0:01

Hey

0:02

everyone, I'm Marshall. And

0:04

I'm not Lindsay. What? I'm

0:08

Elliot, Tumble's production assistant. So

0:11

Elliot, what are you doing here? Well,

0:13

I think Lindsay's enjoying her summer break,

0:15

as I hope the rest of our fans are. And

0:18

today we're excited to share a special collection

0:21

of Tumble stories with you. You might

0:23

remember that we kicked off season 8 with Life

0:25

Lab, which was a five-part series that explores

0:27

the incredible power of synthetic

0:29

biology. Synthetic biology

0:32

is a

0:32

new technology that could solve some

0:34

huge problems. But as everyone's

0:37

favorite superheroes uncle once said, with

0:39

great power comes great responsibility.

0:42

Love that line. All right, let's kick off our road

0:44

trip to learn more about this powerful science.

0:47

Welcome to Life Lab.

0:53

Hi, I'm Lindsay. And I'm Marshall.

0:55

Welcome to Tumble, the show where we explore stories

0:58

of science discovery. We're kicking

1:00

off this season with something a little different. This

1:02

is the first part of Life Lab, our five-part

1:04

series about how tiny life can change

1:07

everything.

1:07

Life Lab will explore

1:10

the incredible power of a new technology

1:12

you probably haven't heard of to

1:15

solve some of the biggest challenges on the

1:17

planet and beyond. But

1:20

with great power comes great responsibility.

1:23

We'll be asking how this technology could

1:26

or should change our future.

1:28

That sounds kind of like a lot to

1:30

do. Where do we even start? Well,

1:32

let's start in the most obvious place,

1:35

cheese. Cheese? That's

1:37

not obvious. You'll see. A

1:44

few years ago, my friend did something really

1:46

weird with cheese. And I haven't stopped

1:49

thinking about it since.

1:50

We were recording a podcast

1:53

about cheese, and I

1:55

was swabbing people's belly buttons

1:58

to sample their microbiota.

1:59

by the bacteria that live inside their

2:02

belly buttons so I could make cheese out of it for an

2:04

art project that I was doing at the time. That's

2:06

Christina Agapakis, who's a scientist

2:09

and artist. She's also known as the

2:11

cheese lady.

2:12

Wait, so she was making cheese out

2:14

of the bacteria that live inside people's belly

2:17

buttons for an art project? I've

2:19

seen some weird art projects. That takes the

2:21

cake. Or the cheese. It takes

2:24

the cheesecake. As

2:26

weird as it sounds, this sciency

2:28

art project made Christina kind

2:30

of famous. It's more rare

2:33

nowadays that I get called the cheese

2:35

lady. I think before it was much

2:37

more sort of my claim to fame.

2:39

So not like, recognized on the street

2:42

famous, but more like Venn diagram

2:44

of cheesemongers and scientists famous.

2:46

Exactly. I've actually known

2:48

Christina since before she was

2:50

cheesemonger scientist famous. My

2:53

best friend from college is one of her best friends

2:55

from high school and we met when

2:57

she was studying to become a biologist.

3:01

Christina was probably the first person

3:03

who said the word synthetic biology

3:05

to me. So what's

3:08

that have to do with cheese? What

3:10

does making cheese out of bacteria

3:12

from the belly button have to do with synthetic biology?

3:15

That's a very, very good question.

3:17

Yeah, I feel like I have a lot of good questions

3:19

about this. Like what is synthetic biology?

3:22

I really feel like we need to know this before we can get

3:25

to the belly button cheese.

3:26

Yum. Synthetic

3:29

biology is engineering

3:31

biology.

3:33

Okay, so the rules of definitions are

3:35

that you can't use the words being defined

3:37

in the definition that is called a circular

3:39

definition. Try again.

3:41

Okay, well, I'll get

3:43

Christina's advice on how to explain

3:46

synthetic biology. There's

3:48

probably a lot of ways that you could do that.

3:50

You could start by talking about DNA, right?

3:52

So like DNA is, it's

3:55

the code inside of ourselves.

3:58

This code is not so different.

3:59

and the kinds of codes that our computers

4:02

run on. Inside of a computer, there's

4:04

a code that sort of tells the computer

4:06

what to do. And computer programmers

4:09

can change that code and

4:11

do different things with the computer.

4:13

Right, so I know a computer

4:15

code is, it's like the language that you use to communicate

4:18

with a computer and like it lets you

4:20

change things on website or build a new app

4:22

or a game.

4:23

Exactly, so imagine

4:26

doing that for a cell using

4:28

the language of DNA. You

4:31

can, as a synthetic biologist, rewrite

4:34

that code and program it the way that a computer

4:36

programmer programs a computer.

4:39

But wait, you're not gonna like make a video chat

4:41

app on a cell, right? It's

4:43

too tiny. That's true, but

4:45

tiny life can be very powerful

4:48

to do other things. Well, so

4:50

what other things can you program a cell

4:52

to do? Lots of things. For

4:54

example, you can make a cell smell. Cell

4:58

smell. You could sell some smelly cells

5:01

down by the seashore. Or some, or some silly

5:03

smells. Here's

5:07

how Christina describes it. I

5:09

would sort of look at what a cell did and I

5:11

say like, okay, well, I see that this cell over

5:13

here can make this kind of smell. In

5:15

theory, Christina could find the

5:18

piece of DNA code that was responsible

5:20

for making that smell. Then

5:23

she'll copy that code. I

5:25

can put it into a different cell and

5:27

then now that cell makes that smell. And

5:29

so like, that's the sort of basic idea

5:32

that I can kind of like cut and paste

5:33

and move around and rewrite

5:36

the way that a cell works through DNA.

5:38

That's wild, so it's just like copy and pasting

5:41

on my laptop. Well, not exactly.

5:44

Working with biology is much more

5:46

challenging than working on a computer for

5:49

reasons we'll get into during the series.

5:52

But you can copy paste DNA

5:54

from one living thing

5:55

into another living thing and build

5:58

or engineer. a new

6:01

kind of tiny life, synthetic

6:04

life. Oh, so

6:07

that's what synthetic biology is? That's

6:09

the basic idea of synthetic

6:12

biology. It's engineering

6:14

biology. It's a powerful new

6:16

type of technology that can be

6:18

used across nearly any aspect

6:21

of life on Earth

6:22

and beyond. Whoa,

6:25

I mean, that's really huge. But

6:28

I don't understand how that connects to human cheese, because

6:31

that's just gross. Well,

6:33

Christina was using art and cheese

6:36

as a way to ask a question about how

6:39

synthetic biology will shape

6:41

our future.

6:42

What if technology looked

6:45

more like cheese than it looked like

6:47

iPhones is kind of the question that we were

6:49

asking.

6:50

If technology looked more like cheese

6:53

than iPhones, you definitely wouldn't want

6:55

to keep that in your pocket. Or like

6:57

put it next to your ear. Like if you had to text

7:00

on cheese, it sounds slimy.

7:02

But seriously,

7:04

synthetic biology will change the

7:06

way we think about what technology

7:09

is. I think synthetic

7:11

biologists want to make technology out

7:14

of biology. And so, yeah,

7:16

it's going to look more like cheese. It's going to

7:18

smell weird. It's going to be alive.

7:21

And we're going to engineer that to make different

7:23

kinds of food

7:24

or different kinds of medicines or different kinds

7:26

of materials and things around

7:28

us. Using DNA and factories

7:31

made out of cells, synthetic biology

7:34

could engineer the world around us.

7:37

Things made from biology instead

7:39

of chemistry.

7:41

And so that's what technology might start to look like

7:43

soon, more like cheese. But

7:46

what

7:46

does that really mean? More

7:48

techy cheese? Cheese startups?

7:52

Tech cheese bros?

7:52

Well

7:55

dig into the startling world of cheese tech and

7:58

reveal a surprising truth.

7:59

about cheese after this

8:02

quick break.

8:06

Tumble's brought to you with support from Spotify for

8:08

Podcasters. If you're so inspired

8:11

by me and Lindsay that you wanna make a podcast of

8:13

your own, Spotify for Podcasters has

8:15

got everything you need all in one super easy

8:17

place. If you've got audio you've recorded

8:19

that you wanna upload, go ahead. If

8:21

you don't, you can record your show right on Spotify's

8:24

platform and even edit and add music

8:26

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8:28

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8:30

platforms. See, easy. To

8:33

get started, just go to Spotify.com slash

8:35

Podcasters

8:36

or download the Spotify for Podcasters app.

8:38

All right, we're back. So

8:41

at the risk of sounding cheesy, this

8:46

explanation sounds like a single slice

8:49

of what synthetic biology is. And

8:51

I still have so many more questions.

8:53

Yeah, there's an entire cheese board

8:56

of what synthetic biology means

8:58

and could be.

9:00

Like you got your hard cheese, your soft

9:02

cheese and then there's the cheeses made with

9:04

all different kinds of milk. You're really

9:06

getting the hang of this cheese metaphor which

9:08

we deeply committed to. But

9:11

just like cheese, synthetic biology

9:13

is used for more than one type of product

9:16

with more than one type of method. But

9:19

get this,

9:20

synthetic biology is already being

9:22

used to make most cheeses.

9:25

Wait, really? Yeah, cheese

9:28

is made with an important ingredient

9:30

called rennet, but it's not

9:32

found in our belly buttons. It's found

9:34

in the lining of calves' stomachs.

9:37

Wait, calves like young

9:39

cows? Yes, we're

9:41

not gonna get into how people discovered

9:44

this inside the stomachs of young cows,

9:46

but rennet starts the chemical

9:49

reaction that helps milk solidify

9:52

into curds of

9:53

cheese. I have to say, rennet

9:55

sounds kind of gross and also

9:58

really not great for the cows.

9:59

I agree. So

10:02

back in the 1980s, scientists

10:04

decided to try to make rennet not

10:07

from cows. So they discovered

10:10

the molecules in rennet that were key

10:12

to that curdling chemical reaction.

10:15

Next, they found the right code of DNA.

10:18

And just like Christina described, they

10:20

copied and pasted it back into

10:22

a bacteria cell. Wow.

10:25

So then that cell started pumping out

10:27

these rennet molecules, identical

10:30

to the molecules found in the animal

10:32

rennet.

10:33

Yeah, so it's basically like a vegan rennet.

