It's time for twists. That's right. It's time for our weekly podcast broadcast. Thank you for joining us Blair, are you ready to do this show? I'm so ready. You so ready So let's get to it starting in three to this is Twist This week in science episode number 860 recorded on Wednesday, January 26 2022 How to regenerate a leg. I know you want to know I'm Dr. Kiki and today on the show We will fill your heads with frog legs flirtation and friends, but first disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer You need to start somewhere an inspiration a twinkle in an eye It doesn't come from nowhere Sometimes it's a good book a walk in a park a nice long shower Sometimes it's getting the sleep you need. It's drying outside the lines or staying inside a box Sometimes it's a bunch of cells struck by electricity in a muddy cocoon or Ingredients stirred in a pot at just the right temperature or it could be This week in science Coming up next Oh, I have to plug it in don't I? It was a good intro I had it all the way except for the did you plug it in part? Okay? coming up Next now it won't even play. Did I get it right? Can you hear it? No? No? silly There we go, hold on I can do this Take a deep breath Mine I can't get enough Science to you kiki and the good science to you to Blair and welcome everyone to another episode of This week in science everyone out there. We're so glad that you're joining us once again for another Fun-filled adventure through the world of science whoo-hoo but you might have noticed already that we're missing a Justin so There's news there's news Justin's not joining us tonight because he's on baby duty. So Congratulations to Justin and Yana for their newborn child. There's a new baby in the twist family sprung little life Just flickering right there. So exciting. So There's not much sleep Being had and Justin's world right now, but we will keep the science fires burning and Are really looking forward to seeing when he comes back, but for now, we'll let him be off being a daddy Papa Justin But in the meantime, you know, there's still the science We're gonna keep it going right Blair.  We have all sorts of science news. I have stories about sweet tasting Deep microbes and frog legs So many good things. What is in the animal corner? Oh, well outside of the animal corner I brought a bunch of dinosaur stories still, you know animal stuff But we'll talk about that first and then I have hippos and jaguars in the actual animal corner proper I Like the hippos and I like the jaguars and they're both in the same part of the alphabet It's a J. It's right in there. Yes, some nice megafauna for the animal corner. Yes Now it's time for us to start the show so as we jump into the show I want everyone to remember that if you are not yet subscribed you can find us all places that podcasts are found We also stream live every week Wednesday at 8 p.m. Pacific time on Facebook YouTube and twitch we are twist science on YouTube and twitch No, no, sorry twist science on twitch and Twitter and Instagram and we are this week in science Everywhere else you can find information about the show and show notes and all those things at twist org Okay, let's start with the science big big news this week The naysayers I think I might have been concerned and counted as one of them Have been so far proved wrong proven wrong the James Webb Space Telescope has made its way to Lagrange point to in an orbit around Lagrange point to it just had a booster Exercise that put it into its orbit and now with all of its solar shades and mirrors Furl unfurled It is now ready to start the five month long process of calibration and testing to make sure it's ready to actually do observational science and To get on with its mission so It's gotten where it needs to be It's doing what it needs to do it has Very successfully like more than successfully it has done better than expected all the way out So now because of the way that they launched it and certain things They're gonna be able to have a longer lifetime to it because they have more fuel than they thought they would so There are all sorts of things going on out there and maybe we will have a Wonderful infrared view of our universe By June Yeah, whatever the opposite of it breaking is is what That's great Never been so happy to have a prediction already foiled. Hopefully it stays that way Yeah, so I mean there's five months still of the calibration of the testing and making sure all the systems work and make You know, there's a lot that can still go wrong But it's gotten where it needs to be and that is the big part I mean, I think some of the interesting questions. There are other deep space the deep space observatory is out around l2 And It's a big question. My my son was asking me this last week He's like, what if something does go wrong out there? How do they fix it? And I was like, well, they don't he's like Why don't we have a space station out there? Like yeah, but these are great questions It's not something that'll be done right away, but I mean these are very interesting questions You need to send a shuttle out there with a 3d printer that will print a robot to then do the actual repair So it's not sitting out there also getting ruined But instead you just you're like, oh, let me send the Shuttle that is only as large as a 3d printer. There you go One day we will have the ai robots that will be able to you know Be like little little crab robots that travel all over our spacecraft and fix them when they need fixing But that day is not yet. This is how the matrix started Is very possible Yeah, what yeah other spacey news though, uh, that's not as Positive but as could come out being positive. So spacex back in 2015 It was part of the the the mission launching the deep space observatory for nasa out to l2 and its second stage booster rocket got up into orbit around the earth and did not have enough fuel to Get itself back down to crash, you know to come back to earth. So it was stuck in earth's orbit It didn't have enough fuel to have a controlled orbit. So it's been in a chaotic orbit and now an old falcon 9 spacex rocket is gonna Impact on the moon Okay, it's gonna run into the moon and it's probably gonna happen on march 4th They don't know exactly because there are factors like solar radiation and other things that are going to impact Trajectory of the rocket but at this they they Think march 4th. It will land somewhere on the equator on the far side of the moon And hopefully We'll have a bunch of of of our satellites that are around the moon in proper position to be able to look at the ejecta and so that is the hope right now but It's still being determined. Yeah, chaotic orbit. This is what happens. This these things are starting to happen This is the first time that we have an unplanned or accidental Impact like this on the moon. We have impacted the moon before on purpose We've had things land on the moon also, but This is one of those things It's we just keeps uh, this is just more mass from earth that we're never gonna get back We're just sending it away Yeah, I mean we don't need that booster rocket. I mean I bet spacex would like to get it back I wonder if you know at some point they'll send a miss a Missed a mission to get it's their rocket booster parts Just so much mass the the telescope this all our satellites Which is so much mass in space that is no longer on our planet. It's crazy. I'm sure it's like One percent or something but it's still it's at a certain point. It's got to make an impact, right? At a certain point Unless we start uh mining asteroids Oh, and then we can bring mass back I see I see interesting. Yes. Yes, huh. We'll bring it all back the universe it will provide I guess unless we make ourselves too heavy and then that messes things. It's anyway We don't need to talk about that. Why don't we talk about not future stuff, but some past stuff? Yes dinosaurs. Do you know I can tell you what month the dinosaurs died? No, what? We're talking about like what month and where this rocket booster is going to hit the moon But now you can like what is this astrology for dinosaurs? What's what's happening here? Not exactly. I mean, we know it was about 66 million years ago at the kt extinction event, right? Yeah But but what month that's what we want to know A recent study in nature builds on earlier evidence to suggest that dinosaurs probably met their demise Late may early june Yeah, okay. Uh, this is looking at a site called tannis, which is in the hell creek formation in north dakota. It's uh Place where there's just so much fossils to go through And um, they have actually been able to observe the cretaceous paleogene boundary in the succession of sediments So they actually have um specific Elements in the sediment that leads them to believe that there's actually this is a flash point of exactly when it happened um And so they have fossils early dinosaurs early mammal or sorry dinosaurs early mammals fish plants other things Um, they're really well preserved They even have some of them have soft tissues skin bones and all sorts of things that they can use to kind of Date these things appropriately um, so one of the so the main reason they think that this is this caught them the main moment when the meteor hit Is uh, the sediments, okay, I'll just say the sediments you can trust me on that There's a whole thing but the sediments tell them this is this but also there were these things called melt spherules In the soil so tiny glass balls cooled in flight from molten rock So the idea is that when the asteroid struck earth In the region of what we now call the euthan peninsula in mexico It's spread debris and melt spherules for thousands of kilometers And so these being there tells us it's that exact moment The the third piece of evidence is sessy waves So they're standing waves and deep channels That tell them that this has to do with this larger impact So all that to say That means this is the extinction event In there now. How do you know? Okay. This is the extinction event. Okay. This means it's late may early june They analyzed fish bones um, specifically certain sturgeon fossils And the turns out that sturgeons They move from summer to winter They have seasonal changes in where they live if it's salt or fresh water And so they have growth rings in their bones That show that alternation between salt and fresh water They're in fresh waters in summer months salt water in winter months And so in the specimens they analyzed this lined up with modern-day sturgeon bones as well The last growth increment matches the transform transition from spring to summer This makes them think it's june. This does also confirm earlier evidence from fossil plants water lilies which um They I guess so at the point of impact the lake froze Which preserved these fossil plants perfectly and by comparing them to modern water lilies They were able to see where they were in annual patterns And it was late may early june. So these two Clues Tell us the dinosaurs want extinct the beginning of the summer But maybe Like the beginning of the summer when the summer was 66 million years ago because climate change potentially has adjusted when that's happening And that is a great point. Yes So you're totally right. We don't know if sturgeon Movements were slightly different because temperatures were slightly different in the waters We don't know if the same is true for the water