem cells can go in and then become a new population of healthier cells right or maybe they have a different function that allows suddenly you know a faster growing cartilage for your knees or something like that or i don't know and then but i mean we start thinking about it also like these gene networks and what we're understanding about like how genes interact with each other you know to determine how tall you are or you know other all sorts of things but suddenly we've got machine learning that's helping us determine which genes are important to be changed or targeted and then we can crisper them in somebody's body prime prime edit yeah that's that's what you you don't want to crisper you get too many uh prime edit all right yeah so prime edit you want prime edit exactly so prime editing though now i'm talking about i'm using crisper legs xeroxing sure sure it's the the brand name is just for if you prime edit it you get it in two days so no but only if you pay a hundred dollars or so a year yeah so and so then the the other question is like how does this affect the entire drug industry right like if one company it's okay so you had two or three companies that are are doing stem cells and gene editing and now you can fix the genes that lead to the disease so that they don't manifest in you anymore i mean that it's a wonderful thing we're still a ways away but we're talking about this the technology is in development right now yeah but i mean are you gonna want to edit your you got a headache because you didn't drink enough you you forgot to drink coffee one day or you didn't drink enough water you're gonna take your ibuprofen or your aspirin or something like that you're not going to go prime edit yourself so the drug companies are still gonna be there for you know certain short for aspirin by your girlfriend yeah no i'm just saying for certain short term solutions the drug companies are going to be there serving up drugs but then for long term things you're going to be balancing probably between that editing or stem cells and yeah i think there's going to be a big balance we're just going to be adding more different companies a really major shift in in the healthcare industry and like all like what if you can if you can edit the genes that eliminate cancer risk in yeah while they're alive or or or if you can reverse like with this other if you can reverse autism autism all timers parking things in somebody who's already got it like we've talked about gene editing like it's always but what you have to do first would have to be for a future generation where you edit an embryonic stage uh to to do the proofreading and editing of the of the genes but if you can do it while somebody's alive change their health outcomes now but you first you have to standardize sequencing the genome of patients yes you need to standardize it yeah so there's gonna that's not part of standard care currently yeah get your genome sequenced no because otherwise so okay let me just say we'll continue treating symptoms sure sure unless because how about the fact how how long have we known the microbiome is an important part of healthcare and that still is not standard practice ignoring it your microbiome and address that as part of your holistic care that is actually a lot easier than sequencing your entire genome so then we so then we're looking at a landscape of gene editing technology first of all we can we can already sequence any patient walking in the door the problem is doctors can't use that information for anything hardly they can they even even in in trying to give you risk factors it's very difficult they usually if you go in it's usually if you go in and have a very specific disease you're like i've got okay you might check a chromosomal loci or something like this but but they're using it more often so like for the rca2 gene or whatever like for breast cancer versus you know there are very specific mutations that we could be like okay we know you got this this is going to be useful yeah there's and there's predictives that that are that you can take place for for all sorts of things right but even those in a clinical environment a doctor person mechanic body mechanic human body mechanic has a hard time actually using any that information productively mm-hmm but when you get into gene therapies being on the table now that becomes crucial like you're saying yeah a crucial part in every patient would have their profile absolutely but that's kind of my point though is that is that we currently have treatments for microbiome issues but you still that is not standard practice when you go in for any host of problems to look at your microbiome so even gastrointestinal issues they don't sequence your microbiome as one of the first things not to mention all sorts of other problems you could stem in the microbiome very likely catch Parkinson's disease before it manifests diagnosically microbiome right and that's my point is that is that we have therapies for the microbiome but but the microbiome is not being looked at because we're not saying it's not going to happen I'm saying there has to be a priority in medical care besides the technology to fix the genome but the priority needs to be on assessing the genome as well which is something that I don't mention so this is this is this is what I'm talking about right now though this is what is what is that what is that landscape so that we have gene editing technology and companies and and processes that our doctor can understand how to utilize based on the genome that they've collected we have a microbiome database and testing of patients so we have microbiome gene therapy and gene awareness or screening and then and then the third one would be the stem cell