10:36

But the cheese isn't vegan, though. That's still

10:38

made with animal milk, right?

10:39

Yeah, right. And so for decades,

10:42

we've actually been eating cheese thanks

10:44

to synthetic biology.

10:46

Wow, I never knew that. Yeah,

10:49

there's lots of other examples about

10:51

how synthetic biology is already

10:53

a part of our lives in our food, in

10:56

our medicine, and the things we buy.

10:59

I mean, I've heard of foods that have been genetically

11:01

modified or had their DNA changed.

11:04

And I know people have a lot of different ideas about

11:06

whether that's good or bad.

11:08

Yes, definitely. And we'll talk

11:11

about that throughout this series.

11:13

But first, we got to find out how we

11:15

got to this point. And to

11:18

do that, I turned to one of the pioneers

11:21

of synthetic biology. Her

11:23

name is Chris Prather, and she's

11:25

a synthetic biologist at MIT.

11:29

It turns out I was working in synthetic biology

11:31

before it was called synthetic biology. How

11:34

could

11:34

you work in synthetic biology before

11:36

it has a name? It seems like you need a name

11:38

first. Well, new fields

11:41

of science and engineering take

11:43

many, many years of development before

11:45

they get a proper name. It didn't

11:48

arise from nothingness.

11:49

So it wasn't just like a piece of DNA

11:51

landed on somebody's head and they were like, you're Eureka,

11:53

I have an idea for a new kind of science.

11:57

It will involve DNA.

11:59

So it came from many different people coming

12:02

together with similar ideas. And

12:04

a lot of what people in our field will talk

12:07

about

12:07

is whether or not synthetic biology is

12:09

really revolutionary or is

12:11

it evolutionary? So what does that

12:14

mean?

12:14

Is it something that is radically, radically

12:17

different, something you've never ever seen before, or

12:19

is it something that represents the

12:21

thing that you expect to come next?

12:24

Chris believes it was the second

12:26

one, the next step of a scientific

12:29

evolution, which began with a discovery

12:31

that happened just a year after Chris

12:34

was born.

12:35

Yeah, I go back to 1973. That's

12:38

when two scientists managed to put DNA

12:41

from one cell into another and

12:43

create the first genetically modified

12:46

organism.

12:47

It showed that you could take DNA from

12:49

two different sources, put it back together,

12:52

physically connect it back together, kind of like

12:54

cutting and pasting, and have it

12:56

work.

12:57

Cutting and pasting, like Christina mentioned.

13:00

Yes, this was the first time

13:02

that ever happened. It was a turning

13:04

point from understanding the science

13:07

of DNA to engineering

13:09

it.

13:10

At that point in time, we

13:12

know the structure of DNA. We

13:14

know that DNA carries the instructions

13:17

for how biology is supposed to

13:20

behave or how biology is going to function

13:22

and work on all those kinds of things, right? Biologists

13:25

had figured out how DNA's two twisted

13:28

strands fit together. It's

13:30

known as the double helix. DNA

13:34

has a sequence of letters, but it has

13:36

a partner. So think about it as being at a dance,

13:39

and based on who you are, you're only allowed to dance

13:41

with one person. The DNA dance features

13:44

only two types of pairs, dancing.

13:47

You have A's, G's, C's, and T's. The

13:49

G's and C's always have to dance together, but A's

13:51

and T's always have to dance together.

13:53

Okay, I've heard about these letters

13:56

before, but I never understood what they stood

13:58

for. of

14:00

different chemical bases and

14:02

honestly they're pretty hard to pronounce.

14:05

All right well I mean I guess I'm fine with AG,

14:07

C, and T. We don't need to make podcasting

14:10

any harder than it already is.

14:11

There are about a million of these base

14:14

pairs in any given strand of

14:16

DNA

14:17

and these pairs form groups called

14:19

sequences. They make up what

14:21

I like to call the line dance

14:24

of life. So you have one sequence

14:26

that has AG, C, and T's paired

14:29

with another sequence that has AG, C, and

14:31

T's. This

14:32

line dance is very very long. For

14:34

example in our own DNA there are about three

14:37

billion of these dancing pairs.

14:40

Wait

14:40

three billion? I don't know

14:43

I had three billion of anything. You

14:45

do and it's repeated in all of the

14:47

bajillion cells in your body. I gotta

14:51

say that's just a lot of stuff. It's

14:54

big numbers. Did you know we're

14:56

made of a lot of stuff

14:57

and it's pretty much all wet. This

15:01

long line of dancing pairs make

15:04

up the twisty strands of DNA.

15:06

These are the words and sentences

15:09

in the instruction manual for the cell

15:11

and to bring it all back to 1973 these

15:15

scientists wrote a new section of

15:17

the manual

15:18

by taking DNA apart and putting

15:21

in a section of DNA from

15:23

another bacteria. It's

15:25

like remodeling the car engine to

15:27

put it together in a new way and still

15:30

have it function. That represented

15:32

a tremendous achievement that was the

15:34

start of genetic engineering. Wow

15:37

so so what does that even mean? It means

15:39

more cheese of course. Great.

15:44

Inventions like the artificial

15:46

rennet we described earlier became

15:48

possible. It really just

15:51

changed how we thought about

15:52

what we could do with biology and

15:55

what we could do with DNA. I mean

15:57

what more could you do this already seems like a

15:59

lot of cheese.

15:59

It doesn't

16:02

have to be just cheese, Marshall. We could

16:04

do much more. So the next

16:06

few decades after the 70s, just

16:08

sped up how much we could learn about

16:10

DNA and how we could make

16:13

it ourselves. And that's where synthetic

16:15

biology or engineering

16:17

biology comes in. Oh

16:19

wait, what's it mean to engineer biology?

16:22

It's using the science of biology

16:25

and DNA to change up what an

16:27

organism can do, or to make

16:30

new organisms altogether, which

16:32

is a bit different from what scientists

16:35

do. If you talk to scientists,

16:38

then their driver

16:40

is what question am I trying to answer,

16:43

right? If you talk to engineers,

16:46

their driver is what problem am I trying

16:48

to solve? Huh.

16:50

So I guess it's gone from like a process

16:52

of scientific discovery to

16:54

a process of problem solving. Exactly.

16:57

That's the difference between

16:59

science and engineering. But

17:02

synthetic biology kind of mix and

17:04

mashes science and engineering together

17:06

in challenging ways. Chris puts it like

17:09

this. If I build

17:11

a bookcase and I come back next

17:14

week, it's still going to be a bookcase. If I

17:16

come back 20 years from now, it's still going to

17:18

be a bookcase. If I build a bacteria

17:22

and I keep growing it over and over

17:24

and over again, five years from

17:26

now, it's not the same bacteria anymore.

17:28

Really? That sounds

17:30

really tricky. And potentially

17:33

risky. Engineering with biology

17:35

is engineering new forms

17:37

of life. And life evolves.

17:40

Humans can't change that. It

17:43

raises

17:43

all sorts of concerns and questions about

17:45

what is the role of technology. And

17:48

just because we can be doing it, should

17:50

we be doing it? And what

17:52

does it mean to make those choices and how do we make those choices?

17:55

These are all really, really critically

17:57

important issues. That does sound really

17:59

important. So how do we make these

18:01

choices? And where do we go from here?

18:04

That's what we'll find out in LifeLab.

18:07

In this series, we will explore the incredible

18:10

potential of synthetic biology

18:12

to help solve some of the biggest problems

18:14

we face as humanity.

18:17

And we'll be asking the important questions

18:20

about how we decide, how

18:22

it shapes our future. And that's

18:24

where you come in.

18:25

Me? I get to decide

18:27

the future? Definitely, someone's asking me. No,

18:30

no, not you. Oh. I'm

18:33

asking our listeners, because

18:35

what comes out of synthetic biology

18:37

could change the world you're growing up in.

18:40

Here's Christina Agapakis, the

18:42

human cheese lady, again. I

18:45

think it's important for kids

18:48

to know about science and technology,

18:50

because it is part of

18:53

how we live that you should know

18:55

and you should be part of, too.

19:00

So get ready to be a part of it, and

19:02

come along with us on the next episode

19:04

of LifeLab, when we'll be packing our bags

19:07

for Mars. When you're two

19:09

years from any other human inhabitation,

19:11

when there are no plants and no animals

19:14

and water is hard to come by, you're

19:17

on your own. And so either you bring

19:19

it all with you, which is incredibly expensive and

19:22

risky because they don't know everything that you

19:25

need, or you use biology to

19:27

make things on demand, to reproduce

19:29

the services of Earth, to create

19:32

things as you need them.

19:33

That's next week on LifeLab.

19:48

Thanks to Dr. Christina Agapakis,

19:50

head of the Genco Studio at Kinko Bioworks,

19:54

and Dr. Kristala Jones

19:56

Prather, the Arthur D. Little

19:58

Professor of Chemical Engineering.

19:59

at the Massachusetts Institute

20:02

of Technology and the Executive

20:05

Officer of Chemical Engineering.

20:06

LifeLab is supported by

20:08

the Engineering Biology Research Consortium,

20:11

a nonprofit committed to educating the next

20:13

generation and building a community

20:15

dedicated to solving big challenges with engineering

20:18

biology, with funding from the National

20:20

Science Foundation under award number 2116166. Special

20:24

thanks to Emily Orend and India Hook

20:27

Barnard.

20:27

You can find a transcript and other educational

20:30

materials about this episode on the

20:32

blog on our website, sciencepodcastsforkids.com.

20:35

On our Patreon, we have two

20:37

bonus interviews for you this week, featuring

20:40

both Christina and Chris. They're

20:42

available to Tumble patrons who pledge just a

20:44

dollar or more a month on patreon.com

20:46

slash tumblepodcast. Our interns

20:49

on this project are Elliot Hajaj and Grace

20:51

Ingram. Eric Kuhn is our engineer and

20:53

mixer. Sarah Robertson-Lentz edited

20:55

this series and designed our episode art.

20:57

I'm Lindsay Patterson, and I

20:59

wrote this episode. And I'm Marshall Escamilla,

21:02

and I did all the scoring and sound design for this episode.

21:05

Tumble is a production of Tumble Media. Thanks

21:07

for listening, and join us next week for part

21:10

two of LifeLab.