lilies. So you're totally right about that This is based on current modern day seasonal fluctuations It occurred it occurred during what would have been Yeah, the same time period with the same seasonal Time period that the plants would have been doing their thing flowering or flowering or whatever. Yeah, that's interesting so I would say You're totally right. It's Maybe silly to say that this happened in late may early june It is more accurate to say it happened in late spring early summer and you can use it to Relatively date other fossils that have seasonal ties So instead of saying this happened in june this happened in august. You can say this happened the season after this happened Yeah So I don't know this is It's interesting though I think it's very interesting that you can you know Understanding how relative dating and radiocarbon dating and all these other fossil dating systems work It's very cool to see this other method where you can pinpoint down to the season Yeah, so it's going yeah, it's going the the radiocarbon dating and the the sediment layers taking it down to you know Era or epoch like what how many thousands of years ago? What's it generally plus or minus 10,000 years or 100,000 years? And then you can but then you because of what we know about biology you can start putting the things together It's like well plants seem to do this and these modern plants do this and so yeah, let's put all these pieces together That's some good archaeological sleuthing Yeah, I love the idea of taking fossils and comparing them to modern-day Animals and you can see similar physiologies and behaviors. Yeah And speaking of that I want to talk about ichthyosaurs ichthyosaurs giant fish dinosaur things From the late Jurassic about 150 million years ago so at this time There were ichthyosaurs hence the point of the story But also something really important happened on the planet two entirely isolated oceans the eastern pacific and the western Tethys which would later become the Atlantic Ocean came together. They merged across the hispanic corridor This merging pushed a bunch of aquatic animals Into common space into common food food webs that had evolved Separately in these separate oceans And so you see some really bonkers evolution happening as a result of this kind of convergent The the union of these oceans Yeah And so a research team consisting of scientists from columbia canada and germany explored the neotrophics Neotrophics they used the fossil record. They Looked for all sorts of cool stuff and discovered a new species of ichthyosaur They are it is named Kaihai taisuka Sasha karam So k y h y ty s u k a that's why my face did what it just did um, so this is the first Cretaceous hyper carnivore ichthyosaur. Let's break down those words. So I already told you what an ichthyosaur is It's a giant fish like marine reptile a hyper carnivore Is an animal that only eats big animals So And uh Cretaceous that means this specific time period So the Jurassic ichthyosaurs They ate some big stuff, but over kind of um evolutionary time their teeth shrank They changed their purpose in the ocean They kind of they ended up eating a lot of smaller fish and stuff like that In vertebrates for about 70 million years And then Kaihai taisuka shows up Has re-evolved the capacity for hyper carnivore During a time when there was huge ecological upheaval when these two oceans are smashed back together So they have these sawtooth cutting teeth. They have piercing teeth. They have crushing teeth They have the the litany of teeth that you would need to eat other large other animals So a couple things on this, you know, that's pretty much the whole story, but it tells an interesting story in that It is a situation where you know, we like to think about evolution as always moving forward and progressing towards a goal That's not how evolution works and I like this story because it reminds us of that It reminds us that it goes back and forth it in and out and oh that didn't work. Let's try this and so it's This is a really good example of they had the ability to eat these giant animals they Specialized into these groups to eat smaller animals and then they were put back all into the same tank again And that was time to start eating big stuff again. I was like, oh, I'm gonna grow some teeth now because food source Right And of course, let me say that I will just spell out in case, you know People are not super familiar with how evolution works What happened was there were some of these guys that had slightly bigger teeth and slightly better teeth for hunting They survived better. They reproduced more and so Over evolutionary time, which is long. It's you know, I'm talking about like it happened right then, but it didn't it It was a long process But over time these ichthyosaurs that were larger that had larger teeth that were able to eat Larger animals succeeded more and so that became the dominant phenotype the dominant type that you saw in these animals so I love the push pull of evolution how fun that is and also the idea of the push pull of the tectonic plates And the fact that they were separated into their own little spots and then the plates moved They were pushed back together and they were oh god back to that thing Okay, gotta adapt. Let's do it I think that's one of the I think that main that that's the main point is remembering that evolution is a process And it doesn't have a direction. It's just the the the goal is the goal is survival The biological goal is survival. So how do you Make that happen don't die goal to reproduce. That's it. Yes That's a successful evolutionary trait And we find all the time that there are bits of dna that have been silenced But that can be Unsilenced that you know, they've been they've just been in hiding chickens can have teeth. Who knew, you know, like this is Thank goodness they don't but they could those genes are still there and This it isn't just a one-off that that's The reality it's all of us. We all have potential Whoa, give me a tail. That's all I was gonna say You've got a little tiny one. You can probably grow a longer one I don't want a big one, but I also would have to turn on the genes to make it fluffy because otherwise Yeah, that would take a while. Yeah, I I recommend maybe, you know, it's like a tail that velcros on Oh, okay. I could do that. Okay All right tails. Yeah, tell me about frog legs. Yes moving from tails. Let's talk about regenerating frog legs This is one of the coolest stories this week like It it goes from the idea. So science fiction future you can grow whatever limbs you want, right? This is like a dream of science fiction. Yes Blair, you can have a tail But in the more near term it would be amazing to be able to regrow limbs For people who have lost them for whatever reason. So amputation For, you know, various reasons disease trauma Whatever right now We don't have that we have we have prosthetics and the prosthetics are getting better and better and their neural integration is getting in better and better But that's it. That's one different path. The other path is, you know, if you've watched the expanse one of the or even many science fiction Science fiction books and movies. There's the idea of just growing a new arm that we have the technology to Get the body to do what it knows how to do and just grow a new arm We knew how to do it once. Why can't we do it again? and so In this study published in science advances these researchers have Taken multiple drugs related to growth factors That have been shown in multiple studies to work in a variety of ways and use the idea of organisms like the the salamander and others that can Regrow limbs looked at how that happened happens in other organisms But in this they've looked at frogs xenopus lapis and lavis and these frogs they don't Grow regrow limbs when they're in their adult form as tadpoles. They can regrow all sorts of stuff but as adults they really don't regrow anything and They've created what they call what they've got this What they call the bio dome And the bio dome is like a little it's just a little plastic cap that they fill with all these growth hormones and factors and they stuck it on the end of these frogs amputated limbs and Looked to see what happened in the regrowth of the limbs and they found that 24 hours of application of the bio dome to the frog limb resulted in The propagation of what ended up being 18 months of growth So over 18 months these limbs grew to the point with all these growth factors They grew to the point that they started regrowing bone And the little digits at the end of the hind foot 18 months of growth and it wasn't a full regrowth yet, but it began the process It restarted a process just 24 hours of application of these Neurotropic growth factors and growth hormones and different things. It set the stage For the for the the biochemistry for the cells that were already in The damaged part of the leg to instead of forming a scar tissue Start forming new tissue and the growth continued Like I said to the point that they started uh, they started growing Digits at the end of the leg They also showed that compared to a normal limb that had not been Had not been amputated that at the end of 18 months the limb was strong and actually had A significant amount of could withstand a significant amount of force So the bone the tissues everything were growing and healing This isn't you know, it's not like 100 done But it is a step along that path So I just I just want to confirm. Yeah, what I'm hearing.  Yes, but they didn't they didn't reapply it Just 24 hours. It's just it's giving it a jump start. It just jump started it. Yeah, okay And this is because frogs normally cannot grow their limbs, but other amphibians can So This is where it takes a pretty big jump if we're trying to do it in mammals Is that amphibians have you talking about kind of like these latent? Yeah genes they have them very closely related Right, so This is a big question, you know, they chose the frog because it was closely related to regenerative amphibians, but not regenerating that Lack of a process in itself is closer to mammalian biology. So that's why they chose the frog In this particular instance, uh, but now next steps are to see whether or not they can do similar work In mammalian models.  