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This is a CBC

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Hi, I'm Bob McDonald welcome

0:43

to quirks and quarks on this week's

0:45

show don't eat red

0:47

snow either Biologists

0:49

investigate the climate implications of

0:51

what they call watermelon snow.

0:53

Well, it's a growth of Microorganisms

0:57

primarily algae and in this

0:59

instance It's happening on the surface of the snow

1:01

and this bat has an intimidating

1:04

organ, but it's not for penetration

1:07

To observe this penis for the first time is really

1:10

impressive You you will have this

1:12

very long and also very wide

1:15

Penis, especially at

1:17

the terminal part plus

1:20

stripes turn out to be slimming because

1:22

spiders won't eat them What

1:24

it's like to have a third arm in your hands

1:27

and how biodiversity drives

1:29

nature's Pharmaceutical innovations

1:31

all this today on quirks

1:34

and quarks Let's

1:36

say you saw an animal with long powerful

1:39

legs You might reasonably

1:41

think it was adapted for running fast Or

1:44

if it had broad pectoral flippers

1:46

or web paws You'd assume it was

1:48

a proficient swimmer or

1:49

if it had sharp stabbing teeth, probably

1:52

a ferocious hunter So

1:55

what if you saw an animal with an impressively

1:57

long and agile penis?

2:00

Well, I'm sure you might assume certain

2:03

things, but it turns out

2:05

your assumptions might be wrong. Well,

2:08

mostly wrong. The male

2:10

of this species does use its penis

2:12

for sex, but not in the way you

2:14

might expect. This story starts

2:16

when Dr. Nicola Fazl, a bat

2:19

researcher working at the University of Lausanne

2:21

in Switzerland, got an unusual email

2:23

about a very large penis. Now,

2:26

normally you wouldn't open an email like

2:29

that, but then he realized it

2:31

was from a science-minded bat enthusiast

2:33

in the Netherlands. We'll let him

2:36

take it from here.

2:37

Dr. Fazl, hello and welcome to our program.

2:40

Okay, hello. First

2:42

of all, tell me about this email that

2:44

you clearly clicked on, otherwise we wouldn't

2:46

be talking here today. What about it caught your attention?

2:49

I received this email. First I

2:51

was thinking, okay, it may be a spam,

2:55

but then I thought, okay, it's

2:57

about Eptesicus, which is the

2:59

Latin name for the species we were studying.

3:03

I thought, okay, that will be too targeted

3:05

for a spam. So I decided still to take

3:07

the risk to open the link. Then

3:09

I found those amazing videos of

3:12

a compilation of these bats. We

3:14

could see that the bats

3:17

have a very large penis

3:19

when it's erect. Okay,

3:22

so we're talking about a species of bat here.

3:25

What species is it?

3:26

It's called a common

3:29

serotonin. It's a kind

3:31

of big bat, one of the biggest in Europe, in

3:33

Switzerland. It loves to

3:36

live in buildings, so it's

3:38

very, very fond of churches. And

3:42

it loves also to eat

3:44

some big flying beetles. Now,

3:47

I'm going to read a sentence from your scientific paper.

3:49

It reads, quote, with the erect

3:52

organs seven times longer and

3:54

wider than the vagina, its possible

3:56

function becomes a perplexing question.

3:59

Yes, indeed. So tell

4:02

me about this bat penis. To

4:04

observe this penis for the first time is really

4:06

impressive. You will have this

4:09

very long and also very wide

4:12

penis, especially at the terminal

4:15

part. And the terminal part

4:17

is really interesting because it has the

4:20

shape of a heart, but turn,

4:23

so the two lobes in front are

4:26

quite difficult to imagine to penetrate.

4:30

How long is it? So

4:32

the penis, when

4:35

directed, it's 1.6 centimeters,

4:38

so almost 2 centimeters,

4:40

and this is quite big. This will represent

4:43

one-fifth or one-quarter of

4:45

the bat size.

4:46

So besides its size, that heart shape doesn't

4:49

sound like it's designed for penetration. Exactly,

4:51

exactly. That was the big question

4:54

we had, is that how can you penetrate

4:56

anything with this shape? Well

4:59

before you embarked on this study, how much

5:01

did we actually know about how bats copulate?

5:04

Very little. So

5:06

bats normally copulate during

5:09

very secretive moments, so they can be in

5:11

caves or in the darkest

5:13

place of a house. So it's

5:16

very difficult to observe any copulation.

5:19

We were super lucky to have Jan

5:22

putting and fitting so many videos

5:24

inside the church and also having our Ukraine

5:27

colleagues who

5:29

worked with bats in cages and

5:31

who could witness those copulations.

5:35

Okay, so once you looked at all of these

5:37

videos, what did you see? Give

5:39

me a play-by-play of how these

5:41

bats copulate. So you

5:44

will see a female first, and

5:46

then you have this male that will just arrive

5:48

and try to kind of jump

5:51

on her, so both are crawling,

5:54

and the male will start to bite

5:57

the nap of the female. Once

6:00

a female is fixed, he will actually

6:02

go with a very mobile penis

6:06

around the tail membrane. Once

6:09

it has found the place,

6:11

he will push against

6:13

his vulva and

6:16

stay there for quite a long time. How

6:18

long? So, that was quite

6:21

a surprise. We had a median

6:23

time, not the average,

6:26

but the middle one, which

6:28

was the most one hour but then

6:30

we had big champions staying in the

6:33

corporation for more than 12 hours.

6:36

12 hours? Well, what's

6:38

the male penis doing during all

6:40

of this time? So the male penis

6:42

stays in front of the vulva,

6:45

sometimes he's pressing more or less

6:47

and then he's just staying

6:50

in contact with the vulva. In

6:53

your paper, you describe the bad penis like

6:55

an arm reaching under the female. So

6:57

you have to imagine that the female,

7:00

like the male, they have a tail membrane. So

7:03

between their legs, they have a membrane that they

7:05

can use to cover their lower

7:07

part and then you have the male

7:09

that has to bypass this membrane

7:12

and use actually this huge penis

7:15

as an arm. On the video that we

7:17

could get, you can clearly see

7:20

the male moving his penis and moving away

7:22

the

7:22

tail membrane in order to reach the vulva.

7:25

So it's sort of like opening curtains to appear on the other

7:27

side. Exactly, you got it. I

7:30

guess if it can go on for 12 hours,

7:32

there must be something in it for her.

7:35

Yes, and probably actually

7:37

it is the way to test the

7:39

capacity of the male. If the male can stay

7:42

as long as 12 hours or more,

7:45

it will be a way for her

7:47

to say, okay, this one is really into

7:49

it and it's not just coming and going

7:52

away. But if there's no penetration

7:54

involved here, what's your

7:56

best guess on how the semen is actually getting

7:59

into the vagina? We quite often

8:01

believe that the male part

8:03

is just important and that

8:05

the female genital tract is just

8:08

a vase with a passive egg that

8:10

is just floating around and waiting for the spermatozoa.