21:12

Hi, I'm Lindsay. And I'm Marshall. Welcome

21:14

to Tumble, the show where we explore stories of

21:17

science discovery. This is the second part

21:20

of LifeLab,

21:21

our five-part series about how tiny life can change everything.

21:24

Last time on LifeLab, we heard about

21:27

how a new feeling can change everything.

21:30

And we learned about how a new feeling can

21:32

change the world. And we

21:34

learned about how a new feeling can

21:36

change the world.

21:37

Last time on LifeLab, we

21:40

heard about how a new field called

21:42

synthetic biology came to be

21:44

and where it could be going. If

21:47

you haven't heard it yet, you probably should go back and listen

21:49

to it before this episode.

21:51

Because in this episode, we're bringing

21:53

LifeLab to Mars. Wait,

21:55

is there life on Mars? The question

21:58

is, should we bring our life there?

22:00

In this episode, we'll be making a packing

22:02

list of the Red Planet.

22:16

Before we get to Mars, there's one more thing

22:18

I keep thinking about that we heard in the last

22:21

episode. Which is? Well,

22:23

remember how Chris Prather, the

22:26

synthetic biologist from MIT, defined

22:28

the difference between scientists and

22:30

engineers?

22:32

If you talk to scientists, then

22:35

their driver is what

22:37

question am I trying to answer, right?

22:40

If you talk to engineers, their driver

22:42

is what problem am I trying to solve?

22:45

Yeah, I mean, I thought that was an interesting way to put

22:47

it. So like the goal of science is to answer

22:49

questions, and the goal of engineering is to

22:51

solve problems.

22:53

They're different. But I keep

22:55

wondering, if synthetic biology

22:57

is about solving problems with

22:59

biology, how do you choose

23:02

which problems to solve with

23:04

biology? Huh, I

23:07

don't know. Me either. So

23:09

that's why I wanted to start asking

23:12

the question with an example

23:14

of a big, nearly impossible

23:16

problem. Imagine sending

23:19

a small village of eight astronauts

23:22

to Mars.

23:23

That's Adam Arkin. He's a bioengineer.

23:27

And this is the problem he's working

23:29

on. A problem in the future.

23:32

A future where humans could live

23:34

on Mars.

23:34

It takes almost two

23:36

years sometimes to get to Mars and

23:39

to get back again. And so if you're going to stay there

23:41

for some period of time, you're on

23:43

an inhospitable planet very

23:46

far from home with almost none

23:48

of the services to get you there. Okay.

23:51

I mean, I think I'm seeing what the problem is. It's

23:53

hard to live without life. Now,

23:57

were you on

23:57

the moon? Amazon claims to be on the moon.

23:59

it can deliver to the moon. You can have Amazon Prime

24:02

for the moon, right? And

24:04

so you don't have to bring a lot

24:06

of stuff with you because it can be sent to

24:08

you when you need it. But when you're two years

24:10

from any other human habitation, when

24:13

there are no plants and no animals

24:15

and water is hard to come by, you're

24:18

on your own. And

24:21

so either you bring it all with you, which is incredibly

24:23

expensive and risky because you don't know

24:25

everything that you need, or you

24:28

use biology to make

24:29

things on demand, to reproduce

24:32

the services of Earth, to create

24:34

things as you need them. Whoa.

24:37

So he wants to use synthetic biology

24:40

to supply a small Martian village

24:42

of astronauts, which that

24:44

seems like really ambitious.

24:46

It does. We'll

24:48

figure out how Adam plans to

24:50

make it happen after we take

24:52

this short break.

24:58

You know, I talked to a lot of synthetic

25:00

biologists for the series, and Adam

25:03

Arkin was the one who came up with the shortest

25:05

definition of what they do. We

25:07

make organisms that make new things. I

25:10

love it. It's brief, to the point, you put

25:12

it on a T-shirt, and then I would buy

25:14

that T-shirt. You could

25:15

market the T-shirt very easily.

25:18

So Adam's making organisms to

25:20

solve the problem of living on a planet

25:22

without life. And he's broken

25:25

that huge challenge down into

25:27

three smaller, but still significant,

25:30

problems. Let's

25:31

just take three simple categories. So

25:33

you have food, you have medicine,

25:36

and you have materials to make

25:38

your house, for example, and to make the tools

25:41

and things you need.

25:42

First, let's talk about food.

25:44

Adam knows he can't feed eight people

25:47

the same thing every day. They'll get bored

25:49

of it. So we need to pack

25:51

the ability to grow food

25:53

of various sorts. Now that food

25:56

has to be adapted to space, grow

25:58

in very confined areas.

25:59

he is. It was very specific light sources.

26:02

So a Mars garden? Like

26:04

an olive garden, but on Mars. Instead

26:10

of bottomless pasta bowls, they have

26:12

bottomless dust bowls. Would

26:15

you like more dust? We have plenty.

26:17

Yeah. For

26:19

the Mars garden, you can't just get some

26:21

regular seeds from the regular garden

26:24

store. They'll have to be engineered

26:26

for a Martian habitat and

26:28

then supercharged for astronauts.

26:31

All the better if that food has

26:33

been functionally modified.

26:36

Well, wait, what does that mean? It

26:38

means that the food is packed with

26:41

more than just the normal nutrients.

26:44

For example, your potatoes could contain

26:46

tiny molecules that help keep

26:48

your bone strong in Mars' low

26:50

gravity environment.

26:52

So you can get more nutrition from it? And

26:54

even better if it's providing things

26:57

that we know you need medically.

26:58

And that brings us to the

27:00

second category, medicine.

27:03

How will astronauts get all the medicine

27:05

they need for all their time on Mars?

27:08

Everybody gets headaches. Everybody

27:10

gets joint aches. We know you need things like

27:13

aspirin or Tylenol. I'm

27:15

assuming you can't just get like one of those massive

27:17

bottles they have at the like discount

27:19

stores and take them to the spaceship.

27:21

No. An

27:24

astronaut could get sick with

27:26

all sorts of different illnesses on Mars,

27:29

but you couldn't really pack for all

27:31

the possibilities.

27:32

So we need organisms

27:34

that can produce these molecules on

27:37

demand. Plants are one of them.

27:39

So like you go to a greenhouse instead of a drug

27:41

store. Yep. And there's two ways

27:43

to make that happen. You can imagine

27:46

making it in the plant so that you can extract

27:48

it and make pills out of it. Or you can

27:51

have the plant be edible so you can eat

27:53

the plant and get the drug directly. Wait.

27:55

So you'd be making just like a medicine plant?

27:58

Not medicinal.

27:59

like a plant that's just medicine.

28:02

Yes. You could chow down

28:05

on a leaf of aspirin, and I

28:07

don't know how that would taste.

28:10

I guess however you wanted to, right?

28:13

That's crazy. It's not just food that

28:15

can do double duty. So we also

28:17

make bacteria that are photosynthetic

28:21

and can reuse carbon dioxide and things like

28:23

that to clean your air, but they'll also

28:25

make these drugs reuse. So he's trying to

28:27

make bacteria that will make pills and

28:30

clean air.

28:30

Yes, it is really

28:33

wild. And now we're onto

28:35

the last category on Adam's

28:37

packing list, the building materials.

28:40

Then we have other bacteria that

28:43

make plastic for us from which you can

28:45

make tools, work

28:47

surfaces. We can patch habitats

28:50

with it.

28:52

Okay, so he's trying to do bacteria

28:54

that makes pills, cleans air, and

28:56

he wants to make a little army of plastic-making

28:58

bacteria that's busy building the materials

29:01

for your Martian home. Yes. And

29:03

the plan is that all of this

29:06

tiny life settlement gets set up

29:08

without the astronauts themselves.

29:11

So a lot of this would be

29:14

sent to Mars before any astronaut

29:16

arrives. It would be robotic.

29:18

Adam told me that this Martian

29:20

village survival kit would be

29:22

rocketed out to the red planet, kind

29:25

of like a rover.

29:26

So when the astronauts arrived, a lot of things

29:28

were already booted and operating. Well,

29:30

that's insane. It can just set itself up.

29:32

That's the idea. It's the

29:35

ultimate off-grid technology. In

29:37

fact, Adam says we could easily

29:40

convert this Martian village system

29:42

to benefit Earthlings still on

29:44

our planet.

29:45

This whole thing fits in something the

29:47

size of your backyard. So you could

29:50

imagine feeding two or

29:52

three families, providing resources

29:54

for them here on Earth with nothing

29:56

but the sun and the atmosphere

29:59

and water.

29:59

own household waste. I think that's a

30:02

huge benefit to mankind.

30:04

Okay, so we could all use this crazy Martian

30:07

technology, but right in our backyards.

30:10

Yes, and you know, a lot

30:12

of technology developed for space missions

30:14

has ended up being used on Earth.

30:17

Like, did you know the Dust

30:19

Buster was first designed in

30:21

order to collect moon dust?

30:23

Really? I

30:27

guess like if it can get dust on the moon,

30:29

then it can definitely get those little crumbly things that

30:31

are in the couch.

30:32

Exactly. But

30:35

getting back to Mars, what Adam

30:37

just laid out is a synthetic biology

30:39

solution to supporting astronauts

30:42

on Mars.

30:43

They'll use the power of DNA

30:45

to convert bacteria and plants into

30:48

tiny factories that make supplies

30:50

on demand.

30:51

But when it comes to how this would actually

30:54

work in real life, there

30:56

are some kinks to work out. Take food,

30:58

for example. And it's actually

31:00

not entirely clear how

31:03

we ensure that there's always food

31:06

at all times, and it always grows

31:08

with no error. Wait, it's

31:11

not clear how they make sure the astronauts always

31:13

have food? See, that sounds important to

31:15

me. I don't

31:18

know about you.

31:18

You want to have food all the time,

31:21

like every day, right? I mean, around

31:24

two or three times, sure. So

31:27

there's not exactly a grocery store

31:29

that you can go to if your crops fail.

31:32

So making sure there's no bad

31:34

growing season is extremely,

31:36

extremely important.

31:37

Especially when no one's ever grown

31:39

a plant on Mars before. I mean, how do we even

31:41

know how that works? Yeah, and that's

31:44

not all. Moving on to medicines,

31:46

these pills or pill plants have

31:49

to be as good as what you'll get

31:51

on Earth at the pharmacy. Our

31:53

pills are made in big factories with

31:55

lots of tests, making sure they

31:58

don't accidentally harm you.