Can they regrow all the all the stuff? Yeah, it So in this in this sci-fi Kind of next step you would go to the doctor you would get your 24-hour treatment and then you just have You'd have you're living in a in a like a A sling or something nice and covered and then over the next 18 months. It would get bigger and bigger Right, you know, you'd probably have to wait a couple of years for it to grow back, but it would potentially Grow back over time. I mean the question is is the timeline something that humans in our lifespan could we Could we live with that right? Could we accept that timeline people want want everything now, right? Um Or and because because we're longer lived. Is it not the same would it take? You know five years or ten years in us exactly 18 months because of that and also because our biology is pretty complex and I mean, I do love the idea I love the idea of somebody who's like, you know super buff on one arm and the other arm is a baby arm You know, it's like the two-year-old toddler equivalent because it's been growing for two years That is the question That sort of thing that too is how it would grow It'd be so interesting to see how it would develop. Wow Anyway, yeah, so many questions. I mean the leap from a frog leg to any application in humans is a massive leap but It's an interesting proof of concept and uh, we'll see where it goes. Yeah, so food for thought would you Cut off a limb In order to have a new one in two years I would not because my limbs are fine. I know I just I can see also that being a thing, right? Like Instead of getting this elbow surgery, I'll just cut it off and I'll get a new one in two years Well, that I mean that's the that's the next step of Could they advance the technology so that it made it makes it worth it for somebody right? Yeah, there's there's a lot that would go into that wild We'll see there's a lot still to be seen there And then uh moving on from frogs legs I want to talk about some really deep life Yes, please Yeah Oh my gosh, so This to me just it boggles my mind to imagine Can you think of life in the deep ocean? When you think of life in the deep ocean Like what do you think of? Octopus Octopus is yes But you think of like the the the deep hot smokers the vents where there's a lot of bacterial life where there's a lot of A lot of nutrients coming out and there are these hot hot spots Of lots of biodiversity and a lot going on but then we talk about the bottom of the deep ocean as A desert It's just like you know, it's these The spaces where there's nothing going on and that's why like when a whale dies and it goes to the bottom It's like ah, because suddenly there's food Exactly so a group of researchers In 2016 upon a Japanese scientific drill ship called the Chikyu Drilled 1200 meters below the seabed So they went looking at the bottom of the ocean and then they drilled past it 1200 meters below To see if they could find life to see if they could find anything any biodiversity In the crust of the earth below the ocean They found stuff They found like Not very much life like they were they were finding maybe like just just a tiny amount of life Not very many cells where there would normally be hundreds of thousands of cells in any topsoil Millions of piece of bacteria microbes in a spoonful of topsoil here. They're finding, you know 500 microbes like Smallest no, you know factors of Factors of difference and so They They tried to grow them and they tried to find out about these the bacteria that are down there They're like, how can bacteria live down there? What's going on and what they determined is 1200 meters below the surface of the sea below the seabed It's getting hotter and hotter and hotter because you're drilling through the crust toward the mantle And so even though the bottom of the ocean is cold below the salt below that seabed surface It gets hotter and hotter and hotter. So life that exists 1200 meters below the seabed is living at about 120 degrees Celsius So it's extremophiles Trying to survive. How are they surviving there? We don't really know what that, you know, they're they're living off of acetate and And hydrocarbons that are in the crust of the earth They're living off these like just toxic things normally but they're surviving in the crust and In order to survive because they're being bombarded by radiation from the center of the planet by the high temperatures By so much stuff going on in the soil They realized they found that the metabolic rates For these bacteria were super high for the biosphere basically these Microbes who live in the deep deep crustal seabed They are their hypothesis is that these microorganisms maintain a really high metabolic turnover To undo all the damage that their environment causes So they're not in a torpor like You know like a like a tardigrade could potentially, you know be in a torpor state to you know withstand it They are they're alive and they are living really fast because they're like I gotta fix all that DNA damage my god So it it's a very I think for the microbial deep seabed crustal life It's a very lonely and just intense kind of microbial life They were if they're conscious of what's going on They're very very high strung That's crazy Yeah, so uh, so these researchers they've uh, they've They've just uh published published their work this last week and it's in nature communications Uh rapid metabolism fosters microbial survival in the deep hot subsea floor biosphere Deep deep life it's down there Keeps on going next we're gonna find it in the magma I'm just amazed that something could live right. Why not? Why not? Why not? It's okay. There's life down. Okay, what? Magnophiles You shouldn't be able to live down there, but you are okay Yeah, yeah, we'll see I did the conversion if anyone was interested because I I used to be able to do the conversion Pretty easily in my head, but I can't anymore. It's about 250 degrees Fahrenheit It's hot. It's hot. You would not be happy 120 degrees Celsius is uh, it's very hot. You'd be dead You'd be dead. Yeah people would be dead We're not liking it very much So these little microbes living at the absolute edge of what should be possible for existence Their their metabolisms are doing Everything they can to make that possible You guys could just back off a little bit It'd be cool too This is this weekend science. Thank you for joining us for another discussion of science and learning and curiosity If you're enjoying the show, please tell a friend Want to come back for some coveted conversation might as well Let's do this. Oh, you know what? There's a new variant Yeah, well, it's not like a variant variant. It's an omicron lineage variant And so this is this is where the fun starts.  Because like most of the world got omicron at this point, right? So yes, yes So that is the that is the good news here the omicron lineage Has been taking over and the main lineage for a very very long time was called ba one and suddenly There's a new one that was detected called ba two and ba two is even more transmissible than ba one Which is like, okay, and so it is rapidly outpacing The original omicron But it doesn't appear to be causing any worse Symptoms so they're just trying to get all the ones they miss. They're just playing cleanup at this point Yeah, so at this point it's a sub lineage. It's related enough like very closely to the original the og omicron so that antibodies T cell response all that stuff is still going to work So it should not be you know, it's like, oh, it's still omicron more or less Just a slight variant Little bit a little bit easier to catch But it's here in the united state united states. No, of course it is It's here And the world health organization President is saying we really need to be ready for more variants There there will be more variants because we know that Mutation in this virus happens Very readily So as long as it is spreading between any individuals There's the possibility of more mutations and more variants This is the price of us not shutting down and doing things Yeah, so it allows for things to spread and mutate Yes, but good news. Pfizer has started a human clinical trial of its new omicron based vaccine For covet 19 so it has switched up It's It's a chemistry really so instead of the old alpha spike protein, which everything was targeting now this new This new vaccine It's a vaccine variant really It is made for the omicron specific mutations So that it'll be much better They've started testing it on around 1400 individuals They're going to be testing it on people who have Not had any vaccines and also people who have been previously vaccinated to see how it mixes with previous vaccination as Like the next booster shot that would be given possibly Beginning this spring summer into the fall So question about that Yeah Would the idea be to give everyone that booster or would they like test you for omicron antigens? And then go No, not you Or would they say did you get covid from this date to this date? Okay, not you and I think this is one of the big debates that we are That our health systems are not uh dealing with well, which is If you've been infected the immunity that you have gotten from infection, how is that going to mix with future vaccination, we also don't know a lot about You know how long it takes for Uh immunity to wane For this newer omicron variant. We like is it different from delta? Is everything waning in the same amount of time? You know as it stands currently people are suggesting that if you've been infected that similar to like your last A vaccine dose that you wait at least six months to get uh Get a vaccine if you're going to right, but then the problem is with omicron that so many people got it and didn't know that They got it There were some people who were asymptomatic went about their lives never got tested at the right moment Spent their two weeks with omicron had no idea no clue or five days. I guess whatever anyway But yeah, I think I think that's what makes this really tough is that Up into this point asymptomatic cases Didn't happen a lot like I mean they happened but they still the the people who had strong immune responses were usually the people who got really sick so This makes it such a weird new world in that Everybody was getting it and everyone was having varying levels of responses whether they got sick or not Yeah, the amount of antibodies you would have developed would be varying depending on when you got vaccinated and boost It's just it's kind of a logistical mess Yeah, um, I mean I think Looking forward statements made by the head of fizer are not on this kind of like oh We're going to be like on a every three month or six month booster schedule It's not like we want to have a booster for each and every variant that comes out like we want to have it like constant constant We don't want that and fizer said that's not what they're planning on I mean they're thinking looking at mutation rates and looking into the future that it like we said before might be Similar to the yearly flu vaccine and maybe they will be given at the same time So that you know, whether or not you've had it, you know, you go in For your yearly vaccine and then you know, you're taking care of and you just you just go ahead with your life because You've done what you can Yeah, I could see for this one though them saying if you didn't test positive at any point Yeah, you get first dibs Jump in there Well, they're I mean they're definitely again going to focus on people who are immunocompromised They're going to focus on the elderly. They're going to focus on the people who Are at highest risk For infection and for the severe outcomes of it But it's good to know the clinical trials have started the process is going Yeah, I'm glad the system is moving quickly. The system is moving. Yeah, which is it's working. That's good It's good to know it works sometimes Sometimes Yeah, tell me about the covid mice. Oh sure So remember how we were like, oh, don't worry covid can't spread to Any animals? Oh, no wait. Actually, maybe sometimes cats. Oh, no wait turns out maybe weasels await So, you know, we kind of had to backpedal on that anyway But a team of biology researchers from georgia state university recently found that some of the newer variants of the virus That causes covid 19 can infect the respiratory tract of wild mice The original strain could not this was looking specifically at the alpha and the beta variants And so they were the first two. Yeah, they were the original ones They were able to replicate