8:13

But I guess we forget about all

8:16

the mechanisms from the female side to

8:18

actually move also physically the

8:20

spermatozoa towards the fertilization

8:23

side. For example, in birds,

8:25

you don't have except in the xanostrins

8:28

maybe, but you don't have a penis

8:30

and birds are just touching their cloaca

8:33

together and the sperm is just transferred from

8:35

one cloaca to the other and

8:38

apparently it's working perfectly fine. So

8:41

perhaps it's like sort of an internal

8:43

pump within the female that can draw the

8:46

semen in? I think more than possibly.

8:50

The female genital tract is known

8:52

to move the sperms

8:54

towards the fertilization sides.

8:58

So putting all of this together, what

9:01

insight does this give you about where

9:03

bats fit in when it comes to the evolution of copulation?

9:06

We know already that bats are very deep,

9:08

very unique. They live super long

9:11

in terms of immunity. They have

9:13

lots of disease and viruses,

9:15

but they do perfectly fine. So

9:17

there are many aspects that are quite unique and

9:19

I guess with reproduction, we

9:22

have also something that is quite amazing.

9:24

So for example, it's known that bats

9:27

have the possibility to restore sperm for

9:29

several months. They can delay

9:31

ovulation, they can delay the implantation

9:34

or the embryonic development.

9:37

So yeah, they are really unique in

9:39

many aspects and apparently in copulation,

9:41

they are also quite strange.

9:44

Dr. Fazl, thank you so much for your time. Thank

9:46

you very much. Dr. Nikola Fazl

9:48

is a bat researcher working at the University

9:51

of Lausanne in Switzerland. If

9:53

you want to see the video Dr. Fazl

9:55

mentioned, shame on you. I

9:57

mean, you can find it on our website at...

9:59

at cbc.ca slash parks.

10:11

If you are wondering what the fashionably

10:14

cautious insect will be wearing this

10:16

season, it seems that black

10:18

and white stripes may be de rigueur.

10:21

It turns out dressing up a little and

10:23

especially adding some contrast can

10:26

turn predators' heads. And

10:28

surprisingly, that's not a bad thing.

10:31

In fact, it may explain why the striped

10:33

pattern is so common in nature. At

10:36

least that's what a new study looking

10:38

at hungry jumping spiders and

10:41

stylish termites seems to show. Dr.

10:44

Lisa Taylor, a behavioral ecologist

10:46

at the University of Florida in Gainesville was

10:48

part of the team. Dr. Taylor, welcome

10:50

to Quirks and Quarks. Thanks for having me. Let's

10:53

begin with the jumping spider. Tell me a little

10:55

bit about them.

10:57

So jumping spiders are everywhere. They're found

10:59

worldwide. They are voracious little predators.

11:02

So they're in everybody's backyards and gardens.

11:04

Sometimes they even wander into your house. They're

11:07

in agricultural fields. They're pretty much everywhere you

11:09

can imagine.

11:10

And do they really jump?

11:11

They do. Yep, they jump. So

11:13

they can walk a little bit to get around, but when they're moving fast,

11:15

they jump. So you often see them jumping through the leaflet

11:18

or jumping across the ground.

11:19

And what do they prey on? Pretty

11:22

much everything. So everything that's smaller than

11:24

them. And then also sometimes things that are a little bit

11:26

bigger than them.

11:28

Wow. Well, what is it about the jumping

11:30

spider that got your attention? Do

11:32

you want to study the relationship between what

11:35

it sees and what it eats?

11:37

So just really interesting. They have eight

11:39

eyes. Two of those eight eyes are really

11:41

big and positioned in the front of their face. And

11:43

those are the ones that in some species have

11:45

color vision, but they also have these eyes on the side

11:47

of their head that help them detect motion. So

11:50

they're just really interesting. And so I've just always

11:53

been interested in understanding what they see,

11:55

how they see, and how they use

11:57

the information that they see to make decisions. So they've

11:59

got information. coming in through all those eight

12:01

eyes and then they have to figure

12:02

out what to do with it somewhere in their brain.

12:04

Now what about this issue of

12:07

contrasting black and white?

12:09

We're particularly interested in the black and

12:11

white stripe patterns because it's something that you see all

12:13

over nature. So a lot of animals will pick

12:15

up toxins from their food or produce

12:18

toxins to protect them from predators. And

12:20

a lot of animals that do this also advertise their toxicity

12:22

using bright colors or sometimes patterns.

12:25

And so black and white stripes are really common

12:27

way that animals that are toxic advertise their toxicity.

12:30

And so we're really interested in finding

12:32

out how jumping spiders respond to those

12:34

straight

12:34

patterns. Kind of as a way to understand the

12:36

way that jumping spiders see and interpret

12:39

prey, whether that has contributed to the evolution

12:41

of those straight patterns. I think those straight patterns work really

12:43

well so that it can protect a lot of insects

12:46

and other small invertebrates from

12:48

getting eaten by jumping spiders in particular.

12:50

Well tell me about your setup. How did you test

12:53

this?

12:54

Yeah, I've been testing this idea. We actually took

12:56

small termites and we put these little paper

12:58

capes on them.

12:59

And so the benefits of doing things this way is that

13:01

we can basically manipulate the color patterns as

13:03

different termites to understand how

13:05

those color patterns influence the jumping spiders

13:08

decisions to attack or not.

13:09

Paper capes?

13:11

Paper capes, yeah. So it's

13:13

a pretty low tech setup. We basically just

13:15

pinched out these little oval pieces of paper. They

13:18

either were white, solid white, solid black,

13:20

or had black and white stripes on them. And then

13:23

we took a little bit of Elmer's glue and we just adhered them

13:25

to the back of the termites. Because termites

13:27

during soon stages of their development actually have

13:29

wings, like really big wings, the

13:31

termites were able to move around just fine with

13:33

these little capes on. And so we put them in

13:36

a dish. We let them wander around. And

13:38

then we introduced a spider. We gave each

13:40

spider

13:40

the choice of two black, two

13:42

white,

13:42

or two striped termites all moving around them. And

13:45

then we looked at the spider and saw which one got their attention

13:47

the fastest. And then we let the spiders

13:49

actually attack the termites and see which ones

13:52

they chose to attack.

13:53

Using Elmer's glue to stick paper

13:56

capes on the back of the termite. It sounds like

13:58

a science-based technique. experiment,

14:00

an inquisitive 10-year-old would

14:03

do. Yeah, there's a lot of things you

14:05

can learn about the natural world using pretty low-tech

14:07

methods.