32:00

How do you make machines that do that? And

32:03

we kind of know how, but

32:06

not enough to guarantee

32:07

it. And that needs to be solved.

32:10

It's going to have me go to Mars. All right. So

32:12

that doesn't sound to me like it's just like a little kink

32:15

in the plan that needs to be worked out. It sounds

32:17

like it's actually like a really huge problem

32:19

that could mean life or death for an astronaut.

32:21

Yes. And that puts a

32:23

lot of serious responsibility

32:26

on Adam and his team. We

32:28

have to make sure that we just don't cause

32:30

any problems. Okay. But

32:33

how do scientists know if what they're going to do will

32:35

cause problems? The short answer

32:38

is that they don't. And biology

32:40

is complicated. And because it's complicated,

32:42

we have to be very careful when we use it. Well,

32:46

how do you make sure you're being careful? Well,

32:48

Adam is constantly thinking about

32:50

what can happen. We figure out

32:52

for every step what could go wrong. And

32:55

we then for every technology that

32:57

is about that risk, we assess

32:59

how can it go wrong? How can it be fixed?

33:02

What happens if it can't? Do we have a backup

33:04

technology?

33:06

Sounds like they're trying to stop things from going wrong.

33:09

Definitely. But beyond the technology,

33:12

there's bigger questions to ask about

33:14

how we bring ourselves and brand

33:16

new biology to another planet.

33:19

We are a people about

33:21

to embark into an unknown location

33:24

and plant our flag out there. And

33:27

we are taking a privilege

33:30

to go to another planet and

33:32

assert our biology and our dominance in

33:34

that world. Wow. That's

33:37

a really interesting question that asks, if

33:39

we even have the right to live on Mars at all,

33:42

is it okay to colonize another planet even

33:44

if no life exists there?

33:46

That is an excellent question.

33:49

And there's an even bigger one behind

33:52

it. There's a larger question

33:54

about what is our rights in terms of getting

33:56

out into the world. And there's two things

33:58

to consider here.

33:59

Huge amount of cost for us to

34:02

go out there. This costs the world a lot of

34:04

money. These are billions upon trillions of dollars

34:06

that could be spent elsewhere to help

34:09

our people. And we ought to justify

34:11

that in some way. We think

34:13

about, is it worth that cost for

34:15

the benefit we'll deliver to our people back on

34:17

Earth when we do this? It's an ethical statement

34:20

we're trying to make.

34:24

An ethical statement means,

34:27

is this a good decision to make? How

34:29

does going to Mars and bringing

34:32

our new biology with us measure

34:34

up to what we think is right

34:36

and wrong?

34:37

Meaning, why do we think

34:40

this is a problem that we should even put

34:42

effort into solving? Exactly.

34:44

There are no right or wrong answers.

34:47

Ethics are about what you believe in

34:49

and what you value. We

34:52

all believe in and value different things.

34:54

So we can all think through the same questions

34:57

with the same information and come

34:59

to different answers.

35:00

Well, I mean, what does Adam

35:02

think? What's his answer to that question? Honestly,

35:05

I'm a technologist and a scientist, and

35:08

I'm most concerned with the fact that we

35:10

are clean. That

35:12

is, we do no harm, that

35:14

we don't contaminate

35:16

the planet. Basically, he has

35:18

a job to do, and he wants to

35:20

do it well. He believes that synthetic

35:23

biology can be contained and

35:25

not affect Mars in a bad way.

35:27

And he thinks it's possible to make it

35:30

trustworthy enough to support his

35:32

small village of astronauts.

35:34

I want to make sure that we are

35:36

doing the job that everyone expects us to do

35:38

and nothing more. That's my main concern.

35:41

But he admits that not everyone would

35:43

agree with his job. Now,

35:46

going to Mars as a people, as

35:48

a human race, as a human animal,

35:51

is debatable. But

35:53

I can't imagine not wanting

35:56

to explore. I can't imagine

35:58

us as a species wanting to...

35:59

cut ourselves off from the universe we live in. Okay,

36:03

so he does think we should go. He

36:05

definitely has a case for it. I

36:08

think that going to Mars is

36:10

an immense undertaking

36:12

that will increase our knowledge by leaps and

36:14

bounds. It's just an amazing

36:16

thing, but it could be a place for us to live

36:19

one day. And I'm not

36:21

sure we're going to do that, but not

36:23

knowing if we could seems like a

36:25

mistake.

36:27

That sounds like a pretty compelling argument. I'm

36:30

not sure what to think about it though. Me

36:32

either. On one hand, I'm like, if

36:34

we need to solve problems on Earth, why don't

36:36

we just do that and not have to

36:39

figure out the part of how do we get these things to Mars?

36:42

Yeah, but then you don't get to

36:43

go explore space, which I don't

36:45

know is like, that's really

36:47

cool, a good enough reason.

36:50

We could go back and forth on

36:52

this forever, but at

36:54

some point we have to decide

36:57

what to do. So how do we do that? That's

36:59

what we're going to find out in our next episode.

37:02

We'll be heading to the home of a Harvard professor

37:05

and his eight year old daughter. And

37:07

this father daughter team is going

37:09

to attempt the impossible to

37:12

figure out how we make good decisions

37:14

about science together. Should

37:17

we do this or should we not do this?

37:20

Or I'm kind of in the middle.

37:22

I don't know which one we should do.

37:25

Maybe we should,

37:27

but very carefully. Or

37:31

maybe we shouldn't, but very carefully.

37:34

Yeah, right, right. That's next

37:36

week on Life Lab.

37:47

Thanks to Dr. Adam Arkin, professor

37:49

of bioengineering at the University

37:51

of California, Berkeley, and scientist

37:54

at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

37:57

He's also the director of CUBES, which stands

37:59

for

37:59

the Center for the Utilization of

38:02

Biological Engineering in Space.

38:05

Good acronym. Yes. Life

38:07

Lab is supported by the Engineering Biology

38:09

Research Consortium, a non-profit committed

38:11

to educating the next generation and

38:14

building a community dedicated to solving big

38:16

challenges with engineering biology, with

38:18

funding from the National Science Foundation under

38:20

award number 2116166. Special

38:24

thanks to Emily Orend in India, Bukhbarnar.

38:27

You can find a transcript and other educational

38:29

materials about this episode on the blog

38:32

on our website, sciencepodcastforkids.com.

38:36

Learn

38:37

more about life in space on our bonus

38:39

interview with Adam Arkin. It's available

38:41

to Tumble patrons who pledge just a dollar

38:43

or more a month on patreon.com

38:45

slash tumblepodcast. Our interns

38:48

on this project are Elliot Hajaj and Grace

38:50

Ingram. Eric Kuhn is our engineer

38:52

and mixer. Sarah Robertson-Lentz

38:54

edited the series and designed the episode

38:56

art.

38:57

I'm Lindsay Patterson and I wrote

38:59

this episode. I'm Marshall Escamilla

39:01

and I did all the scoring and sound design for

39:03

this episode. Tumble is a production

39:06

of Tumble Media. Thanks for listening

39:08

and join us next week for part three of

39:10

Life Lab.

39:22

Hi, I'm Lindsay. And I'm Marshall.

39:24

Welcome to Tumble, the show where we explore stories

39:27

of science discovery. This is the third

39:29

part of Life Lab, our five-part series about

39:31

how tiny life can change the world.

39:33

In the last episode, we

39:35

started packing for Mars, but

39:38

planning the trip brought up some difficult

39:40

questions.

39:40

You should listen to that episode if you

39:42

haven't already to know what we're talking about.

39:45

Especially because this led us to the

39:47

question we'll be attempting to answer

39:50

today. How do we make the

39:52

decisions that are going to affect

39:54

our future as

39:55

humans?

39:59

Alright, Marshall. Well, we're kind of stuck

40:01

on this Mars question. How

40:03

can we solve it? Well, it's clear that we disagree

40:06

and one of us is right and one of us is wrong.

40:09

Probably I'm the right one. I mean,

40:11

I disagree about that too.

40:14

But ultimately, it's not us who

40:16

gets to decide whether we should go to Mars.

40:19

I don't know. I've got a pretty major space

40:21

traveling operation going with the squirrels in our attic.

40:25

We've decided we're going. Alright,

40:27

well you and your team of squirrel astronauts

40:30

can do what you will. When it comes

40:32

to realistic visions of getting to Mars,

40:35

the decision for humanity to settle

40:37

another planet could involve literally

40:39

the entire world.

40:40

We have to think about how

40:43

do we make sure that everybody is heard.

40:46

That's Adam Arkin from our last episode, right?

40:48

Yes, and he agrees that our future

40:50

in space is not just up to scientists

40:53

and astronauts.

40:54

How do we make sure there are diverse people

40:57

and diverse minds and diverse

40:59

nations are taken into account as we go

41:01

and establish dominance out in space?

41:05

So he's saying that this shouldn't be a competition

41:07

to see who can get their flag on Mars first.

41:09

Exactly. It shouldn't be like

41:11

the race that we did to the moon. It

41:14

should be a planet wide

41:15

decision. Are you saying we

41:18

should plan it for the whole

41:20

planet? Yes. Should

41:22

plan the planet planning planet?

41:25

Yes, but how to make that

41:27

plan

41:28

is still to be decided.

41:31

I don't think we've solved that problem. I think

41:33

we've discussed it. I think it's been surfaced, but

41:35

I don't think we've solved it yet. And

41:38

that's something for you guys to all be involved with. You

41:40

guys, like me, you and the crack

41:42

team of squirrel astronauts in our attic, I

41:45

didn't know we were all invited to join the Intergalactic

41:47

Council.

41:48

I'm pretty sure he's not talking about

41:50

me, you and the squirrels alone.

41:53

He's saying our listeners could get involved

41:55

with deciding if and how

41:58

humans live on Mars.

41:59

Wow, really? That's

42:02

a huge responsibility. Right?

42:04

And that got me thinking. Not just about

42:07

Mars, but about synthetic biology. Who

42:09

gets to decide how we use it in

42:12

the future?

42:12

And how do you even get to decide who

42:15

gets to decide? Well, Adam

42:17

kind of left that up in the air. So

42:19

I set aside the Mars problem, packed

42:22

up my recording gear, and went to Cambridge,

42:24

Massachusetts.