in the lungs of wild mice And so what this means is on the pro side That you can use lab mice now as a model for researching the virus, which is Really good news actually of course on the bad side of the coin There is a higher potential for the virus to replicate in rodents Which means like, you know wild mice and rats in cities and stuff Living in close proximity to humans So that does raise concerns about bats rodents other wild animals That there may be a situation where they could Not only replicate and and hang out in mice, but also that they could mutate within mice and then jump back to humans public health experts and researchers generally currently agree That infected animals Have likely gotten the virus from people and not, you know from each other There's a low risk of transmission From animals to animals and even lower from animals back to humans. So they really don't think that that's Any cause for panic yet But that that is something to consider moving forward Next these researchers are going to look at other variants like delta and omicron In mice to see if they can replicate as well Well, I'm I'm gonna say it probably will be able to I wouldn't agree That's my that's my hypothesis And I'm gonna just stick with that Yeah, I mean we've already seen uh hamsters and there's a there's I think Hong Kong they had one uh outbreak that was tied to A pet store employee at a pet store where all the hamsters had covid So it's a question whether it came from the hamsters or whether the employee had gotten it and given it to the hamsters and other people big question, but you know ferrets and hamsters and Cats and dogs all these pet animals that we like to Spend time with Yeah An animal reservoirs are such a huge issue. I mean I love the I love the possibility now of Mice our model lab animal we can Let's do research. That's great. We still have so many We still have so few medicines for covid that that could be a huge benefit actually Yeah, absolutely But the the downside like you said is like Okay, so the mice and the rats in the city where you live if they all have covid and We get rid of it in the human population, but it's still In that reservoir what happens when it pops out again What does it look like when it pops out again? And that's the big concern Researcher researchers are really busy talking about the concerns of animal reservoirs human reservoirs even like patients with suppressed immune systems like cancer patients and others who have become basically reservoirs for mutations to occur And whether or not it'll allow for enough mutations to lead to the point that a variant will evade antibodies evade vaccines and evade the t-cell response Because where we've been right now is you get vaccinated Okay, you can have a breakthrough But your t-cells are still primed and your t-cells are gonna your immune system is going to protect you and keep you from having severe disease most cases But if it gets to a point where the mutations allow it to evade the t-cells that is the huge concern But We don't know nobody knows what's coming next We keep looking and they're looking at the various mutations there are researchers who are very worried that Like we talked about in the last section evolution doesn't necessarily Need the virus to become less virulent You know, it could become more virulent It could switch up and and that would not be great for us But we you know, we can just keep following the genetics which a lot of these You know, we have monitoring groups all around the world that are following the new variants looking at strains as they come up see what's going on And tracking them so that they can try to make predictions about where things are going to go but As we've seen already there have been variants that were variants of concern that researchers thought were going to become a really big deal That didn't didn't at all They didn't go anywhere and so Right now where we are omicron ba1 ba2 The wave is making its way quickly through populations Hospitals are getting overwhelmed, but it hopefully will not last too long and fingers crossed That nothing really big pops up anytime soon. I mean it would be great to have like Let's have let's you know finally have our hot vac spring and summer But uh vaccine immunity and omicron spread are very promising for The pandemic becoming endemic at the moment Which how how crazy is that? That that's our hope at this point and that two years ago We're like we just we just don't want to make it endemic. We just want to get rid of it Now it's like can you just can you just chill and hang out in the background? That would be great. Yeah. Can we just have two years and not five? Can we just come on? Just go play with the flu in the corner We'll call you when it's time to come back. Okay. Yep Just go take care of yourself. Just play amongst yourselves Go home already go home coronavirus go home Well, I think there's good news though. I think I think there's room to be optimistic even though there's A lot of things still pandemic-wise that are who we're all tired of but I do believe that they're you know I don't know depending on your personality.  I will not I don't want to dash your expectations later Yeah, I I I also do just want to mention a lot of people died and that sucks and uh a lot of preventable death And that's the worst and it feels terrible So if we can just stop more preventable deaths from happening We'll take the loss at that point It's still terrible families have been ripped apart But it's can we just stop enough? Fingers and toes crossed Right, I know every week every week it's like, where are we now? Have a little check in where are we now? But you know where you are right now This week in science Yes, that's right this week in science. We come to you every week to talk about the science news from the past week A lot of science Some discussion a lot of curiosity. We hope that you enjoy the show If you do enjoy it head over to twist.org and click on that patreon link Patreon is how we support the show. You can become a supporter Choose your amount of support a dollar ten dollars a month anything ten dollars and more a month We will thank you by name at the end of the show We really can't do any of this without you. Thank you So much for your support And now It is time to come back to the wonderful world of happiness and animals with Blair's animal corner Why isn't it working anymore? I don't understand My computer Maybe it's just user error Error With Blair's animal corner It's small Five pegs in the middle of bed No pet at all If you want to hear about this animal She's your girl Except for giant And that's girl They've been up your tail What you got Blair Oh, well, I had to bring a story about hippos Yes, you did Watch the clock.  Did you know that hippos call? They have fun sounds I figured they were like Kind of open their big maw Yeah, pretty much. Well, they they have a what's called a weas honk call And it's very very very loud. It can be heard over long distances As we've discussed many times hippos are territorial But there has not been a lot of research on their calls in particular And how that kind of folds into their territoriality if that's a word And so a new study that came out this week looked at hippos and how they recognize each other's voices How they respond to hearing other hippos if it matters if it's a stranger a neighbor or someone from their own group This is a university of scent etienne in france in france Who's friends? Uh, france a uh and the study highlights that hippo groups are territorial entities that behave less aggressively towards neighbors than strangers So you might think actually that there would be more friction in between neighbor groups because They have to share resources and they're maybe you know Males are sneaking in from the other one and it's it's a whole mess But actually they're used to tolerating each other and so it looks like they are less aggressive towards the sounds of their neighbors This study highlighted that hippo groups They they have kind of a different response to a stranger Versus a neighbor versus someone from their individual group. And so they recorded calls from each hippo group They played the recordings back to all the other hippos to see how they'd react. So this is not a lab This is not a zoo. This is in the wild in africa in mozambique They went to a reserve and they played these calls to see what the hippos did It sounds more like a bird than I expected I love it so much Uh, but so they would play these recordings back And they wanted to see if there's a difference in the way that they performed to familiar versus outsider Sounds they found that hippos respond to hearing a played back call by responding vocally Approaching the sound Or spraying poop as as they are want to do Which is a territorial display Interestingly The response varied depending on whether they were hearing hippos that they knew or or ones that they didn't The overall intensity of the response grew when they heard a stranger. So they responded kind of louder bigger More aggressively larger movements. If the if it was a total stranger they were hearing They were more likely to spray dung which again is a territorial behavior and so The thing that's really interesting about this is that like I said hippos are really territorial We've studied all sorts of things about their territorial nature But this has not been thoroughly studied the way that they respond to sounds We know they make sounds but there is this kind of Understanding that because hippos just kind of lay there in the water during the day They're very inactive they sleep they they have their nose and their eyes and their ears poking out But otherwise they're pretty much submerged They it looks like they're not up too much They're they could be totally conked out But these results show that they really are paying attention at all times of day to their surroundings When they heard a hippo played from the shore they responded right away It didn't matter if it looked like they were dead asleep. They heard another hippo. They responded And so this has implications for hippo management and other animal management This is maybe time to look at how a lot of other animals that hang out in groups that have neighbors and stuff how they interact because They'll relocate a population To make sure that they're healthy sizes that there's proper Resources all this kind of stuff But it might be a good idea to play sounds of the group coming in to the neighboring groups before they arrive And it also might be a good idea to play sounds from their new neighbors To the group they're about to move Right so that they're more familiar so because you can see You would be able to see their response kind of calm over time when the sound became more and more familiar And that would be your cue that it would be okay to be to move them at that time They know what they sound like so oh, you're not you're not a stranger anymore. I've heard you I've seen I've I've seen you across the way auditorily Exactly and so I know you in fact.  