14:08

So what was the spider's reaction to these three

14:10

different choices?

14:11

Yeah, so what I also didn't mention

14:13

is that termites are wandering around on a white background. And

14:16

so not surprisingly, the white

14:19

ones kind of blended into the white background. And so

14:21

both the black ones and the striped ones seem to get the

14:24

spider's attention the quickest. And that's not

14:26

super surprising because those are the ones that were the most

14:28

highly contrasting with the background. What was

14:30

interesting was that the ones that had the stripes were

14:32

attacked at the lowest rates compared to either the black or the

14:34

white. So that suggests that the

14:37

contrast with the background is what's needed to get

14:39

the attention. And then once they oriented to the

14:41

termites and looked at them kind of face

14:43

on with those big eyes in the front, they used the pattern

14:46

to decide what to eat. And so anything with stripes,

14:48

they didn't want to eat. So

14:50

it suggests they're using the stripes to

14:52

make a decision not to attack.

14:54

Why would it not attack the one that had the stripes

14:56

more?

14:57

Yeah, I mean, I guess one of

14:59

the kind of prevailing hypotheses

15:02

is just that the spiders have an innate aversion

15:04

to stripes, even innate aversion to stripes

15:07

or

15:07

a learned aversion to stripes, basically because a

15:09

lot of things out in the environment that have stripes

15:11

are using those stripes to advertise their toxicity.

15:13

So if they have an innate avoidance to stripes,

15:16

then that would kind of protect them from wasting

15:18

energy or even getting poisoned from a lot

15:20

of the things that are out there that are toxic and

15:23

using stripes to stay away. But

15:25

there's also other reasons that they might be particularly

15:27

attentive to stripes and why stripes might work

15:29

as a warning better than other cleaners or

15:32

than other patterns. And one is that the

15:34

stripes are just, you know, regardless

15:36

of what background you're on, black and white stripes

15:39

are really

15:39

conspicuous. So they might be they might

15:41

be good at both getting attention and signaling

15:43

to a predator not to attack.

15:45

So the spiders take a good long look at

15:47

things to make sure that they're this

15:50

is the one I'm not going to eat. I'm going to eat that one. They do. Yeah.

15:53

The way jumping spiders hunt is really interesting. So

15:55

they just they typically sit and wait predators. And

15:58

so when things catch their attention.

15:59

and then those lateral eyes, then the spider

16:02

will actually swivel and look really closely

16:04

at the prey with those front eyes. And in some species,

16:06

those big eyes in the front also have

16:08

color vision, and they have really good resolution.

16:11

So they can see things like pattern, they can

16:13

see things like color. Those side eyes don't

16:15

seem to have very good vision,

16:18

but they do allow the spider to detect things moving

16:20

basically almost 360 degrees around it.

16:23

Wow. So this is happening with

16:25

little tiny spiders, and yet we see

16:28

black and white stripes all the way up to zebra,

16:30

so to large animals. Does this explain why

16:33

stripes are so common in nature?

16:35

Yeah, I think

16:35

it helps to explain why stripes are so common in

16:37

nature. So people

16:38

have been thinking about these ideas for a long

16:40

time, thinking about the idea of warning colors and

16:42

why certain warning colors and

16:44

patterns work better than others, and why there seem

16:46

to be these kind of universal colors

16:49

and patterns that work across all animals, regardless

16:51

of whether you're a bird or you're

16:53

a fish or you're a lizard or

16:55

whatever. But most of that work has been done

16:58

on really big animals, but there's been

17:00

very little work or comparatively less

17:02

work done on small animals like jumping

17:04

spiders. And so we have a lot

17:06

of insight already from birds. I think what's really

17:09

interesting is a lot of things that we're finding from jumping spiders

17:11

are really similar to what we're finding from birds. So

17:13

that might explain why there are kind of these universal

17:15

patterns out there that just seem to be really good

17:18

at signaling

17:19

danger.

17:21

And I guess as your science progresses,

17:23

you're just going to have to make sure you have lots of paper

17:25

and Elmer's glue to continue.

17:27

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot

17:29

of things you can do on a pretty low budget. We also

17:31

need a lot of spiders and we need a lot of termites and

17:34

a lot of time. Dr. Taylor,

17:36

thank you so much for your time.

17:38

Thanks so much for having me. Dr. Lisa

17:40

Taylor is a behavioral ecologist from

17:42

the Department of Entomology and Nematology

17:44

at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

17:54

Imagine you're coming home with a heavy bag

17:57

of groceries on each arm and see

17:59

a package at your

17:59

door.

18:00

You shift the bags to pick up the package

18:03

and then you somehow get the house keys out and

18:06

then oh no your phone

18:08

rings and it's a call you absolutely

18:10

have to take. In a panic

18:13

you wish you had just one extra arm

18:15

or maybe two or six Dr.

18:17

Octopus style to handle all your

18:19

needs at once. While

18:22

this may be the stuff of science fiction for

18:24

now researchers have been exploring

18:26

the very real question of what it would

18:28

be like for us to have even one extra

18:31

limb at our disposal. Well

18:33

now in a simulation experiment they've

18:35

shown just how handy an extra

18:37

limb can be. Katya

18:40

Ivanova is one of the authors of the study. She's

18:42

an assistant professor at Queen Mary University

18:45

of London and a researcher at Imperial

18:47

College London. Dr. Ivanova

18:49

welcome to Quirks and Quirks. Thank you for

18:51

having me. Now we can all imagine situations

18:54

where we could use an extra arm or two. Was

18:56

there a special setting

18:59

for you that inspired this study?

19:01

Absolutely so we are especially

19:03

interested in robotic assisted

19:06

surgery. Normally we

19:08

have this task where we need

19:10

more than two arms or

19:13

two hands. However in

19:15

order to do it right now the only way is

19:17

to have

19:17

an assistant. So a second person

19:19

to work in a team. But in some tasks

19:22

right like surgery

19:24

it's not really coming handy because a surgeon

19:26

may be preferred to have a full control of

19:29

all tools. If we imagine situation

19:31

when

19:32

a surgeon had to have an assistant

19:35

and this assistant had to be first trained

19:38

to almost treat the mind of the

19:40

surgeon. How I would like to have my light, how

19:43

I would like to have my suction. It also

19:46

takes additional time

19:47

during the surgery to communicate

19:49

verbally.

19:50

If I have control over all tools myself

19:53

I don't have to do it.

19:54

So basically it's more efficient.

19:57

Also if I have a new member of the

19:59

team

19:59

This time the team also needs to be

20:02

trained every time.

20:04

So basically we need to learn

20:06

to work as a team every time

20:09

when we have a new member.

20:11

Well take me through your experiment. What did the extra

20:13

arm in your study look like?