42:25

And we'll be there right after this

42:27

short break.

42:31

Do you want more Tumble stories? How

42:33

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42:36

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42:45

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42:50

sweet deal to me, and I'm not just saying that

42:52

because I happen to make these interview extras.

42:55

If you want to help support Tumble and become

42:57

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43:00

go to patreon.com

43:01

slash tumblepodcast, or just

43:03

tap one of the locked episodes on our Spotify

43:06

feed and click get access.

43:11

Ooh, is that the sound of Harvard-educated

43:14

birds? Yes, yes it is. Hello!

43:24

Sam Weiss Evans greeted me at the door

43:26

in front of a steep set of steps leading

43:28

to his family's apartment.

43:29

Sorry, the stairs are so steep. Sam's

43:34

not a synthetic biologist, but

43:36

he works with them to help decide which

43:39

technology is created, and

43:41

if it should be used in the real

43:43

world.

43:44

So, like, in the future, should

43:46

we use synthetic biology to solve problems,

43:48

or should we not? Exactly! So

43:51

Sam had invited me over to demonstrate

43:54

how to think through these tough decisions, with

43:56

the help of a very special guest,

43:59

his 8-year-old daughter. So do

44:01

you like to be called Isabel or Izzy? Izzy.

44:04

Izzy, okay. They're going to be talking

44:06

about a problem that might be solved

44:08

by synthetic biology, getting

44:11

rid of a deadly disease called

44:13

malaria. I set Izzy

44:15

and Sam up with microphones on their dining

44:17

room table and got ready to listen

44:19

to the conversation

44:20

unfold. Ready to get

44:23

started? Sure, yeah. All right,

44:25

go ahead. Okay. Have you ever

44:27

heard of malaria? Yes. What do you know

44:29

about it? Anything?

44:30

I know that it's passed by mosquitoes.

44:33

Yeah. So when the mosquito bites

44:36

you, then you might get sick.

44:38

Wait, can I butt in here? Yeah.

44:41

You have control of the audio. You can just like press

44:43

stop and start on the tape. I guess.

44:47

So why is malaria an issue we're talking about

44:50

here? It kills hundreds of thousands

44:52

of people each year, and

44:54

it's a big problem in some parts of the

44:56

world.

44:57

Yeah, mosquitoes are definitely the

44:59

worst. But where does synthetic biology

45:01

come in with this? We're getting to

45:03

it. Let's get back to the conversation. So

45:06

people have been coming up with all kinds of ideas. Well,

45:08

how do we address this problem of malaria?

45:11

But there's another idea that they're working

45:13

on right now, which is to change

45:16

the mosquito.

45:17

How do you change a mosquito?

45:20

Right. It's kind of a weird idea.

45:23

Okay. I mean, that is a weird idea.

45:25

So how do you change a mosquito? This

45:28

is where synthetic biology comes in.

45:31

The mosquito is a living

45:34

being, and that

45:36

living being has, you could

45:38

think of it like code, like

45:40

code in their body that tells them, you're

45:43

going to be this kind of being, you're going to

45:45

be this kind of animal, and you're going

45:47

to grow one head and not two, and you're going

45:49

to grow wings, and you really like blood.

45:53

Yeah. Okay.

45:55

So he's either talking about mosquito DNA or

45:58

vampire DNA.

45:59

He's definitely talking about mosquitoes here

46:02

because mosquito DNA has all

46:05

the instructions for how to be a mosquito.

46:08

But in some species, it also has

46:10

the instructions that let mosquitoes

46:12

carry the malaria virus and pass

46:14

it on to people.

46:16

That sounds like some pretty bad instructions. Can

46:18

we tear up that manual maybe? Well,

46:21

let's hear more about this idea from Sam.

46:24

The one idea might be, maybe we

46:26

don't want the mosquitoes to transmit malaria or

46:28

maybe we just don't need the mosquito anymore. So

46:31

what if we change the mosquito so that when

46:33

the mosquitoes try to have babies, they

46:36

can't have babies anymore? And

46:38

so you can like just take the mosquitoes out of

46:40

the environment. Is this a good idea?

46:43

Okay, so let's pause here

46:45

for a moment. Sam's just described

46:48

a big idea to Izzy that's

46:51

changing the mosquito's DNA to

46:53

prevent female mosquitoes from

46:55

being able to have babies or

46:57

reproduce. If they

47:00

can't reproduce, the species will

47:02

die out. No mosquito babies

47:04

means no mosquitoes ever again,

47:07

which means no malaria. So listeners,

47:10

here's your chance to think about Sam's

47:12

question yourself. Is this a good

47:14

idea? That's a tough one. So

47:16

we need to think about whether it's a good idea or not

47:19

and then why or why not?

47:20

Yeah, take a few moments to think

47:23

about it or you can even pause the

47:25

podcast to discuss it. Then

47:27

we'll hear Izzy's answer.

47:42

Okay, now that we've all thought about it, what

47:44

did Izzy say? No,

47:47

because bats eat mosquitoes

47:49

and if there's no mosquitoes, then

47:52

the bats can't eat mosquitoes.

47:55

So they'll die out and the ones that

47:57

eat the bats will die out.

48:00

the

48:01

animals who eat the bats will die on

48:03

and go like that until it hits

48:06

the top of the food chain where nothing

48:08

can eat it and then they'll just die

48:10

on and there'll be nothing left.

48:12

It's true. That's so true.

48:14

Yeah. So as much as we humans really

48:16

hate mosquitoes and would love

48:18

for them to be gone forever, I guess Izzy

48:21

did just point out that they are pretty important to bats.

48:23

It's true bats play an important

48:26

role in the food chain, but maybe

48:28

not all of our listeners had the same

48:30

reason for saying no to changing

48:33

mosquitoes as Izzy did. Or

48:35

maybe they think there are other important reasons

48:37

to say yes.

48:39

Oh, we've got another problem here. Like,

48:41

do we have to get everybody in the world to

48:44

agree which direction science should go before

48:46

anybody does anything? No. No.

48:50

Right. Yeah, no, that doesn't really

48:52

make sense, does it?

48:53

Yeah, because it would be really, really

48:56

hard to get every single

48:58

person in the world because you

49:00

can't do that. You have

49:02

to say it really, really, really,

49:04

really fast in a second.

49:07

Yeah, right. Yeah,

49:10

Izzy's got a really good point here. And also

49:12

people can change their minds sometimes. So

49:15

is it even possible to make a good decision about

49:17

science? Like, maybe we should just go

49:19

with what the squirrels want to do and that would be just

49:22

as good.

49:22

Hold on, these

49:25

squirrels in the attic aren't the answer to everything. I'm not

49:27

going to tell them you said that. Maybe

49:30

this is a good time to step away

49:32

from Sam and Izzy's dining room table

49:34

for a moment and press pause

49:37

on the conversation. So after

49:39

my visit, I called Sam to

49:41

explain a little bit more about where

49:44

he was going with this. What

49:45

I was trying to do in my conversation with Izzy

49:48

was to show that the kids who

49:50

are listening to the podcast

49:53

can really have a role

49:55

in saying, hey,

49:57

science, I've got a perspective on the world.

51:56

Island

52:00

is a national park. The scientists

52:02

started a conversation with the St. John's

52:04

National Park Service about maybe

52:07

releasing these modified mosquitoes

52:09

in the park. They

52:11

can just do whatever they want on their section of the

52:13

island, which is half the island. So

52:15

we could have just worked with them, released

52:17

it on the, you know, in the park and

52:20

of course it would go outside of the park.

52:22

It's true, mosquitoes really have no respect for

52:24

property lines. So they

52:26

could have just had the park rangers like

52:28

give them the thumbs up, but the rest of the

52:30

island never would have had a say. Well,

52:33

that doesn't

52:33

seem particularly fair. But

52:35

I was saying, you know, is that okay? And

52:37

the scientists were like, we don't think that that's okay.

52:40

And I was like, okay, we'll go talk to somebody else.

52:42

I mean, I'm sure there are people

52:44

who actually live there year round, right?

52:46

Okay, go talk to those people. And so

52:49

they really got a sense of the complexity

52:51

of the local community. The

52:52

modified mosquito debate is still going

52:55

on in many parts of the world involving

52:58

scientists, governments and local communities.

53:01

It's a long process in each

53:03

place. In

53:04

the case of St. John's, Sam said

53:06

that the scientists didn't take their project

53:09

further, but they learned something important

53:11

in the process.

53:13

The point of the whole exercise for me with

53:15

them was was saying, you think you want to make

53:17

this technology because you think it'll

53:19

solve a problem in the world. But what

53:21

is the problem that you're trying to solve?

53:23

And how do other people see that problem? So

53:26

I guess on an island, it seems a little easier to talk

53:28

to all the people who would be impacted by these decisions,

53:30

because there's fewer of them, and it's like harder for

53:33

them to get away. But how does that work

53:35

when involves like a whole country or a

53:37

whole planet like going to Mars?

53:40

Will people ever agree about

53:41

that? So even though you can't

53:43

talk to everyone in the world, like

53:46

Izzy said, scientists can

53:48

talk to more people and get more

53:50

opinions, including kids.

53:53

And that's what science needs right now. It

53:55

needs much more involvement

53:57

in the processes of making decisions.

53:59

And the respect for the outcome of that

54:02

process will be a very different science

54:04

as well as a different society.

54:12

Okay, through the magic of audio,

54:14

let's now transport ourselves back

54:16

to Sam and Izzy's dining room table

54:19

as we wrap up our conversation.

54:22

So how did you feel about that conversation?

54:24

I liked it. I liked the bit where it's

54:26

also, should we? Yeah,

54:29

like should we do this or should we not

54:31

do this? Or I'm kind

54:34

of in the middle. I don't know which one

54:36

we should do.

54:37

Yeah, or maybe we

54:40

should, but very carefully.

54:44

Or maybe we shouldn't, but very carefully.

54:47

Yeah, right, right. Yeah. Okay,

54:51

so we're back in the safety of our own studio.

54:53

No genetically modified mosquitoes here,

54:55

just the squirrels. So where do we go from

54:57

here? What's next on our magical audio

54:59

field trip?