Yeah, exactly And so when you meet them if if one of our listeners meets us They might feel like I know them already. They're my friends and it's because they've been listening to us this whole time Hippos are the same. Yeah. So basically it's like podcasts for hippos. There you go Yeah, and and so in future studies researchers hope to learn more about what hippos are communicating with their calls If they're specifics to what they're saying they'd also like to explore how they recognize the sound of other hippos What about their voices giveaway? That they know them or they don't and do those voices give away other characteristics like size sex or age We don't know any of this yet So there is a there's a ripe vein of research to be had related to hippocalls Oh Blair you're so excited about the future. I'm really excited of hippo hippo vocalization science That's a guarantee that we're gonna learn so much. That study crosses my desk. You'll hear about it awesome yeah Yeah, jump in just across the ocean there to South America. I want to talk about jaguars. Okay um, so on valentine's day 2020 Uh in columbia some jaguars were observed Meeting doing their whole like mating dance doing growling fighting And it's a it's a two-day process for these jaguars to kind of it's a will they won't they scenario for two days with Sometimes will they sprinkled in there over the two days? and so they observed this what was strange was that Right before that that same female jaguar was spotted Playing with her five month old cub But during this valentine's day romp the cub was nowhere to be found This is a problem because in jaguars not to mention lions Pumas all sorts of animals, but definitely a lot of wild cats in fan Infanticide is the thing So infanticide means that a male will kill a baby So that the female then can go back into estrus and he can mate with that female And then she can have his baby instead So eval it's very sad, but evolutionarily it is a successful tactic Otherwise this male would have had to find another mate or wait a whole another however long usually a year right to be able To have a baby and if you're trying to win the game of evolution as we were talking about earlier You want to get the baby out now. So this is the benefit From the side of the male to infanticide Again very sad, but nature can be sad So knowing that people watching these jaguars were upset. Oh man, this means the five month old was probably killed by the the new male A few days later Mother and cub reappeared So that cub disappeared just long enough for mom to have this two-day romp with this boy So what was happening here? Where was where was the where was the young one? What happened? Well Other Big cats like lions and pumas have been known to hide their young During other mating to prevent infanticide. So hiding Is a beneficial tactic to prevent this But this is an extra level because it looks like the female Engaged in this kind of flirty two-day love fest to Either make the male think he was successful and impregnating her which he couldn't have been because she was nursing the cub so like So that's not biologically. That's not gonna happen tricky Yeah, so so this kind of like getting him off the scent Like oh no no I'll have your baby So there's this idea There's the other idea that like you could hide the baby do this and then If the timing works out just right the male could think it was his Right So this is something that has uh never been written down In jaguars But this happens in other other cats big cats. Yes, it does but but not to the level where it looks like the female is Engaging in this intense multi-day flirtation because in the jaguars they have mock fights they the female bears her teeth she makes vocalizations and so This is kind of this intense mating ritual with like mit with lions for example It's a lot less fancy because there's just a male and a bunch of females and if he's the head male then that's it You just right he he's gonna do what he's gonna do So I think this is unusual because of the the kind of the amount of effort that the female had to put into pretending That she was an estrus So this makes it pretty unusual Again researchers had no recorded history of this But so they asked around and they found two other eyewitness accounts of this happening So now they have a sample size of three-ish Huge sample size. Yeah, so this is a very small sample size However, this is something that hasn't really been looked for and the other problem is that jaguars are notoriously great at hiding their babies So how do you know the difference between just seeing two jaguars having a fun couple days? That could result in a baby And a female who's hidden a baby who is pretending to engage And you have you have to be watching the animal the whole time. Yeah, you have to be tracking them. Yeah Yeah, so so that's kind of the difficult piece here now as There is less wild space and humans live closer and closer to wild animals like this There is a chance for better accounts as time goes on, especially if you know what you're looking for Locals could see this happening because they see the same animals all the time So a lot of the time if you live around wild animals, you will get to recognize individuals And they would be able to say I saw that female two days ago with a cub and now she's with the male So there's that possibility There's also the possibility of setting out specific research trips looking for this during specific seasons And they can catalog and they can use cameras and they can do all sorts of stuff to kind of track individuals and maybe figure this out But the other problem is that as again wild land disappears That means that There is potentially less space to hide babies So that is also something that it's important for us to understand as conservationists Because if if conservationists can go out there and and make sure there are spaces for babies to hide Assess a space make sure where jaguars are living there those spaces exist Then that can reduce infanticide and obviously you don't want that For a bunch of reasons, but the main one being if you want to boost a population You don't want to first of all let one bully male Father too many babies But you also just don't want to risk another birth and early life in a baby if it's doing fairly well because the There's bad odds there if you had a successful baby come out Mom didn't get hurt baby didn't get hurt and baby grew to be some weeks old You want to continue that trend because that means that some pretty important Hurdles have been jumped So it's you know, it's tough out there It is tough out there and how can we make it easier? What you know, what can we do as humans? We're not we're not doing what we can necessarily to Help the animals in the the wild world. Are we? Yeah, it's I mean Step one would be to not cut down rainforests and destroy jungles and keep wildlife refugees Protected and did not start forest fires and all that good stuff But otherwise You know also like don't traffic wild animals and all that stuff But also if you're trying to you know, if you're you're trying to reduce the amount of Disappearance that's happening But you're also if you're also trying to add back if you're trying to augment the population that exists and increase it then you need to understand the The reproductive history and patterns of a species. So this is really important information Yeah The indigenous Knowledge aspect of it. I think that you mentioned is really important as well you know, it's we We don't think sometimes about the number of animals that there are in populations and how they interact with human populations, especially in the jungles as Humans are encroaching and you know, and also the the tribes that have lived in the jungles forever. Yes, successfully. So successfully, yeah So there's a lot to lot to be learned there and brought into this whole conservation game. We'll see Yeah, love it. I love it sneaky mother jaguars. Yeah. It's like, oh, yeah, don't worry about it. Yeah, this is yours Don't eat it. Uh-huh. Yes. Don't eat it. It's okay. Don't eat the baby. It's your baby. I swear swear Swear on I don't know the place I hit it This is this weekend science. I'm gonna jump into my last couple of stories, but you're so sweet They're so sweet. Well, they're all about sensing sweetness indeed Researchers are have just published reported in acs applied materials and interfaces They're extra special ultra sensitive bioelectronic tongue That measures sweetness they had previously reported on a A tongue that they had created to sense bitter flavors And they decided to try again or no, it's not bitter. I apologize. That is exactly wrong They had made an umami sensor. That's what it was umami I got reports confused, but they'd made an umami sensor and in that umami taste receptor They had used the protein at the end of the umami taste receptor in the human tongue and applied it to this Bioelectronic application and they thought hey, maybe we can use the same concept to be able to detect sweetness And so they have made a sweet sensing bioelectronic tongue that uses what is called the venus flytrap domain Of the taste bud So human taste buds the sweet taste buds have these two complex Structure structures that bind to sugars And the outermost portion of one of these structures is called the venus flytrap domain because it's hinged and it opens and closes And it looks like a venus fly flytrap And it is activated when somebody consumes sugar or sweet things And so they used that same protein the biological molecule and they grew it in bacteria So they added it to bacteria got the bacteria to grow the bio this venus flytrap domain and then they added it to gold electrodes with carbon nanotubes and they made in a transistor device so These bacteria have the venus flytrap domain that can bind to sugars And when it happens it Causes an electrochemical Cascade that then goes from the gold ions to the carbon nanotubes and can actually transduce charge so that They can tell if something sweet has passed by this fake tongue Okay, so why Why make So robots can Eat food. No That's not why there has to be a why there's a real why The real why is that it could sense the actual sweetness level of drinks. So it could Uh be a sensor that could determine for say people who are diabetic or Have other glucose intolerant type disorders metabolic disorders and have to limit the sweetness that they are exposed to That there could be a sensor that you could pass, you know, drop your food past and it could let you know if it's an acceptable sugar quantity based on the sweetness So So something like a bioelectronic tongue could also be used in industry for quality control to ensure that Everything that's coming out of a bottling plant is coming out at the right concentrations Um, and you know to allow robots to taste someday Okay, because And I just want to tag that on there because I know it creeps you out. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, so it's I think I love this for the application They're taking biology they're taking What's already been created what we've got in our bodies. They're like, hey, we can take this protein and we can Put it in this bacteria and the bacteria can grow it and it then we can use it in this way and look what we did So just the combination of engineering and biology and chemistry and electronics like it all works together and it's a really cool application But moving on from Bioelectronic sweet sensing tongues How does our gut know? When we've eaten something that's real sugar versus something that is artificial sweetener Why would it need to know? Right, but why would it never maybe had to know evolutionarily? But there's been a lot of evidence that suggests that The metabolic response to artificial sweeteners is not exactly the same as to sugar When we intake artificial sweeteners, there's a lot of evidence that Our our whole physiology Our brains We react differently. We know that it's artificial sugar and not real sugar How is that and why is that? and so some researchers Wanted to look into this and they're like, hey, let's get into the gut a little bit and in their study they've gotten into This part of the gut and i'm going to put a video from duke university on the screen here But i'll try and explain it as much as possible for everybody in the In the podcast, of course and so in this In this situation There are nerves the vagus nerve gets stimulated by activity In the gut and the vagus nerve sends information About what you've eaten whether or not you've had sugar up to the brain and then that Gets your brain to do certain things, right? so these Digestive particles of stuff interact with the lining of your gut and the lining of your gut has a whole bunch of specialized cells In it a lot of little cell types. There are goblet cells and pterocyte cells And one of them is an entero endocrine cell, which they like to call the neuropod Because this one interacts with the nerves That go to the vagus nerve so the neuro and these entero endocrine neuropods are really important for that information transfer from the gut into the brain and what they found in this study is that when the The the animals in their situation when the the gut was given sucrose plain sugar It stimulated the neuropods and the neuropods sent Signals up to the brain When they stimulated with sucralose It did not stimulate the vagus nerve in the same way. It stimulated Different receptors that stimulated an ATP response that stimulated completely different nerves That went on to stimulate the brain. There are two parallel pathways. They've discovered within the gut for Sugar Or other sweet stuff and our gut knows the difference and tells our brain What does our brain do with that information? Well, it's so it has to do with energy Right. So what have you eaten? How much energy do you have? How much energy do you have to spend? How much energy do you need to? How much how much do you blood do you need to send to the gut for digestion? How you know, what are the other things that need that need to go on? So the entire Your entire metabolism is impacted by What you eat Now what they don't know and they haven't looked into it Specifically is how are these neuropod cells stimulated by fat by salt by other nutrients And what do other nutrients do to this gut to vagus to brain pathway and how do they affect that? but in Anesthetized mice, it's this really interesting situation where there's a completely different receptor that gets stimulated with glucose than what gets stimulated with sucralose and it There's different pathways so I know there's a whole like Urban myth or whatever that uh artificial sweeteners make you more Mm-hmm hungry or make you crave more sugar or right weight So I wonder if this has something to do with that That's what I was wondering too. Yeah, I mean that's like when that's one of the big questions is Is this why we have these different effects where your body goes? I got something that's like sugar But it's not and now I used this ATP. So can I have some sugar? Yeah I need energy can I have more energy? Yeah, you just wrote me an io you you owe me Right, but you didn't it didn't it didn't stimulate the body. It didn't stimulate the brain in the right way that for what we've evolved to expect so it's yeah, it's Expectations being being let down Unmet expectations of the gut brain axis. This is our hypothesis. Yeah One of the really cool things about this study in the way that they did the study is they moved just past the Simple like sucrose to sucralose and what's it stimulating they used also optogenetics in the gut So we've talked about optogenetics being used in the brain and how you know you have to have these wires and how there's this huge setup and So to think about oh my gosh, how did you do that in the gut of an animal? That's moving around where the gut is moving and everything you know shifting around all the time the brain doesn't move as much and So everything's a lot more stable there. They created a whole new flexible wire To be able to use optogenetics to turn Vegas nerve activity on and off in the mice while they were doing the experiment and so one of the big things that you know even bigger than Figuring out how our gut and our brain work to You know help us understand how our body even thinks how our body does nutrition, right? How it does energy allocation and digestion Beyond that is this This new development in optogenetics could even push Uh push work further forward because if we can do flexible wires in the guts of mice in a lab Who's to say that we can't do? optogenetics in people Which has been a huge limitation so I just assumed they they used those cows with holes in their sides, right? So they got it done No This seems better Even better. Yeah, I mean that would be an easy way. What's going on in there? Open it close it. Yeah Nice cow fistulas kaiser cow guys cows Are fantastic for their multiple guts their multiple stomachs that allow Just walk around with a hole Yeah It works for some not for others right But yes, the research moves forward Do you have anything else to talk about tonight blair? Not at all Not at all. No, not a thing No, I got to talk about hippos. I'm happy Like I'm done Flirty flirty jaguars You're really good at that It's almost like I listened to it a lot I have a feeling I can imagine you sitting there clicking the play button over and over again Yeah You can ask my roommate. He heard me do it for quite a while.  Oh, yeah Yeah, I like it very much, but they'll get used to it. They're gonna they'll be friends eventually It'll be fine and then you can introduce a hippo to the house. Yeah, it's fine That's the only thing preventing me from doing it right now. So how do you bring a hippo home? Well, first you got to play the calls at home a few times Get everybody ready Then you give the hippo a cookie But if you give a hippo a cookie, then he's gonna ask for some milk So, well, I know I knew where I knew I knew where you're going there If anybody has any questions about anything, you know, you can send us your questions We'd love to answer them to talk about the things that you find curious as well So let us know if you have any questions you want us to answer Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you enjoyed the show tonight And I don't know when Justin will be back. I'm sure we will hear how things are going as days move forward Once again, congratulations to Justin Everyone oh the whole family for the baby He's either asleep or he's watching this right now Those are the two options If he's watching right now, I hope we get a comment in the chat room All right, everyone Thank you so much shout outs to fada Thank you for your help with social media with show notes I know all the frustrations you're going through gourd identity for uh Our and lore everyone for manning chat room stuff identity for thank you for recording the show Rachel, thank you for editing the show and your assistance And I would really love to thank our patreon sponsors Thank you, too Richard badge Kent northcote rick loveman pierrella czar Ralphie figaroa john ratness wami carl cornfield karen tozzy woody ms Andrei beset chris wozniak dav bun vegaard chef stad house snider donathan styles aka don stylo john lee alley coffin Maddie paren gaurav sharma don mundus steven alberon 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in science this week in science this week in science science i've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that's what i say may not represent your views but i've done the calculations and i've got a plan if you listen to the science you may just get understand hey yo hey yo it's the end of the show thanks everybody after show thanks blare yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah hello eric nap hello everyone in the chat over on youtube and twitch and all the places this fascinating stuff thanks beach no basilisk what what what what lighting rod i don't think you want to pick up a hippo chick oh this is the part where i get to sit oh yeah you get to sit i'm still standing i'm still standing yeah yeah yeah i'm still standing because my house is freezing it's cold down here sometimes in the basement it's cold and i like it down here but it's really cold yeah that's funny lightning rod that's really funny shoe brew i don't think there's an english jaguar dictionary nope no blare would like there to be an english hippo dictionary so that she could talk to the hippos you don't need to talk to the hand just talk to the hippo blare hippos do dig ronnie's thank you my name is hip hop eponymous my lyrics are bottomless we recently watched uh all of the madagascar animated films again with kai he loves them they're great and i'd love the the hippo character she's fantastic the relationship between the hippo and the giraffe and they're so cute and the giraffe is like i'm so shy and the hippo is just wonderful and it's great i love it what's her name gloria right gloria yes i've only seen the first one what they're all pretty good but i make it my business to know the names of hippos what's your business business no one the names of hippos yeah that's my business that's my business that's quite literally my business it's what i do oh my goodness justin has a new baby i can't believe it and yana does oh yeah did you get the the text on the day he was born do you have unknown numbers blocked no i didn't even get anything that was a blocked thing because i got i didn't get anything because you're on the text it says when was the baby born let's let me see if i can find it i got nothing i had no idea until today when he was like i'm not gonna come to the show so whoa one two three four five six seven eight nine it's 10 digits but it's in couplets and it was on friday at 2 p.m. we sent it but i didn't know how to reply because i was like i think if i reply to this i'm gonna get charged like five dollars because it's international yeah you're like i'm like can i text internationally so then what's gonna happen here i was like i'll just text him on the separate thread and then i i forgot so yeah so then he texted us today i was like oh good i can reply to this because this is his normal number and yes gaurav it is finally a real good news from justin yes real real good news yes and the pictures that we've seen oh my goodness i have to say that little baby already has the eyebrow like justin like uh huh already i know kiki and i texted that at like the exact same time like oh my god that's such a just like you oh my god baby elephants are adorable flair yes gouchy graham grouchy grouchy gamer says stop yawning i can't i've i've uh saved them all up that's right during the show we saved them up so that we can yawn during the after show now is the tired part how is the tired part of the show oh my gosh though so i was telling blare before it is a little baby boy grouchy gamer but unnamed right have they not named oh let me text him he should be awake now right who who's to say does he always say if you not it should be on silent for sure i don't know i got a text from you me i know we'll find out yeah