20:14

Right now it's just

20:17

a virtual arm on the screen.

20:20

So basically we did an experiment where we controlled virtual

20:22

arms on the screen, presented on the screen.

20:25

And we controlled the three arms, two

20:29

hands by robotic

20:30

interfaces. And we

20:32

also used foot to

20:34

control a short arm.

20:35

Okay, so a person sitting at a computer

20:38

screen, they have a controller in each hand

20:40

and their foot on another controller, is that

20:42

right? Exactly. So

20:45

what kind of tasks did they have to do

20:47

with the three arms?

20:48

So they have presented the

20:50

three arms on the

20:51

screen, presented, replaced

20:53

a screen.

20:54

And their arms

20:57

in the screen were connected with a

20:59

virtual elastic band. So they had

21:02

to move the center of this

21:04

triangle in the direction of the target.

21:06

They had to reach the target

21:09

with the three arms by

21:12

also containing the

21:12

distance between the arms.

21:15

Now normally feet are

21:17

not used for delicate operations

21:19

the way the hands are. So how well

21:22

did the people do?

21:23

Actually pretty well. But I need

21:25

to say the interfaces are also quite good.

21:27

Okay, but again feet are not

21:30

as dexterous as hands. So was that

21:32

a limitation? Did it take a lot of practice

21:35

for people to develop the control?

21:37

This is exactly what

21:39

we explored in the study as well. So

21:41

basically it took

21:43

four sessions one hour over three days.

21:45

They were really quite good with it. We had

21:47

also another study before had where

21:50

we asked people to control with the foot and with

21:52

the arms different types of motion

21:54

and within five days. Also

21:57

very short training times, 15-20 minutes. they

22:01

won't be able to control it. But of course we're

22:03

saying here, we're speaking

22:05

about a very simple task, right?

22:07

So it's not really a surgery right now.

22:10

So

22:11

in this case, yes, it was quite

22:13

simple and natural to learn it.

22:15

However, the other task could

22:17

be more challenging.

22:19

Now why were you doing

22:21

this on a computer screen and not using

22:23

an actual prosthetic limb?

22:26

It's a good question, but we have to start

22:28

somewhere, right? So the first

22:31

step to understand whether we're able

22:33

to learn pre-manipulation would be

22:35

on an experiment like that

22:37

before we actually develop all of

22:39

these expensive prototypes and

22:42

use actual robotics. Because also using

22:44

actual robotics in

22:46

direct contact with the human body had

22:48

also their limitations. First,

22:51

there are not so many

22:53

interfaces that we could use right now ethically

22:56

or from the safety perspective as well.

22:58

And this is a fast and

23:00

efficient way to check

23:02

the hypothesis whether humans can learn

23:05

pre-manipulation. Oh, I see. So

23:07

now that you've shown that the people could do it quite

23:09

quickly, they could learn it easily on

23:12

the computer screen, what's your next step? So

23:15

we did some studies also in

23:17

3D in virtual reality. So it's a little

23:19

bit more closer to what

23:22

it could be. And the next step

23:24

was to use real interfaces. Of

23:26

course, the challenge is to understand what interfaces

23:28

should we use from robotics

23:31

point of view. Should we use conventional interfaces

23:33

such as conventional robotic arms,

23:36

very rigid, then from metal plastic,

23:39

or should we go in the direction of interfaces

23:41

of robotics which is how compatible

23:44

with the human body done

23:46

from textiles and silicones, but

23:49

which have limitations

23:50

on their own. For example, they are not

23:52

that controllable or they cannot

23:54

lift

23:55

that much weight.

23:56

Did the participants

23:59

in your experiment complain at all

24:02

that they were I guess overloaded by

24:04

operating so many limbs three at once?

24:07

So

24:07

in this particular experiment we actually compared

24:09

the manipulation with working

24:12

in a team

24:12

of two people. No one

24:15

complained.

24:17

We also evaluated

24:19

a mental load of participants in

24:22

first session, so in a pre-test and also

24:24

after the training in a post-test. And

24:27

we saw that actually the mental

24:29

load

24:30

is getting lower

24:32

because people are learning how to control

24:34

three limbs and they're starting to prefer almost

24:37

to control all three limbs

24:38

by their own instead of having partner

24:41

with them who is controlling either

24:43

foot or hands. Oh I see.

24:45

It's better if you do it all yourself. It's more

24:48

efficient and if you learn how to do

24:50

it, I suppose people like to have some

24:52

agency. Now in

24:54

your experiment when they were moving

24:56

around on the screen you said it was very simple just follow

24:58

a dot. How much

25:00

more difficult would it be to work in three dimensions?

25:04

Much more difficult. So

25:07

we also collaborated with

25:09

Sorbonne University where

25:11

they have such interface

25:14

and also at Imperial College London our

25:16

mentor, Professor Tien-Bortat is

25:19

now developing a system which we actually

25:21

call Dr. Octopus which

25:23

will have four additional

25:26

artificial limbs. So I suppose

25:28

we will have many

25:31

new experiments to go.

25:32

Now surgery is a pretty delicate

25:34

procedure. Would you be comfortable having

25:36

surgery, maybe your appendix removed or

25:38

something by a surgeon using

25:41

multiple arms and their feet to control

25:43

things? And after some training

25:45

why not because

25:46

the surgeon will use their

25:49

natural hands as usual

25:51

but the foot for

25:53

example will control something like lighting

25:55

or

25:57

suction. So why not?

25:59

Well, I guess when you

26:02

drive a vehicle with a standard

26:04

transmission, you're using all four limbs to control

26:06

the car. So I don't know.

26:09

Exactly.

26:10

Dr. Ivanova, thank you so much for your

26:12

time.

26:13

Thank you very much.

26:14

Katya Ivanova is an assistant

26:16

professor at Queen Mary University of London

26:19

and a researcher at Imperial College London.

26:23

For decades, there's been a lot of talk about transitioning

26:26

to renewable energy around the world,

26:28

but in Uruguay, they actually did

26:31

it. On Planet Money, as part of

26:33

NPR's Climate Week, how that

26:35

happened, the story of Uruguay's

26:37

green energy initiative and

26:40

what we can learn from it. Listen to Planet

26:42

Money wherever you get your podcasts.

26:48

I'm Bob McDonald and you're listening to Quarks

26:50

and Quarks on CBC Radio One. Coming

26:53

up later in the program, why the natural

26:55

world turns out to be a fantastic

26:58

pharmaceutical innovator.

26:59

Evolution is a massive, massive

27:02

research and development project

27:04

in a sense, R&D on massive

27:06

days of the series.

27:09

By now, many parts of Canada

27:11

have already had the first snowfall of the year.