55:00

Well, in the next episode, we

55:03

are going to talk more about making

55:05

these science decisions very

55:07

carefully. As we explore the

55:09

future of something you're probably touching

55:12

right now, your clothes. It's

55:15

actually interesting because fashion is one of the

55:17

last places as scientists

55:19

or engineers we

55:21

think to innovate. We'll

55:23

talk to a scientist who's making new clothing

55:25

materials out of some pretty unexpected

55:28

biology. Have you ever been

55:30

bitten by a spider?

55:31

Yes, and I do not have superpowers

55:33

yet. Wow, that sounds bizarre.

55:36

Are the spiders like manning the machines? We'll

55:38

find out next time as we explore

55:41

synthetic biology

55:42

in fashion. Thanks

55:51

to Sam Weiss-Evan, Senior Research

55:54

Fellow at the Program on Science,

55:56

Technology, and Society at the Harvard

55:59

Kennedy School.

55:59

and Izzy Y7.

56:02

In fact, thanks to the whole family for

56:04

letting me take over the dining table for an

56:06

afternoon. We also heard from

56:09

Chris Prather at MIT and

56:11

Adam Arkin from UC Berkeley in

56:13

this

56:13

episode. LifeLab is supported

56:15

by the Engineering Biology Research Consortium,

56:18

a nonprofit committed to educating the next

56:20

generation in building a community

56:22

dedicated to solving big challenges with engineering

56:25

biology, with funding from the National

56:27

Science Foundation under award number 2116166. Special

56:32

thanks to Emily Orend in India Hook

56:34

Barnard.

56:35

You can find a transcript and other educational

56:37

materials about this episode on the blog

56:40

on our website, sciencepodcastforkids.com.

56:43

Learn more about how Sam thinks about

56:45

synthetic biology in our special bonus

56:47

interview episode. It's available to Tumble

56:49

patrons who pledge just $1 or more

56:51

a month on patreon.com slash tumblepodcast.

56:55

Our

56:55

interns on this project are Elliot

56:57

Hajaj and Grace Ingram. Eric

56:59

Kuhn is our engineer and mixer. Sarah

57:02

Robertson-Lentz edited this series and

57:04

designed the episode art. I'm

57:06

Lindsay Patterson, and I wrote this episode.

57:09

And I'm Marshall Escamilla, and I

57:11

did all the scoring and sound design for this episode.

57:13

Tumble is a production of Tumble Media. Thanks

57:16

for listening, and join us next week for part

57:18

four of LifeLab.

57:29

Hi, I'm Lindsay. And I'm Marshall. Welcome

57:32

to Tumble, the show where we explore stories of science

57:34

discovery. This is part four of LifeLab, our five-part series about

57:39

how tiny life can change the world. In our

57:42

last episode, we sat in on a conversation between

57:44

a dad and his eight-year-old daughter

57:47

as they figured out how to make good

57:49

decisions about synthetic biology. It

57:52

gave us some ways to think through some tough questions.

57:54

You should listen to that episode if you

57:56

haven't already. Now,

58:00

we're about to discover the most trend-setting,

58:03

future-thinking, avant-garde,

58:06

next, next, next, next, next season's

58:09

fashion, all made with

58:11

synthetic biology.

58:21

Marshall, I can't believe it's already our

58:24

fourth episode of Life Lab. I

58:26

know, it's really flown by. It's amazing how

58:28

quick four weeks can be. I

58:31

feel like we've been on a whirlwind tour

58:33

of synthetic biology. We've seen

58:35

its beginnings, we've taken it on an

58:37

imaginary trip to Mars, and

58:40

seen how it could make disease

58:42

disappear. And

58:44

you can't forget the cheese part. How could

58:46

I? But now we're close

58:48

to the finale, so we've got to get

58:51

dressed and ready for it in synthetic

58:53

biology fashion.

58:57

Ooh, lamb time. So

58:58

to understand how engineering

59:01

can turn biology into clothing,

59:04

I turned to Dan Widmeyer, the

59:06

head of Bolt Threads, one of the leading

59:09

companies using synthetic biology to

59:11

make materials for fashion. Did

59:14

you ever think you'll be working in a fashion

59:16

job when you were growing up when you were

59:19

a kid?

59:19

0.0% probability. No,

59:23

absolutely not. It's actually interesting because fashion

59:26

is one of the last places, as scientists

59:29

or engineers, we think to innovate.

59:32

Dan now works with famous

59:34

fashion designers and brands, but

59:36

like all fashion greats, he came from humble

59:39

beginnings as a scientist working

59:41

in a lab.

59:42

And the thing I worked

59:44

on was how spiders make

59:47

their silk. Wait, like spider

59:50

silk for webs? Yes,

59:53

Dan thought spider silk was just the

59:55

most incredible material and

59:57

far better than the silk we used to do.

59:59

day. So he and two

1:00:02

friends started bolt threads to see

1:00:04

if they could make spider silk for

1:00:06

the things we wear every day.

1:00:09

Me and my co-founder David would

1:00:11

wander around the Bay Area and collect live spiders

1:00:13

and put them in cages. And I would

1:00:16

keep them in my 350 square foot apartment

1:00:18

with my wife, who was not particularly

1:00:20

happy with the fact that we had, I don't

1:00:22

know, 30 to 50 spiders living on the

1:00:25

dresser at all times. Oh

1:00:27

my goodness, spiders, science, a

1:00:29

small apartment. How could this not go wrong?

1:00:32

Sounds like a twist on Spider-Man, except they

1:00:34

escape and start their own clothing company.

1:00:36

I know. When

1:00:38

I talked to Dan over Zoom, he looked

1:00:40

like a regular scientist turned

1:00:43

CEO, not a scientist

1:00:45

turned superhero. But I had

1:00:47

to ask, have you ever been bitten

1:00:49

by a spider? Yes, and I do

1:00:51

not have superpowers yet. If

1:00:54

I look at to the canon of Stan Lee's

1:00:56

Spider-Man, you know, it's the combination

1:00:59

of radiation and spiders, and we've only had spiders.

1:01:01

You know, I've not been bit as much as I thought

1:01:04

I would when we started working with spiders. I

1:01:07

mean, I guess not everyone gets into spiders to

1:01:09

gain spidey senses.

1:01:10

Yeah, some people just think spiders

1:01:12

are super cool and interesting. We

1:01:15

wanted to know what the different silks were

1:01:17

that different spiders make, because an

1:01:19

individual spider makes six

1:01:21

or seven different kinds of silk. Wait,

1:01:23

he just said one spider makes six

1:01:26

or seven different kinds of silk? Like,

1:01:28

I thought they just made the one web kind.

1:01:30

I know, that's what I thought too,

1:01:32

but their bodies actually contain

1:01:34

little silk factories. Like

1:01:37

imagine their buds holding tiny spools

1:01:40

of silk thread.

1:01:40

I've got the image. I'm

1:01:43

going to admit it's not a pleasant one. And

1:01:45

the silks have different properties, like some are super strong,

1:01:47

some are super stretchy, like rubber. In

1:01:50

fact, spider silk is five times

1:01:52

as strong as steel, if steel

1:01:55

was as thin as a thread of silk.

1:01:58

That's

1:01:58

incredible. You think of silk as being soft,

1:02:00

but this makes it sound like a really tough fabric.

1:02:03

It combines both beauty and brawn.

1:02:06

But while humans have managed to work with silkworms

1:02:09

to make beautiful clothes from their cocoons,

1:02:12

spider silk hasn't been quite so

1:02:15

easy to work with.

1:02:16

An individual spider has maybe 50 milligrams,

1:02:19

so 50 thousandths of a gram of

1:02:22

silk in there. And your average

1:02:24

shirt weighs, you know, 200 grams,

1:02:26

something like that. That'd be a lot of spiders, so

1:02:29

can we find a better way to make the same thing

1:02:31

the spider makes? And that's where we go to synthetic

1:02:33

biology.

1:02:34

Yeah, I mean, that makes total sense to me because

1:02:36

a spider silk farm with like 7,000

1:02:39

spiders in it. Thousands and thousands of spiders. People

1:02:42

actually have nightmares about that, I'm pretty sure.

1:02:44

It's definitely the setting for

1:02:46

a horror film. So how

1:02:49

can we get spider silk without

1:02:51

the creepy spiders?

1:02:52

What we'll often do is copy, in the case

1:02:54

of the silk, copy the DNA, the

1:02:56

instruction set for making spider silk protein

1:02:59

out of those cells from the spider and put

1:03:01

them in another cell. There's

1:03:04

that copy paste method again.

1:03:06

Both threads puts the spider silk

1:03:08

DNA into brewers yeast,

1:03:11

which is the same stuff that brewers use

1:03:13

to make beer.

1:03:14

And then we grow it in big fermentation tanks.

1:03:17

So instead of beer coming out of those

1:03:19

big tanks, you get the stuff that

1:03:21

makes spider silk.

1:03:23

Wait, so like it's like

1:03:25

a giant soupy puddle? How

1:03:29

do you get the threads?

1:03:30

Well it's like a yeasty molecular

1:03:33

mix, and it takes a lot of steps

1:03:35

until you're able to make clothes out of the

1:03:38

stuff. Bolt calls their fake

1:03:40

spider silk, bee silk.

1:03:42

Well that's all cool, but I have

1:03:44

one big question. Shoot.

1:03:46

Why is this a problem that needs solving?

1:03:48

We'll find out after this quick break.

1:03:50

If you're listening

1:03:53

to this, something tells me you're

1:03:55

a tumble superfan. And superfans

1:03:57

like myself tend to like merch, so check out the link

1:03:59

in the description. our threadless shop where you'll

1:04:01

find awesome designs for clothes of

1:04:04

all shapes and sizes. If you

1:04:06

want a science of butts t-shirt or

1:04:08

an animal mummy hoodie, just to name

1:04:10

a few, well we got you covered.

1:04:13

To show off some science swag and support

1:04:15

tumble in the process, check out our merchandise

1:04:17

by clicking the link in the episode description.

1:04:20

Now back to LifeLab.

1:04:25

Alright so we're back, so are you going to tell me

1:04:27

now why this is a problem that needs to be

1:04:29

solved? Yes, thank you for waiting.

1:04:32

As Dan sees it, the way we make materials

1:04:35

for clothes is a huge worldwide

1:04:37

problem.