okay i can turn the heater up in a minute so i was telling blare before the show oh we could name him bambini bambini bambini yes my house is freezing my husband we have a nest thermostat and i thought you meant like with birds in it no i wish maybe the song sparrow outside in my backyard that nests every spring its nest will be starting soon probably but oh we can name him twist no um but we have a little nest downstairs the thermostat and i was like it's so cold and i kept turning the thermostat up and it would stay really cold i was wearing a puffy jacket today with like this beanie hat and the hood of the puffer jacket on in my living room because i was so cold i went upstairs it's like 20 degrees warmer upstairs in my house and i was like what is going on apparently he got another little temperature sensor that was upstairs that was setting the temperature for the house oh no and so even though you're like what is physically wrong with me do i have what's happening am i dying yeah what's happening yeah so we've solved the problem thankfully it has been solved um yeah i'm still uh my workplace has a broken h-back system so i've been very cold at my workplace for like two months right now it's so cool i mean it's also colder in the south bay than it is where i live so in the commute it gets like at least 10 degrees colder as i drive my 45 minutes to work you're like and let's get colder now a little bit colder now that's right yeah eric nap there is veto power of what gets set but i didn't realize what was happening and all i was doing was just changing the thermostat temperature and the upstairs was setting everything and so it was 72 degrees upstairs but it was not downstairs it was much colder i will fix it now but this is definitely yeah modern problems a broken heater than a broken ac yeah i mean yeah you can heat yourself up with blankets and you can always you know set fires today at work it makes it hard i was very hot like a thick winter coat a blanket scarf an electric blanket at work and i had a space heater pointed at me it was uh probably 10 degrees warmer outside than it was inside because is this like big giant office building that we're moving people in and shifts and so we only have like 20 people in this building that's designed for 100 right now so the body heats not cooking uh not cutting heating it up yeah and there's not a lot of windows and so like there's not a lot of passive heating that's happening it's just yeah yes you gaurav exactly in texas when they lost power because of extreme cold a lot of people really suffered but you just comforter comforter comforter comforter and you sit together and uh yes i don't know we're going to have extreme temperatures we're going to have extreme hot and extreme colds and it's the hot hot with the humidity that's going to be bad right now be happy for the good days that we have the nice moments that we can enjoy a quiet hour on a taco tuesday with the cerveza a little bowl of chips and some salsa that's nice you know what are your little happy moments do you have little happy moments blaire yeah sure you're like no i can't think of them right now oh i don't it's no i'm i'm looking forward to um i mean it's strange because i pre-covid i'd be like oh i'm really looking forward to being hot enough that i can hang out on my balcony and like sip of beer but now i'm just like i'm looking forward to seeing humans that i like in real life that's it that's really it it's i you know there have been so many so many of my friends have had babies during the pandemic and a lot of them i haven't seen in like a year yeah and so you know i haven't gotten away with babies yeah but so i i have a god daughter who is afraid of me because we didn't see her for the first year of her life and so it just it's such a bummer because they live across the bay they live right here we would have been there constantly yeah we would have been babysitting her and her parents could have gone out and yeah it's just it's it's so strange to like be like no i'm supposed to be important to you i'm good i'm important don't you understand this is like strange and i feel like i'm missing you know with the other babies too i'm missing like key moments i'm missing like watching them grow i have to see it through pictures on my phone it sucks so that's that's really the thing i want to see all the babies i want to see all my friends i want to see all their babies it'll happen especially as like the weather gets nicer again and people want to spend time outside and you can go visit backyards and parks and it'll happen it's just tough like one of the one of the babies and and her mom who's one of my best friends um we were supposed to go for a walk last weekend and uh i was at the last minute i was like you know this just doesn't seem super smart and so i i cut it because you know we were gonna go on a walk but we're gonna go on a walk in san francisco which means we were gonna be a foot apart for a while right and even though there's not a lot of exposure outside outside is pretty safe i was just like you know what you have this unvaccinated year old baby like let's just i'll see you in a couple weeks when this all comes down a little bit yeah and it was it sucked to have to make that decision but there are people who have had to make so many decisions that suck i know and i think that's the thing is that the people making the smart and and responsible decisions are not the people causing this pandemic to continue we're here making the responsible decisions over and over and over and just getting punished over and over and over like the goal line keeps moving farther away because other people are not making the smart decision yep yep that's annoying i'm agreeing with you i know yes yeah but then you start all we not you we start thinking i don't need to make the good decisions why do i have to be that's not fair it's not about fair but also it's about like if you're willing to make a risk for yourself and your own well-being that's fine but if you're gonna do that then you're not allowed to hang out with anyone immunocompromised anyone who's young enough to not be vaccinated um anybody who uh might know people in those categories so fine be do the risky behavior but then don't hang out with people for two weeks please and i think that's the disconnect this yeah if you're gonna do something risky don't plan anything for two weeks and hopefully also you're not just you're making those choices because i can be risky because i don't hang out with these people because i do you know my life my circles don't rotate in these risky places i don't intersect you know so you and for you or for other things um yeah you can yeah people can make those different risk determinations yeah it was crinoids to inherit the earth it's just when those those decisions get someone else sick that's that's what sucks don't do that don't get other people sick don't do it uh yeah so here in portland though i mean i've been looking at i've been following the international health metrics uh what is i it's ihme international health metrics evaluators i don't remember what the e stands for but they do a whole bunch of health metrics around the world and they've been tracking coveted and what they do is they do predictions modeling and predictions so basically based on their models and predictions we are even here in oregon past the peak and that the cases are all dropping and that by mid march early march we should be like lower than ever which for any anything so this is that's good something to think very positively about i'm knocking on all the wood i know i mean the prediction is there they've been very on it for predictions they and you know they can't predict they haven't been able to predict when a new or if a new variant is going to be like ta-da here i am taking everything over that's not going to happen but based on the data they have now everything's looking very good so data looking good and i like that you know we're all in this place now where we can look and kind of be optimistic but also set our expectations not too high yeah i just make those plans but make sure they're refundable is pretty much that's pretty much it yeah exactly yeah yes i uh i paid for the travel insurance on my friend's wedding uh travel arrangements it's like you know what i think this is gonna happen but i'm paying the extra money for this insurance yeah we have a friend who's getting married in france oh jesus i did for this summer we've been at not the whole summer but for we've been invited to the wedding at a chateau in france ooh la la i know so we have tickets that's great i have fun i'm so excited but who knows who knows what's gonna happen oh my god we've been waiting for this for two years they were gonna get they were gonna do this two years ago it didn't happen so i don't know it's a crazy crazy world so hopefully the you know travel insurance it's refundable doesn't happen it doesn't happen we'll just not go but if it does happen we're ready and we're gonna make it happen and i am great so i think it's gonna happen i'm so excited about visiting neanderthal caves ooh it's in this like in the uh bordeaux region of france right near some of the big major like maybe like an hour away from some of the big major neanderthal caves so i'm so excited i'm like hey guys great you're getting married where are the neanderthals that's great how fun how fun how fun i'm so excited i need to start practicing my french yeah we say well just be be prepared if you're in the bordeaux region be prepared to not understand anything nothing because we all learned peresian french in school and as soon as you leave the peres metropolitan area you can't understand anybody no yeah the accents the slang it's all different the first time i tried to speak french in in france was in nice which like is the opposite side of the hexagon and uh i couldn't understand a word i couldn't understand it at all i was like oh no i've learned a very niche thing which is peresian french got it got it they can understand me so that's that's good is that like i could i could communicate but i feel like people couldn't you know oof it was rough as long as i can find out where the bathroom is oh yes see you play a language is a dialect with an army interesting oh that's an interesting phrase huh that's really an interesting phrase eric i like that thanks i like it it's an interesting framing and way to think about it ah yes natural selection uh let's see so it's 10 blare do you want to go to bed probably it wouldn't hurt i have to wake up in seven hours that works maybe probably yes yeah this morning i woke up at five in the morning i don't know why just like sat right up in bed and i thought i heard something on the stairs oh good and so i was like what's that and so then i had to get up and go see and it was my cat of course and then i heard something on my front steps outside my house so i heard it because i was on my stairs so i like what's that on my front i'm like seriously a shut-in afraid of everything right now so i'm like what's on my front porch and i went to my front door and i saw this woman running away to her car and i was like oh my god was somebody on my porch and then i opened my front door and my newspaper was there okay and then i went back to bed right it was like i need to go back to bed right now so i am i just was the epitome of next door yeah