27:14

And when we think of snow, we think winter,

27:17

cold, white. What

27:19

we don't associate with snow is the color

27:21

red. But that's precisely the

27:23

kind of snow that Canadian ecologist,

27:26

Lynne Quarmby, has been studying. It's

27:28

something you may have seen in photographs. Entire

27:31

fields of snow turned eerily different

27:34

shades of red, looking almost

27:36

like the inside of a watermelon. In

27:38

a recent study, Dr. Quarmby and her colleagues

27:41

tracked how much watermelon snow showed

27:43

up on glaciers from 2019 to 2022. They

27:47

wanted to find out whether this unusual

27:49

color had an effect on how fast the glaciers

27:52

around the world were melting. Dr.

27:55

Quarmby is a professor of molecular biology

27:57

and biochemistry at Simon Fraser

27:59

University.

27:59

Hello and welcome back to

28:02

Quarks and Quarks. Hi, Bob. Thanks

28:04

very much for having me back.

28:05

So first of all, what causes snow to turn

28:07

red?

28:07

Well, it's a growth of microorganisms,

28:11

primarily algae, and analogy

28:13

would be the blooms that one

28:15

sees in lakes and the ocean in

28:17

the summertime, blooms of microalgae,

28:19

red tides, and in this instance

28:22

it's happening on the surface of the snow.

28:23

Where does it come from and how does it survive

28:26

on snow?

28:26

There are two leading hypotheses about

28:29

where the algae come from. One is

28:31

that they're blowing around the globe, that they're

28:34

maybe in reservoirs, the cysts

28:36

are tucked away in rock crevices,

28:39

but the species that we've been studying

28:42

in other projects in my lab, we

28:44

have some evidence. It's not very

28:46

strong yet, but my favorite

28:48

model is that these guys

28:51

overwinter as cysts underneath

28:54

the snow on the substrate. And

28:56

then in the spring, whether it's a trickle

28:59

of

28:59

water or a bit more

29:00

light, whatever the signal

29:03

is, that they hatch and

29:05

they grow their cilia, they're very

29:08

powerful swimmers. They could easily cover

29:10

several meters of swimming upstream

29:13

to the surface of the snow. And

29:15

then once exposed to the high

29:18

light at the surface, my hypothesis

29:20

is they would then shed their cilia

29:22

and start producing this astaxanth

29:24

and the red pigment to provide

29:27

the antioxidant in the shade. The

29:29

blooms don't happen until the snow

29:31

starts to melt in the spring and

29:34

the algae grow in the interstitial water

29:36

between the snow crystals. Under

29:38

the right conditions, that means warm

29:40

enough to have some water, cold enough to still

29:43

be snow, and for

29:45

a long enough period they can form

29:47

blooms and snow fields and on top

29:49

of glaciers.

29:50

What gives the algae the red color?

29:52

The algae that grow in the

29:54

snow are actually evolutionarily related

29:56

to the green algae that

29:58

we see form the snow.

29:59

pond scum if you

30:02

will in lakes and ponds. But

30:04

the snow is a very challenging

30:06

place for these algae to grow. The light is

30:08

very bright so the light reactions

30:11

of photosynthesis where a photon

30:13

comes in and excites electrons

30:16

and starts the process, that's very

30:19

rapid and intense but

30:22

the follow-up reactions fixing carbon

30:24

dioxide and making sugars of it, that

30:27

part of the reaction is very slow because

30:29

of the cold temperature.

30:29

So we

30:32

think that the red pigment is

30:34

an adaptation to those conditions.

30:36

Okay so let me see if I got this right. You're saying

30:38

that red algae grows in the snow because

30:41

the red color essentially works better to absorb

30:43

light and protect the algae in the bright

30:46

cold environment of the snow? The

30:47

red actually absorbs heat

30:51

and so it helps melt the snow and it

30:54

shadows, it's like a bit of an umbrella

30:56

so it will shade the chloroplast

30:59

so that it doesn't get too much light.

31:00

Okay and chloroplast

31:02

those are the the devices

31:05

that absorb light

31:07

that contribute to photosynthesis.

31:09

Exactly.

31:10

Well how are you able to identify

31:12

areas with red snow in your new study?

31:15

So my graduate student Casey

31:17

Engstrom took a deep dive

31:19

into available satellite data

31:21

and the satellite can take images across

31:24

not just visible light but very

31:27

detailed sampling of different

31:29

bandwidths for the wavelengths of light

31:32

and so Casey developed a model for

31:35

interpreting where was red snow

31:37

and where wasn't it and he trained

31:41

a model for machine learning

31:44

to recognize which

31:46

regions were watermelon snow

31:48

and which were

31:49

something else and and

31:51

that's how we were able to look at the extent in

31:54

the duration and the intensity

31:56

over these four years. So

31:58

what areas get the red snow?

32:00

Well, it turns out that northwestern

32:03

North America is

32:05

one of the hotspots on the globe. So it sounds like

32:07

British Columbia is a hotspot.

32:09

It is, but red snow

32:11

happens everywhere. So we

32:14

can find it in Antarctica, we can find

32:16

it in the Arctic. It's pretty

32:18

cosmopolitan.

32:19

Now

32:20

if this algae is covering

32:23

the snow and turning it red, how

32:25

is that affecting the melting of the glacier

32:27

when spring comes around?

32:28

A number of factors influence how

32:30

much it

32:31

increases the melt, how intense

32:33

the bloom gets, that is how

32:35

red is it, what extent

32:38

does it cover, how big is the bloom,

32:40

and how long does it last over

32:42

the course of the season. And so we were

32:44

able, or Casey was able, to look

32:47

at those measurements and to

32:49

use modeling and estimate

32:51

that for this region, for northwestern

32:54

North America, it's contributing

32:56

to about 5% of the

32:59

melt over the season.

33:00

Okay, so if they're contributing to about 5%

33:02

of the melting of the glacier, has there been

33:04

a change in that effect

33:07

over time? I guess

33:08

the short answer is it depends. Some

33:11

glaciers are melting faster, others

33:13

have not been impacted. What's

33:16

very clear in our data is

33:18

the

33:19

striking absence

33:21

of large blooms in 2021. And

33:24

that is the year that we had the big

33:27

heat dome here. And

33:29

that heat dome caused

33:31

the snow to melt out

33:34

before the big blooms

33:35

could form. So as the temperature

33:37

warms, as we proceed into the future,

33:39

does that mean we'll have more or less red

33:41

snow?

33:42

Well, we might have more in

33:44

the short term, but it's possible

33:47

that this beautiful ecosystem,

33:51

the red snow, I'll remind you, is not just

33:53

the algae, but it's many species of

33:55

algae, it's fungi, bacteria,

33:58

beautiful rotifers and tardic... grades,

34:01

it's a whole ecosystem that

34:04

it may be an ecosystem that we

34:06

lose quite early. As

34:08

we saw in 2021, the blooms

34:11

just didn't form when it was too warm.