technology to do tissue repair like you say cartilage repair injury repair becomes a major player and that so those are the I guess that those are the three really big ones that then would be the landscape that sort of replaces the current way that healthcare is being administered so here's my here's my question to that based on the current medical care system at least in our country how do you make bespoke medical care profitable because that's the difference but I don't know what the word bespoke means made made to order made to fit for an individual right because right now you have symptoms yeah it's very general thousands of people have that symptom here is a medication for that symptom right that is profitable because you can make a medicine that hundreds of thousands of people can take right but as opposed to let me see exactly what your system is dealing with and let me tailor a gene therapy for your specific genome how do you make that profitable so so it is it replaces two things one the profits that are in drug companies would if we just took our current system would go to gene editing individual therapy companies and it could be done likely a lot with with that level of money flowing through the system it happens overnight right it happens overnight but it's also going to be the kind of thing that unless our system changes I mean it's what you're gonna have it's the haves and the have nots right it's people who can afford it versus people who cannot afford it because unless until you get to an economy of scale that allows the personalization to actually be more like oh just fixing I don't know where it's more legos and everything fits fits together but it's all you know it's a word I'm just trying to until it's created a system is created that can be mass applied there's no way for anybody else but we have that to seriously we're missing one ingredient we have to get rid of insurance companies no no that is that's not that's not a laughing matter it's not a lot of that's where the money it's public health right that's where the money that we're talking about with the cost of everything that's where it's going I was watching this really interesting hearing congressional hearing where they had drug manufacturers there and they had these I forgot what they're called but they're in between that negotiates drug prices on behalf of clients and the drug companies are like actually we keep offering the molecular biosimilars for much cheaper but when we do they don't make it into the system and into your drug system you know where there's a french company and a danish company and you know some american companies it's like if we don't show a high list price it doesn't get put on the selection for drugs that can be used and then they said well what about that what's the problem there you guys negotiate the prices why why are you well there's a whole rebate system and everything else okay who do those rebates go to our clients who are your clients who owns the negotiators the insurance companies so what that means is all of the negotiating to lower drug prices in the united states being done within insurance companies lowers the price for the drug insurance for the insurance companies but not for the patients yeah for and not for the billing to medicaid so they keep the prices looking high so that they can charge medicaid or they can charge patients this is why the pasta I had when I went to the emergency room for abdominal pain cost $200 there are co-payments there are co-payments for drugs some service there are co-payments for drugs oh yeah that are higher than the drug company is charging for the drug that's insane this topic makes me that's an insane system and it turns out some of these intermediaries for the insurance companies that that are taking these rebates that are are like in the seashells or something like it's also like this like weird like there's a lot of like off-shoring of the whole reason I brought all this up the seashells not the seashells for some reason the same reason all all all the what are you calling the the big ships that you go on when you go on vacation I would never go on what are those called carnival cruise cruise lines cruise lines are all for some reason based in the Bahamas yeah yeah like for some legal reason I brought all this up and and now we're talking about this really depressing thing is that like all of these medical advances are very very exciting and I cannot wait to see where they go but there is a piece of me that wants to make sure that there is a lens being used of how will this actually apply to humans who aren't millionaires and how long will it take and that's the part that I think is just working in the confines of the system we have and yes it would be great if the system could change I'm not going to hold my breath but you know the one study yeah but the one study that uh Justin was talking about I think related to uh not uh the anti-rejection of uh of stem cells so that's the kind of thing that will that kind of technology a universal stem cell means you don't have to customize it for each patient which does make it so that that creates yes that creates a higher likelihood of a single kind of stem cell a single stem cell donor line being able to then have to customize the growth for the appropriate destination right but at the same time it does it starts to create the opportunity for you know labs and hospitals to be able to do it themselves yeah uh the other thing too is like you know sequencing sequencing can be done for you know uh a nickel of patient and now the machines are smaller so it yeah it can that information can doesn't have to be within 24 48 hours and can cost you know an app maybe a hundred bucks per patient