1:04:39

So we on this planet today

1:04:41

on earth, we produce as a society

1:04:43

over 100 billion garments

1:04:45

per year. So these are pants, clothes,

1:04:48

underwear, socks, things like that.

1:04:50

Wait, 100 billion pieces

1:04:52

of clothing every year? Are they counting each sock

1:04:55

twice? 100 billion

1:04:57

altogether. And much of it is made

1:05:00

with polyester, a fabric you

1:05:02

might have heard of. It's a synthetic

1:05:04

fiber that's actually made with

1:05:07

oil.

1:05:07

Wait, so it's like oil we put in

1:05:09

our cars? Like the stuff that

1:05:12

you burn to get to the store, that goes

1:05:14

into our clothes?

1:05:15

Yes, probably the clothes

1:05:17

you're wearing right now have some amount

1:05:19

of polyester in them. The t-shirt

1:05:21

I'm wearing is probably a polyester cotton

1:05:24

blend. The polyester will be around long

1:05:26

after I'm dead. Wait, so he's saying that

1:05:28

the materials in the t-shirt that I'm wearing

1:05:30

right now are going to outlive me? Yes,

1:05:33

the current estimate is that it takes about 300

1:05:36

years for polyester to go away in the

1:05:40

environment. It's essentially

1:05:42

plastic.

1:05:43

So throwing away your t-shirt has the

1:05:46

same issue as throwing away your plastic bottle.

1:05:48

Yeah, and that's a big problem because even

1:05:51

if we give our clothes to other people after

1:05:53

we're done wearing them, we're just

1:05:55

not going to be able to wear the

1:05:58

same clothes for 300

1:05:59

years, they're all eventually going

1:06:02

to get thrown away. So like you

1:06:04

can draw out the day that happens, but

1:06:06

at some point it's going to get thrown away. And the

1:06:08

vision at Bolt is if everything's made of biomaterials,

1:06:12

when that product reaches the end of its lifespan,

1:06:14

or if you lose some of it, it gets torn, a little

1:06:16

bit of the fiber goes down the drain

1:06:18

in the washing machine. If

1:06:21

it's made of biomaterials, it's a material

1:06:23

that the earth can process in a much faster

1:06:25

time scale. Meaning

1:06:27

these materials can biodegrade,

1:06:30

just like the silk in a spider's web.

1:06:32

Wow. Well, that's great. But are

1:06:35

we all going to be only wearing spider silk

1:06:37

clothes in the future? Because that would be

1:06:39

a big change in my wardrobe. I think.

1:06:42

No, Dan envisions

1:06:44

different kinds of biomaterials, replacing

1:06:47

almost all the materials we use

1:06:49

now. Another one he's working

1:06:52

on is leather.

1:06:53

One thing that most people don't know, if

1:06:55

you buy a piece of leather, it's up to 40 percent

1:06:58

plastic. The plastic helps

1:07:00

preserve the leather so it could last

1:07:02

as a car seat or a couch, for example.

1:07:05

Well, that's insane. But how do you make leather

1:07:07

without cows? From mushrooms,

1:07:09

of course. Wait, what? You

1:07:12

go find a mushroom in your yard

1:07:15

with a parent and you dig underneath the soil.

1:07:18

You find all these white stringy thread

1:07:20

like things underneath. Those

1:07:22

are the mycelium. They're part of the mushroom that

1:07:24

are in the soil, breaking down dead

1:07:27

stuff. OK, so it's like mushroom

1:07:29

roots or something.

1:07:30

Yes, those stringy threads

1:07:33

are the key. We have this product,

1:07:35

Milo, where we use those threads,

1:07:37

the mycelium, as the fiber

1:07:39

component that makes a

1:07:42

really amazing leather like material.

1:07:45

Famous designers and brands are

1:07:47

already using Milo for footwear,

1:07:50

bags and even yoga mats.

1:07:52

That's crazy. And where

1:07:54

do I get myself a mushroom leather jacket? And

1:07:57

can it have a mushroom emblazoned on the back?

1:07:59

Right now, products

1:08:01

made with milo and spider silk are

1:08:04

very rare and pretty expensive.

1:08:06

But Dan says that won't always be the

1:08:08

case.

1:08:09

So we're right at the beginning of a lot of these biomaterials

1:08:12

coming out in the market and things that you can buy.

1:08:14

He says the idea is

1:08:17

that it will get cheaper to make biomaterials

1:08:19

as they have more practice making them.

1:08:22

Then more stuff will be made with biomaterials

1:08:25

and eventually they'll replace the materials

1:08:27

that are bad for the planet.

1:08:29

That all seems great, but you know I'm

1:08:31

thinking about what we learned in the last episode

1:08:34

with Sam and Izzy. So how

1:08:36

do we know that this is the right solution for

1:08:38

this problem?

1:08:39

Yeah, I was thinking about that a lot too.

1:08:42

Do you ever think about like what could

1:08:44

go wrong with this? Oh yeah, all

1:08:46

the time. People have worried about genetically

1:08:49

modified organisms escaping the

1:08:51

lab and contaminating other environments

1:08:54

since those very first experiments

1:08:56

back in the 70s.

1:08:57

This continues to sound like the

1:08:59

start of a comic book where there's just like wild

1:09:02

bacteria making sweaters. Well

1:09:04

Dan says that his company works hard

1:09:06

to ensure that nothing crosses the

1:09:08

barrier from the lab to the rest

1:09:10

of the world.

1:09:11

We have a general principle that none

1:09:14

of our materials are living materials

1:09:16

when they go out the door, right? A sheet

1:09:18

of Milo is dead. Like the mycelium are no

1:09:20

longer alive. Same with the spider silk. The

1:09:22

organism that grew it doesn't go into the product.

1:09:25

That's good, but I feel like there's so many other questions

1:09:28

that we could be asking. Like maybe questions

1:09:30

we don't even know that we should ask.

1:09:32

I know and Dan knows that too.

1:09:35

I think in all new technology

1:09:38

you can never answer those questions with 100% certainty.

1:09:41

Only with hindsight can you come back and

1:09:43

say here's what we did right, here's what we did wrong.

1:09:45

He said the best thing they can do is

1:09:47

try to answer their own question. How

1:09:50

do we make sure that we're constantly getting better

1:09:52

on how we're taking care of the

1:09:54

planet? I think that's a really excellent

1:09:57

question.

1:09:57

Yeah, it means you can always go back.

1:10:00

can ask more questions about whether

1:10:02

biomaterials are the right solution.

1:10:05

But one thing is for sure, the problem

1:10:07

of how our clothes are made is a problem

1:10:10

that needs solving. In the words

1:10:12

of the great fashion guru Tim Gunn, you've

1:10:14

got to make it work. You have to

1:10:16

make it work. Fashion

1:10:19

is all about creativity, but that

1:10:21

creativity can go beyond creating

1:10:23

the newest looks to changing

1:10:26

its impact on our planet.

1:10:28

It's one of very few

1:10:30

industries that literally every

1:10:32

person on the planet uses. Most

1:10:35

things are used by some people, not all

1:10:37

people. There's a handful of things

1:10:40

that all people use. And

1:10:42

anything, in my opinion, that all

1:10:44

people use is by definition an

1:10:46

important sustainability crisis.

1:10:49

In other words, when there are over 8

1:10:52

billion people on Earth, how

1:10:54

do we keep them all closed, bed

1:10:56

and healthy, while keeping our planet

1:10:59

healthy at the same time?

1:11:01

That's like definitely the hardest question

1:11:03

of our time, I would say. In our final

1:11:06

episode of Life Lab, we'll tackle

1:11:08

the biggest challenge of them all. It's

1:11:11

definitely possible that we can play

1:11:13

a huge role in solving

1:11:15

climate change, yes.

1:11:17

That's next week on Life Lab. Thanks

1:11:29

to Dan Widmeyer,

1:11:30

CEO of Both Threads. Life

1:11:33

Lab is supported by the Engineering Biology

1:11:35

Research Consortium, a non-profit committed

1:11:37

to educating the next generation in

1:11:40

building a community dedicated to solving big

1:11:42

challenges with engineering biology, with

1:11:44

funding from the National Science Foundation under

1:11:47

award number 2116166. Special

1:11:50

thanks to Emily Orndt in India Hook

1:11:52

Barnard.

1:11:53

You can find transcripts and other

1:11:55

educational materials about this episode

1:11:57

on the blog on our website, ScienceCon.

1:12:00

podcast for kids.com.

1:12:01

Hear more from Dan about what happens when fashion

1:12:04

meets science on our bonus interview podcast.

1:12:07

It's available to Tumble patrons who pledge just

1:12:09

a dollar or more a month on patreon.com

1:12:12

slash tumble podcast. Our

1:12:13

interns on this project are Elliot

1:12:15

Hajjaj and Grace Ingram. Eric

1:12:18

Kuhn is our engineer and mixer.

1:12:21

Sarah Robertson-Lentz edited the series

1:12:23

and designed the episode art. I'm

1:12:25

Lindsay Patterson and I wrote this

1:12:27

episode.

1:12:28

And I'm Marshall Escamilla and I did all

1:12:30

the scoring and sound design for this episode.

1:12:33

Tumble is a production of Tumble Media. Thanks

1:12:35

for listening and join us next week for the final

1:12:37

episode of Life Lab.

1:12:50

Hi I'm Lindsay. And I'm Marshall.

1:12:53

Welcome to Tumble, the show where we explore stories

1:12:55

of science discovery. This is our fifth and

1:12:58

final episode of Life Lab, our series

1:13:00

about how tiny life can change everything.

1:13:02

In the last episode, we heard about

1:13:05

a future where we wear wild new

1:13:07

clothes made by biology.

1:13:09

We're talking spider silk

1:13:11

and mushroom leather. So listen to

1:13:13

that episode if you haven't already. But

1:13:16

fashion is only one piece of how

1:13:18

we could make a better future on

1:13:20

our planet. In this episode,

1:13:22

we'll tackle the big one,

1:13:25

climate change, and we'll find

1:13:27

out how a bacteria from a bunny's

1:13:29

belly could turn our worst waste

1:13:32

into our greatest resource.

1:13:42

Well Marshall, we're here. We made

1:13:44

it to the final episode of Life Lab.