34:13

So

34:13

how does this affect

34:15

that the algae is having on the melting glaciers?

34:17

You say about 5%. How does that compare to

34:19

some of the other factors that are affecting glacial

34:22

melt?

34:22

So the contribution

34:24

of algae we do in this paper

34:26

provide parameters that will help

34:29

glaciologists maybe tweak their models,

34:32

but it is nothing that's going to cause

34:34

big changes in their predictions. What is

34:38

really clear is that it's

34:41

the fossil fuel emissions, it's the carbon dioxide

34:43

in the atmosphere that is really warming

34:47

up the planet.

34:47

So the red snow isn't exactly a feedback

34:50

loop as we've seen with other climate

34:52

phenomena.

34:52

Well it is because

34:54

the warmer things are,

34:57

the more red it gets, the more red it gets, the more

34:59

it warms and melts, and the more the algae

35:01

grow. So it is a positive feedback loop.

35:03

It's just not a

35:05

particularly impactful

35:07

one. Dr. Quarmby, thank you

35:09

so much for your time. Thank you so much for having me

35:11

on Bob. Lynn Quarmby is a professor

35:13

of molecular biology and biochemistry

35:16

at Simon Fraser University. Our

35:30

planet is losing species at

35:33

an alarming rate. But

35:35

what are we really losing in this human-driven

35:38

mass extinction? Something

35:40

meaningful, certainly. The richness

35:43

of our natural world has a value that can't

35:45

be counted in money. It's aesthetic,

35:48

even spiritual. But that's

35:50

not to say there aren't powerful practical

35:53

arguments for preserving natural ecosystems

35:55

and biodiversity. An

35:58

important one is that we lose opportunity to

36:00

take advantage of 3 billion

36:02

years of evolutionary innovation, and

36:05

that has important implications for human health.

36:08

You might not know that about half of all

36:10

the drugs in our modern pharmacopeia

36:13

were inspired by nature. A plant

36:16

called the Fox Glove produces

36:18

digitalis used to control irregular

36:21

heartbeats. Aspirin was

36:23

synthesized to provide a pure

36:25

alternative to the salicylic

36:28

acid extract produced from willow bark.

36:31

And then there are antibiotics. 75% of

36:33

currently approved

36:36

antibiotics originate in

36:38

nature. What this means

36:40

is that the remaining mostly unstudied

36:43

diversity of life on Earth represents

36:45

a vast untapped reservoir of

36:48

potentially useful biological molecules

36:50

and compounds that could be medically

36:53

important. Nowhere

36:55

is that more true than in our oceans. Of course

36:58

it's a tricky environment to work in, but

37:01

in a new proof-of-concept study, scientists

37:04

in France have developed and tested a tool

37:06

to sniff the seawater to

37:08

sample the cornucopia of unknown chemicals

37:11

marine organisms release. Dr.

37:14

Charlotte Simler helped to lead a team

37:16

that tested their device called iSmell

37:19

on sea sponges in the Mediterranean.

37:22

She's a natural product chemist at

37:24

the French National Center's Mediterranean

37:27

Institute for Biodiversity and Ecology in

37:30

Marseille.

37:31

Hello Dr. Simler, welcome to our program. Hello

37:33

Bob, thanks for inviting

37:35

me. Why do you need a special

37:37

new device to sample the chemical compounds

37:39

of sea sponge releases?

37:42

There are several objectives

37:44

that

37:44

we pursued by developing

37:46

this device actually. The first

37:49

one is that we know that the marine

37:51

invertebrates that are fixed

37:53

at the bottom of the sea, they are known

37:56

to produce a variety of really original

37:58

molecules that have inspired chemists. and

38:00

biologists alike seeking

38:02

to discover new molecules for their

38:05

seropoietic potentials,

38:06

for example.

38:07

So why C-sponges in particular? C-sponges

38:10

are one of the most

38:12

prolific producers of those really interesting

38:14

compounds. We know that they

38:16

are producing molecules for their defensive

38:19

and

38:19

communication strategies. In

38:22

the ecosystem there are also really

38:24

impressive filter feeders,

38:26

meaning that they will take the food from

38:28

particles that are around

38:30

them in the sea, diluted

38:32

in the sea. And by doing

38:34

so and through their metabolic activity

38:36

they will release compounds into

38:39

the seawater.

38:40

Now why is it a challenge to try to get

38:42

those molecules? I mean couldn't you just sample

38:44

the seawater itself?

38:45

It's a challenge because once

38:48

the compound is diluted, it is produced

38:50

and released in a marine environment, it

38:52

is really diluted in the large volume

38:55

of seawater. And it will be mixed

38:57

with a lot of molecules that are produced

39:00

either by microorganisms or

39:02

other invertebrates or

39:05

species living nearby. And

39:07

the challenge will be actually

39:10

to know where they are coming from, what kind

39:12

of organisms are in fact producing these

39:14

compounds.

39:14

Well walk me through the

39:17

the iSmell device. How does it actually work?

39:20

So the iSmell device is actually

39:23

a system that has an enclosed

39:26

chamber to delimiter zone of interest

39:28

around the species that

39:29

we want to study, for example, or for which

39:32

we want to collect the molecules that are

39:34

released in seawater. And

39:37

just of both this chamber you have

39:40

disks that are placed in

39:42

holders. So these disks

39:45

are like cotton pads and

39:47

they are designed to absorb

39:50

and capture molecules that are passing through

39:52

these disks. And

39:54

then all the features are connected through

39:56

tubing and valves to a

39:58

pump that

39:59

is

39:59

is activated underwater

40:02

by a single push button and

40:05

by the scuba diver. So one of the

40:07

key features is that this device

40:10

can travel with the scuba diver and

40:12

be activated and used by

40:14

a single scuba diver. Oh, I see. And

40:17

what we found out that the chemistry is very

40:19

different when it's collected

40:22

in seawater compared to

40:24

when we collect a little bit

40:27

of marine organism and study its

40:29

chemical composition.

40:30

So I'm just trying to picture that. So a diver

40:33

has this device in their hand of what they

40:35

put it over top of the sea

40:37

sponge?

40:38

Exactly. So they will target the

40:40

species of interest and they will place

40:43

the chamber just above the species.

40:46

And then the diver will activate

40:49

the pump. And by doing so,

40:51

the seawater will go from the marine organism

40:54

to where it's the curtain pads

40:56

or the solid extraction disk

40:58

that we use back outside the

41:01

chamber. So the direction

41:03

is always towards the pads so that

41:05

molecules that are dissolved around,

41:09

produced and released by the marine organism

41:11

goes unidirectionally towards

41:13

the curtain pad and get accumulated

41:16

on this extraction disk.