right there yeah so i will say i was very worried about re-assimilating into society it happened so fast it took like a week if that it probably took two days and the you know i was at first i was like oh you're so close to me uh other smells uh other sounds uh other people and their preferences what's that oh i don't like being out here crowds and then like two days later i was like yep this is my life back to normal not thinking about anything like when i was in isolation in fact if anything i'm like weirdly rose colored glasses in my isolation because it was like calm yeah right okay it was the calm time it was so strange as a person who like is very anxious and is very busy to be suddenly forced to do nothing yeah nothing like completely forced like you're not allowed to work you're not allowed like i was uh i there were days where i was not allowed to work so like at the beginning of the pandemic so that meant i was stuck with nothing to do um brian was still working so he was asleep so i was just sitting alone in my house uh i wasn't we weren't remember we weren't really supposed to go outside like you were allowed to go outside to let your dog go pee otherwise you were not supposed to be outside at all yeah so i'm just like okay well i guess i'll like i'll watch tv and then i'll bake something and then i'll do some dishes and then i'll uh watch tv and then i'll play a video game and then i'll bake something and then i'll clean out my closet and then i'll watch tv and then it was just like it was torture when you were in it but now weirdly i like i romanticize it i was like oh it'd be nice to be like forced to do nothing for a little while wow i i just laugh because i did not it was never not doing anything for me because i've always worked at home and suddenly my whole family was at home all the time and it just was it was i can't wait to get a vacation yeah i'm still waiting like i need a sabbatical from the pandemic because uh-huh yeah yeah like what it was yeah our our trip to disneyland was the thing that felt the most normal out of everything that i've done and uh i'm happy to talk about it now because enough time has passed that we didn't get covid from it so i was i wasn't really posting a lot to social media because i was like i don't want this to be one of those things where i went to disneyland oh look now we have covid i went to disneyland and oh my god was this case of covid yeah but no it was i mean luckily it was before omicron was big over here so it was actually pretty safe like you had to show your vax cards to get into any uh indoor restaurants and um you're supposed to wear masks indoors and people you know cast members are really on top of it at one point we were in it's a small world and uh something you've never i've never seen before a cast member came out from like the shadows to tell someone in our boat to put their mask on that's awesome i know it felt pretty safe actually your mask on the only times it felt kind of weird was that you know if you if you think back to social distancing i think it's like the least socially i am still i have ever been like it was like you get crammed into the haunted mansion elevator and you're like yeah this is the same number of people pre-pandemic this is this is i'm touching i'm shoulder to shoulder i don't like to touch people what no yeah like that was the thing that felt the weirdest but everyone was masked and everything was good so it was like yeah i don't know it's it felt pretty good it felt pretty safe but it definitely it also felt like i said it felt like the most normal because that was also before omicron so you were allowed to have your mask off outside so like when you're walking around the park it felt normal yeah and it was nice i was really glad we got to go because poor brian has had a hell of a pandemic just keeps coming it just keeps coming and he's working in the health care industry and so that's yeah yeah the rest doesn't come all of it keeps coming yeah so i was really glad we got to give him a real vacation that was nice totally yay anyway yay for vacations and honeymoons and all the things i hope there are many more positive things to look forward to i'm gonna go to paris for a wedding i'm gonna go to norlands for a wedding it's gonna be fun it's gonna be great you're going to paris for a wedding no you are i'm going to or i'm going to norlands for a wedding we're going to bordeaux we're just we're both going to to francophone things that's fun yes nolans yes i love it i love new orleans it's so good yeah so i'm planning on doing a show from new orleans but it will see how my hotel wi-fi is fair enough i will probably take time off for my european vacation you should because also it'll be three in the morning when we do the show over there so exactly fine not my that and you i'm not good at that kind of thing no and you shouldn't you're not you're on vacation 26 is that a dig you wouldn't do it now no certainly not also that's interesting because you got the exact right age i know i'm sharper than you might think i am sometimes that is a strange piece of data for you to have in your head is that i was abroad when i was 26 you have no idea the strange pieces the pieces of data that i have in my head oh man so many so many strange pieces yes gaurav i've lived in my basement the whole time oh my goodness all right all right speaking of vacations let's take a short six to eight hour vacation yeah the nice coma vacation a little little mental refresh let the metabolism reset let everything get ready for the next day okay everybody we're gonna do it you know one of these days i'm you know i'm just gonna maybe stop the whole science thing and become a new health guru you can just go to sleep wash all the toxins out i can never do that okay have a great night yeah have a great night everyone say good night kiki good night kiki good night players say good night player good night player good night listeners good night everyone viewers minions friends commerce viewers here paul says no not allowed no i would never go that direction sorry we will see you again next week like we said don't know if justin will be here or not but regardless we will be here twist will be here for you next week and we hope that you will be here too thank you for joining us so good to see you here once again good night


Hey everyone this is Dr. Ruscio and let's discuss if probiotics cause SIBO small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. This is a very important question because if you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth a condition where there's too much bacteria in the small intestine that has been correlated or is one of the underlying causes of the symptoms of IBS. So gas, bloating, abdominal pain, constipation and diarrhea all being some but not the only symptoms that small intestinal bacterial overgrowth can contribute to. So if you're having those symptoms you're likely considering a probiotic as a treatment for those symptoms. So you'd really like to know could a probiotic something I'm trying to use to help me actually make me worse. And the answer to this question is really no probiotics do not cause small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. The vast vast majority of the evidence supports that statement. But every once in a while there's a reference or there's a study that is a little bit confusing and needs to be looked at and contextualized. So I'll put one study of such up here on the screen entitled Effective Bifidobacterium Infantist or Align Probiotic on the Lactulose Breath Test for Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth. Now some have cited this study as showing that probiotics cause SIBO and this is really incorrect thinking but allow me to under or to explain why that isn't and help you understand this. So in this probiotic 19 people were given the Align Probiotic and after a number of weeks on the probiotic they were given a Lactulose SIBO breath test and it was found that three of those 19 patients had a positive methane reading or a positive breath test for SIBO. But here's the important context the why under underlying this. Part of the reason or part of what we need to understand here is none of these patients saw a significant increase in their symptoms. So a lab finding changed but symptoms did not change, very important. The other is to understand I guess you could say the physiology of probiotics which are the majority do not colonize you but rather they have a transient effect. So while these people are taking probiotics they're kind of transiently working their way through the system and then they die off or come out the other end. So there's this transient effect that the probiotic has and then it's gone. So while they're taking the probiotic they have in the system this transient buildup of probiotics.  Does that mean anything is bad? Well in truth no. The majority of the evidence, the vast majority of the evidence shows that probiotics can help to fight small intestinal bacteria overgrowth. Those bacteria crowd out the other bacteria, fight fungal overgrowth, reduce leaky gut and most importantly perhaps is to reduce a litany of abdominal symptoms like gas, blood and constipation, diarrhea. And there's even other evidence that probiotics can help with things like skin and mood just to name a couple. So even though we see in a small number of patients three of nineteen a positive breath test finding that is most likely underlined by the fact that these probiotics are transiently in the system causing this positive breath test but also improving much of ostensibly what's going on in that person's intestine. So it's very important not to look at this study and misrepresent what the study is showing which some people are doing and that's really a travesty to a patient because probiotics can be a very effective and very helpful treatment. They're not going to help everyone but they're certainly a great place to start. So a good probiotic protocol can do volumes for your gut health for the symptoms of IBS or just general symptoms and for small intestinal bacterial growth. And I recommend three probiotics both in my clinic and in the book that give you a quality formula from each one of the three major categories of probiotic. Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium blends, a saccharomyces bilarity and a soil-based probiotic. And by using these three together you really provide a good broad stimulus of probiotic to your gut and I've seen that to be very effective and there's a good amount of evidence to support all three of these different probiotic formulations. So to the question, does using a probiotic cause small intestinal bacterial growth? No, certainly something to try. A small number of people may have a negative reaction to a probiotic and that's okay if so just as continue whatever probiotic you're using to cause that reaction but for the majority of people they will see a benefit from probiotics and it's certainly something to consider adding into your regimen. If you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, IBS or really any digestive condition and perhaps any condition because we're finding the gut has such a far reaching effect on many systems and parts of the body. So this is Dr. Richo and hopefully this helps you better understand the issue of probiotics and SIBO and get healthy and get back to your life. Thanks.