yeah that's kind of my point though is you can also you can also sequence microbiomes very cheaply and easily right but right but we don't do that in the medical system so what's going on yeah that's all i'm asking is yeah the disconnects what is the lag yeah can i can i can i say it again it's the insurance companies it is right that's my whole point that's the point i was trying to make is siphoning the money out of the health this stuff is really exciting but what will it take to bring it to actual humans that's the death of the insurance company system breaking the system yeah yeah you have to make it exciting and profitable yeah uh will john hogan was asking do we think uh miracle will loosen up restrictions with stem cells and personalized medicine i think uh not anytime soon i think the united states the fda is they're they're really trying to walk a fine line between keeping people safe and promoting business um and they actually are like promoting business a lot more than the actually waiting to make sure that things are safe before allowing them to happen so we have things like stem cells being injected into retinas and people going blind and um that's a reason that some of these stem cell technologies are not being as rapidly um rolled out by companies as people would like to see them yeah so i mean i want to say thank you i like things being tested as much as possible before they go into people but some people like flying to foreign countries and injecting things that they've heard that it worked on somebody's brother's nephew's uncle's sister's dog yeah this is kind of part of the reason uh for the the whole of the thing i was saying about the insurance companies and and the is that you don't like the high list pricing of drugs over bio similars yeah is because if that drug that you need every month is twenty five dollars a month with insurance or three thousand dollars a month without you have to keep your insurance at eight hundred dollars a month but if it's actually only twenty five dollars from the manufacturer you don't need your insurance anymore because that cost you seven hundred and seventy five dollars more than you were spending on the drug that you need so that's only but if you're only if you're only getting the drug if you're only getting the drug yeah now you're talking gambling again now you're gambling risk aversion i i hear you but the part specifically to the drugs right because this is what this hearing was about it occurred to me it's like the whole point of keeping list prices high and keeping their rebates or whatever is is basically leverage on the health of of people if you have leverage over their health you can charge them eight hundred dollars a month even if they only need a hundred dollars a month in treatment even if they only need a hundred dollars in treatment and access okay do that they're subsidizing other describing all types of insurance no that's what you're describing you're betting on on a need on a higher need at some point because you have renters or housing insurance is why you have car insurance that's that's the way insurance works you're into an extent except the auto insurance people the auto insurance industry isn't jacking up the price of cars four or five eight hundred thousand it's jacking up the price of repair which is basically what you're talking about if you went to a basic body shop and paid cost for parts versus you went to your insurance sponsored body shop everything costs 10 times as much it's the same game the same game yeah yeah okay it's the exact same game okay well then it's still leveraged against people soon as we get rid of the insurance paul disney says laying off every single health insurance employee in the united states would add 1.39 percent to the unemployment rate i can live with that they could have there there could be other jobs related to helping people through hey if every man if every american had another four to twelve to sixteen hundred dollars a month to spend that would create a lot of jobs a lot of jobs that would just them going out and spending money yes would create more than that many jobs they'd be fine money but i do like his comment you know not great not terrible not terrible i think that's gonna be my new to my new tagline not great not great not terrible this is a very happy in between speaking of happy in between i know that blare was saying she is tired well then say good night blare good night blare say good morning justin good morning justin good night kiki good night everyone thank you for joining us for another fun filled after show and episode of twist we hope that we make your cubicle sitting and making up of numbers much more enjoyable and we do hope that you will join us again next week wednesday eight p.m pacific time and whatever early morning time that is in the european countries if that's where you are but um until then oh my gosh it's june what is happening there's a whole bunch of stuff if you're graduating it's always a month it's always a month don't you know that it's always a month congratulations to all the graduates we hope the graduating people it is graduating season we hope you are having wonderful graduations and the roar of the crowd and when you get out there to the end of the working world remember the best thing that you can do for success is listen to twist just be lucky and listen to i was gonna say get a job with insurance oh that's it too yeah insurance that's like that is going to last and they're not going to take it away from you and minimize like i said be lucky be lucky it's the best road to success yeah so anyway until next week be lucky be safe be curious be great be terrible we'll see you later don't be terrible don't be terrible