41:17

So after you did

41:20

the collection of the seawater coming from

41:22

the sponge, how many different

41:24

chemicals did you find?

41:26

So there was a lot of different

41:28

chemicals. We were mainly interested in

41:30

what we could identify as

41:33

being produced by the storm

41:34

species first. We were

41:36

really happy about it because we could actually

41:39

find a subset

41:40

of all the compounds known

41:43

to be produced by the sponge

41:44

in the seawater. We

41:46

could even classify the sponge based

41:48

on the diversity of compounds we could recover.

41:52

And we also found out that

41:55

among the compound that we were able to identify,

41:58

some of them were slightly different.

41:59

different

42:01

from what the sponge is known to produce,

42:03

which for us will be a source

42:06

of new chemicals, new compounds

42:08

that would be worth exploring further.

42:12

Can you give me an example of how a compound

42:14

from a marine organism could

42:16

be useful for biomedical or pharmaceutical

42:19

research?

42:20

Well,

42:21

this is really

42:23

an interesting question. For

42:25

sponges, for example, there

42:27

are compounds that are nowadays

42:29

used as anti-cancer drugs that

42:32

are produced by sponges or have been inspired

42:35

by structure and compound produced

42:37

by

42:37

sponges. So,

42:40

the idea behind it is to say

42:42

that when a marine organism is producing

42:44

a compound, it could be very

42:46

potent from a biological point of view

42:49

because it produces

42:51

it in an environment where

42:53

everything is

42:54

quite rapidly

42:55

diluted. So to be active,

42:57

say to be cytotoxic or to

43:00

act, for example, if a compound is

43:02

released by a marine organism to

43:05

help the marine organism thrive

43:07

and access to food, some of

43:09

this compound might be toxic for other species.

43:12

It's like a defense and competition behavior.

43:15

And the inspiration was to say that maybe

43:18

we could characterize

43:20

this compound and test whether this compound

43:23

would be interesting as a cytotoxic

43:26

potential anti-cancer drug for human

43:28

application.

43:29

So you managed to use

43:32

your eye smell device on a sponge. How

43:34

widely smell device on a sponge, how

43:36

widely could it be used on other marine

43:38

species?

43:39

Well, actually it could be used on

43:42

any kind of other species for which we want to

43:44

know if they are releasing their compounds.

43:47

We tried on sponge because we know they are producing

43:49

a lot of diverse compounds, but maybe we could

43:51

try to test it over

43:54

cohort species or over other

43:56

filter-fitter marine organisms

43:59

such as... C-SCURTs, for example,

44:01

algae,

44:04

and we can actually continue

44:07

to probe and map the

44:09

chemical diversity of marine organisms

44:12

by using this device. And

44:15

also, I think we

44:17

know that a lot of really interesting compounds

44:19

are also produced by microorganisms

44:22

and the ocean is full of different types

44:24

of microorganisms. So for

44:26

that, we would have

44:28

a lot of opportunities for research

44:30

to

44:32

that end. Dr. Simler, thank

44:34

you so much for your time.

44:36

Thank you. Dr. Charlotte

44:38

Simler is a natural product chemist at

44:40

the French National Center's Mediterranean

44:43

Institute for Biodiversity and Ecology

44:45

in Marseille. Now

44:50

it's not just exotic chemicals produced

44:52

by marine organisms that could hold the

44:54

key to new drugs and treatments. With

44:57

more than 8.7 million

44:59

animal species on our planet, nature

45:01

has done a lot of tinkering. There

45:03

could be a lot of answers to questions about

45:05

human health and nature if we

45:08

looked for them more systematically. The

45:11

key, according to Dr. Barbara Natterson

45:13

Horowitz, is to look at what's making

45:15

us sick and look at how

45:17

nature has dealt with those problems

45:20

when inevitably they've come up before.

45:24

Dr. Natterson after all has done many more biology

45:26

experiments than humans ever will, and

45:29

she thinks the biodiversity of the natural

45:31

world can be read for their results.

45:34

Dr. Natterson Horowitz is a cardiologist

45:36

and evolutionary biologist at the University

45:38

of California in Los Angeles. Hello

45:41

and welcome to Quarks and Quarks.

45:42

Oh, I'm delighted to be here.

45:44

How can understanding evolution

45:47

help us better understand why we seem to

45:49

be seeing so many modern health problems like

45:51

cancer, heart disease and diabetes?

45:54

Well, evolution is

45:58

a process that has created the...

45:59

biodiversity on Earth and the

46:02

environment in which our

46:04

Human biology evolved it

46:06

is not the same involvement in which we find ourselves

46:08

now so we evolved in

46:11

an environment where there were Calories

46:14

were hard to come by right and as

46:16

a consequence our metabolism is Adapted

46:19

to an environment where there isn't enough to eat sometimes.

46:22

Well, what do we have today? We have this environment where

46:24

there's Everywhere there's food

46:27

and so a mismatch occurs And so

46:29

we see that obesity and diseases

46:31

related to overfeeding all of those

46:33

things are in a sense a kind of a

46:35

consequence of evolution meeting

46:38

modern day life So as we

46:40

begin to sort of think in an evolutionary

46:42

way we can decode

46:45

and understand why we get sick

46:47

Well, you say the same evolutionary

46:49

principles have also given rise to solutions

46:52

to these problems. So how so?

46:54

Right. This is the really exciting part Biodiversity

46:58

of you know that we're looking at in other animals includes

47:01

the physiology That's not visible

47:03

from the outside but which contains

47:06

countless adaptations which can

47:08

be thought of as you said as solutions

47:11

for the Challenges that these

47:13

animals find in their environments if

47:16

we can find a way to connect

47:18

those adaptations In those other

47:20

species to the challenges

47:23

in biomedicine today

47:24

those very difficult

47:27

Problems that we haven't been able to solve

47:29

yet. We can potentially find new

47:32

avenues to treat and prevent disease

47:34

So I guess nature has done a lot of experimenting

47:37

testing and innovating over the eons

47:39

to solve these problems

47:41

We do precisely evolution is this massive

47:43

massive research and development Project

47:46

in a sense. It's sort of R&D on massive

47:49

doses of steroids

47:50

Okay. Well, let's look at some examples

47:53

of some of the solutions in nature for these

47:55

human diseases that I mentioned Let's

47:57

start with cancer. Where would we find?

47:59

solutions to that problem.

48:01

There was in the 1970s

48:03

a British epidemiologist, a guy named

48:05

Richard Peato, and he observed

48:08

that if every kind of cell

48:10

divides, there's the transfer mutation,

48:13

and that with a mutation there can be

48:15

the possibility of cancer forming,

48:17

and then

48:18

cancer is this sort of unregulated

48:20

division of cells leading to all

48:22

of these health issues. He

48:25

said, well, if every time a cell divides, there's

48:27

a chance of a cancer-causing mutation,

48:30

then animals who are very, very big,

48:32

like an elephant, let's say, that would require

48:35

many more cell divisions to reach

48:37

its mature size than, say, a mouse,

48:40

he said, wouldn't we predict that those very

48:42

big animals, shouldn't they all be just riddled

48:45

with cancer? And that was

48:47

called Peato's paradox. And

48:50

for a long time, people sort of thought

48:52

that was interesting, the implication being that these

48:54

larger animals evolved cancer-citing

48:58

adaptations, right solutions to that

49:00

challenge. But nobody had kind of

49:02

been able to prove that. Then several

49:05

years ago, a number of groups started

49:07

looking at the African elephant. And

49:10

it turns out that the African

49:11

elephant has multiple copies

49:14

of a cancer suppressor gene

49:17

that is very important in our species

49:19

and others. And all of a sudden,

49:22

it really has opened the door to this

49:24

idea that, aha, there is a cancer-suppressive

49:27

mechanism

49:28

in elephants. And of course, since

49:31

then, other cancer suppression mechanisms

49:33

have been found in a number of other animals.

49:35

Wow. Okay, that's

49:38

cancer. What about heart disease?

49:41

Right. So heart disease is the leading cause of death in our

49:43

species. And one form

49:45

of heart disease is heart failure. There's a particular

49:48

type of heart failure that is more common

49:50

in women. And high blood pressure

49:52

exerts a force on the heart's pumping

49:55

muscle, which becomes thicker and thicker.

49:57

And when it becomes thicker, it starts to

49:59

change.

49:59

and stiff and over time, patients

50:02

become short of breath, their exercise

50:04

ability decreases, they're really symptomatic.

50:08

Well, if we turn to the natural world,

50:11

we could ask ourselves, well, are there any other

50:13

animals that deal with high blood

50:15

pressure? And it turns out the modern giraffe

50:17

species with their iconically

50:20

long neck, right, they actually

50:22

have the highest normal blood pressure of any

50:24

animal on Earth up to 300 over 250 or

50:28

something. So it's

50:30

very, very high. And that's just because

50:32

they have to pump blood all the way up that neck

50:34

to get to the head. That's right. It's

50:37

almost like two and a half to three meters from the left ventricle

50:39

that's down in their body between their

50:41

two front legs and the brain. Absolutely

50:44

right. So how does the giraffe get

50:46

around heart disease then?

50:47

Right. So because the heart has to

50:50

push

50:50

vertically of each other, it's the shy

50:52

blood pressure that is basic. The giraffe

50:54

ventricle is thick compared

50:57

to what you might imagine

50:59

if it didn't have the high neck. So that's how the exercise

51:01

is causing the ventricle to thicken. However,

51:04

that ventricle does not appear

51:06

to be stiff. And in our species,

51:09

in the mutations, when a woman comes

51:11

to me and she's had high blood pressure for a long period of

51:13

time, her heart, her ventricle is thick. It

51:15

is stiff. It's got fibrosis. But

51:17

these giraffes have a high blood pressure,

51:20

but they don't have a stiff ventricle. And

51:22

this is a really intriguing

51:25

finding because of course

51:26

the giraffe has to be able

51:28

to flee predators, 40 kilometers

51:30

an hour. So

51:32

it appears that the giraffe have

51:35

evolved adaptations that

51:37

may suppress fibrosis

51:40

to detect its heart from

51:42

the adverse effects of high

51:44

blood pressure.

51:45

Okay. So the giraffe gets around heart

51:48

disease. The elephant isn't

51:50

riddled with cancerous tumors.

51:53

What about diabetes? What animal do we look

51:55

to for that?

51:57

Right. Well, there's actually a Canadian biologist

51:59

since I'm talking too.

51:59

Canadian radio, a guy named Michael

52:02

Asinger and he wrote a book about

52:04

natural animal models and their relevance

52:07

to clinical medicine and he brought up the hummingbird.

52:10

The hummingbird of course is, you know, their

52:12

heart rate is like 1000 or 1200 beats per minute

52:15

and

52:16

they have very, very high

52:18

blood sugars. The level of blood

52:21

sugar that you would see in a severe diabetic

52:23

human, right, but they don't have

52:26

heart disease that happens to human patients

52:28

who

52:28

have high blood sugars, diabetes. They don't

52:30

have kidney disease. These

52:32

birds appear to have evolved adaptations

52:35

to high serum blood sugar

52:38

without the consequences that we see

52:40

in diabetes in humans.

52:41

So how do we take these adaptations

52:44

that nature's come up with to improve our

52:46

own health for things like cancer, heart disease

52:48

and diabetes?

52:49

Well, one example comes from the world of cancer

52:52

medicine and this elephant story to synthesize

52:54

P53, which is this cancer

52:57

suppression gene and find

52:59

ways to deliver it to human patients. In

53:01

the case of the giraffe, there was

53:04

a wonderful paper that was published about two

53:06

years ago

53:06

where they found the genes that

53:08

were unique to the giraffe that seems

53:11

to be involved in protection

53:14

against the effects of high blood pressure and

53:16

they crispered them into mice

53:19

and they exposed the mice to

53:21

high blood pressure. And what they found was

53:23

that these mice who had this giraffe

53:26

gene were resistant

53:29

to heart failure, to the kind of fibrosis

53:32

and the stiffening. And to me, that

53:35

paper is really a sign

53:37

that we are moving forward, that there is now

53:39

a path where modern technology,

53:41

cutting edge science, CRISPR, etc.,

53:44

can meet evolution, right? These

53:47

evolved adaptations that have been

53:50

solving problems for hundreds of millions of

53:52

years and we can bring those two

53:54

things together to find solutions. So

53:56

if we allow biodiversity to, you

53:59

know, the reduction

53:59

in diversity, if we allow

54:02

that to continue, what we're doing is basically

54:05

preventing ourselves from accessing

54:07

solutions that we otherwise would have.

54:10

Dr. Natterson Horowitz,

54:12

thank you so much for your time.

54:14

Oh, a pleasure. Thank you.

54:16

Dr. Barbara Natterson Horowitz

54:18

is a cardiologist and evolutionary biologist

54:20

at the University of California in Los Angeles.

54:25

And that's it for Quirks and Quarks this week. If

54:27

you'd like to get in touch with us, our email

54:29

is quirks at cbc.ca

54:32

or just go to the contact link on our web

54:34

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54:36

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54:39

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54:49

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54:52

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54:54

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54:56

Bob McDonald. Thanks for listening.

55:02

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