1:13:47

Yeah. And now, you know, I've taken my

1:13:49

team of crack squirrel astronauts to Mars.

1:13:51

We've got mushroom pants. We got everything.

1:13:53

Yeah, we've really been on a full

1:13:56

journey that was totally unexpected. And we're

1:13:59

ending with a whole new look, we're like super

1:14:01

high fashion. Indeed. How do

1:14:03

you like these mushroom leather pants? It's

1:14:06

better than the pants we were in the sweats

1:14:08

we were starting the series in. We

1:14:10

called it podcaster chic, but

1:14:13

really we were lying to ourselves. But

1:14:17

I want to bring us back for a moment

1:14:19

to our new fashion guru, Dan

1:14:22

Widmeyer. He said something important

1:14:24

about sustainability or the idea

1:14:26

of keeping Earth and its seven billion

1:14:29

people healthy.

1:14:30

Most things are used by

1:14:32

some people, not all people. There's a

1:14:34

handful of things that all people use.

1:14:37

And anything, in my opinion, that all

1:14:40

people use is by definition an

1:14:42

important sustainability crisis.

1:14:45

Dan was talking about clothes, but

1:14:48

there's something that we all use

1:14:50

even more of.

1:14:51

How is there something we use more of than clothes?

1:14:53

We wear them every day for the most part. Here's

1:14:56

a clue. It's actually a ton

1:14:59

of different things that you probably don't realize

1:15:01

is made from the same thing.

1:15:04

Oil.

1:15:04

Oil like olive oil? No,

1:15:07

like oil and gas. The world

1:15:09

produces over 100 million barrels of oil

1:15:12

every day.

1:15:15

Some becomes gasoline to drive your

1:15:17

car and some becomes plastics. Polyesters

1:15:20

of plastic. And then it goes

1:15:22

into your clothes. Oh, right. And that's

1:15:25

the stuff that means our clothes don't break down

1:15:27

after we're done using them, which is why I'm

1:15:29

wearing only mushroom leather now.

1:15:30

It's not just about

1:15:33

fuel and plastics. Oil

1:15:35

also helps make the ingredients for a

1:15:38

surprising number of things.

1:15:39

Like what kinds of things? Like makeup,

1:15:42

crayons, candles, band-aids

1:15:45

and even aspirin, just to name

1:15:47

a few in our own home.

1:15:48

Wow. It really is everywhere.

1:15:51

I know it's incredible that we can make

1:15:53

all these things, but there's a big

1:15:55

downside. The challenge

1:15:57

with it is all of that starts by pumping

1:15:59

oil. oil out of the ground. There's pollution

1:16:02

that comes from the whole process. From

1:16:04

taking oil out of the ground, transporting

1:16:07

it, to turning it in to finish products

1:16:09

like gasoline and plastic. These

1:16:12

polluting gases stick around in our

1:16:14

atmosphere and warm up our planet.

1:16:17

You're talking about climate change. Yes,

1:16:19

exactly. And then when oil

1:16:21

goes into plastics and other products

1:16:23

that can't be recycled, a lot of it

1:16:25

ends up in the environment or in landfills.

1:16:28

But like even more pollution. Exactly.

1:16:31

But what if I told you that we could make

1:16:34

the things we love to use with

1:16:36

less climate change and less pollution?

1:16:40

And

1:16:40

I'm listening. Tell me more. Good.

1:16:43

Because you'll hear more right after this short break.

1:16:50

Okay,

1:16:53

so I promised to tell you how we could

1:16:55

make stuff with less climate change

1:16:57

and less pollution. So I

1:16:59

talked to Ryan Tappel, a

1:17:02

synthetic biologist at a company called

1:17:05

Lanza Tech.

1:17:05

It's definitely possible that

1:17:07

we can play a huge role

1:17:10

in solving climate change. Yes.

1:17:13

What Ryan's company does is recycle

1:17:16

carbon dioxide, one of those polluting

1:17:18

gases, and then make it into

1:17:21

new things.

1:17:21

So we wouldn't need to

1:17:24

dig up more fossil fuels to put

1:17:27

fuel on our planes or make plastics

1:17:29

for our toys.

1:17:30

We can use our process to

1:17:32

make those things.

1:17:34

But wait, I don't understand. How

1:17:37

do you take the gases we don't want and turn

1:17:39

it into a thing? Like a hot

1:17:41

wheel or something?

1:17:42

So here's how it goes. The

1:17:44

recycling process starts with a kind

1:17:46

of tiny life called sea auto.

1:17:49

So sea auto

1:17:51

is a bacteria. That's

1:17:53

sea dot auto. Its full name

1:17:55

is a real whopper. Clostridium

1:17:58

autoethanogenum. Yeah, I'm not

1:18:00

going to say that. C. Auto, it is. So

1:18:03

C. Auto is the name that you'll be thrown around

1:18:05

all over the place at Lands of Tech because

1:18:08

its full name is very long, and

1:18:11

we have to say it a lot. So yeah, having a nickname

1:18:13

is super helpful. So what's

1:18:15

C. Auto? Like, where does it come from and

1:18:17

what does it do?

1:18:18

Let's start with where it comes from.

1:18:21

So this bacteria was actually first found

1:18:24

in a rabbit. Like a

1:18:26

rabbit? Like a bunny? Yes,

1:18:29

one that lived in a laboratory. A

1:18:32

lab back in 1994 was studying rabbits

1:18:36

and what was inside, like, the stomach and

1:18:39

the organs of rabbits.

1:18:41

The lab was curious about the contents

1:18:44

of bunny tummies, and they found

1:18:46

that, like our own stomachs, they're

1:18:49

full of bacteria. And

1:18:51

what these bacteria do is sometimes

1:18:53

can help with digestion, and that's what

1:18:55

it was doing. It was just hanging out in this rabbit,

1:18:58

just like hanging out in the corner, being like, hey,

1:19:00

I'm C. Auto. You guys want to go get some

1:19:02

coffee in this rabbit?

1:19:04

That's

1:19:06

your bacteria voice? Why, yes. Anyhow,

1:19:10

the scientist who discovered it didn't

1:19:12

think too much of C. Auto. It

1:19:15

was just there like other bacteria sitting

1:19:17

in the bunny's belly, chowing down on

1:19:19

the gases that built up there.

1:19:21

All that was really noted at first was like,

1:19:23

yep, this is what this bacteria is, and

1:19:25

it's capable of eating gases as

1:19:28

its food. I

1:19:30

bet that came out as bunny farts on the other end.

1:19:32

Like little bunny toots farting

1:19:35

through the forest. Picking up

1:19:37

the field mice and making them smell real bad.

1:19:42

Well, years later, Lonza Tech

1:19:45

was on the hunt for bacteria

1:19:47

that could eat the planet's unwanted

1:19:50

gases, and they

1:19:52

found C. Auto.

1:19:53

That's the beauty of synthetic biology

1:20:00

and bacteria like sea auto work, you

1:20:03

can then try to have it

1:20:05

make things it would not normally make.

1:20:07

Okay, so let me see if I've got this straight. So

1:20:10

sea auto eats gas and then uses it to

1:20:12

make something new that's not bunny

1:20:14

farts.

1:20:15

Exactly, yeah. When bacteria

1:20:18

eat things, they naturally change

1:20:20

them into something else.

1:20:22

It's like when we eat things, we eat

1:20:24

things to get energy. Yeah, okay,

1:20:26

and we use that energy to run around, and what we

1:20:28

don't use becomes

1:20:31

something you flush in the toilet.

1:20:32

Right, so Lonsotek

1:20:35

wanted to change sea auto's waste

1:20:37

into something that humans can use.

1:20:39

This is starting to sound kind of like,

1:20:42

I don't know, like spinning a pile of straw

1:20:44

into gold or something. Yeah, synthetic

1:20:47

biology is the rumpled stilt skin of

1:20:49

this equation. And so what we can

1:20:51

do is kind of put new pieces of DNA

1:20:53

in the bacteria that say, okay, in addition to eating

1:20:55

your food and also making your energy

1:20:58

and building your cell parts, could you also

1:21:00

make this other molecule

1:21:03

that we could then use to make plastics or

1:21:05

make jet fuel and the

1:21:07

bacteria say, sure, we can do that.

1:21:09

These bacteria, they sound like kind of

1:21:11

nice guys. Well, they

1:21:14

don't actually talk. That's too

1:21:16

bad. We should do synthetic biology

1:21:18

so they can talk. Well,

1:21:22

with this, Ryan's describing years

1:21:25

of hard work that went into engineering

1:21:27

sea auto to be part of a recycling

1:21:30

system for gas.

1:21:32

A gas recycling system? So like,

1:21:34

how does all that work? I'm glad you asked

1:21:36

because we have a song to help explain

1:21:39

it. Synthetic

1:21:41

biology, programmable

1:21:43

DNA, rewriting

1:21:46

the genetic code of organisms in order

1:21:49

to solve real world problems.

1:21:53

What does that

1:21:54

mean? We

1:21:56

start with the factory emitting gas,

1:21:59

burning coal. burning oil smoke we'd rather

1:22:01

not have. It is warming up the planet

1:22:03

in a dangerous way, so we must address

1:22:06

it now. Yeah, we gotta start today. But

1:22:08

what can we do? We need energy too.

1:22:10

We gotta get from here to there, but also we

1:22:12

air too. And it's true, not me or you, not

1:22:15

even with the giant crew. Can I glue the stinky

1:22:17

coo that we pump out in the blue? Or

1:22:21

can we? What if we could

1:22:23

reprogram bacteria to fight climate

1:22:25

change? Hmm.

1:22:29

Check it out. CO2,

1:22:32

a greenhouse gas. It's heating up our

1:22:34

atmosphere way too fast, but we could

1:22:36

stop it using science, as you will see,

1:22:39

with the process that we call synthetic biology.

1:22:42

We can program some bacteria to make the meat

1:22:44

gas, turn those cells into machines that will eat

1:22:47

the gas fast. But it gets better, because you see,

1:22:49

eating gas is not enough. With what's left

1:22:51

when they're done, we can make some good stuff.

1:22:54

After these hungry bacteria eat the CO2

1:22:57

gas, what's left over can be used

1:22:59

to make new, useful things, like fuels,

1:23:01

fabrics, and packaging. Dang!

1:23:08

Wow, I have to say, this idea is incredible.

1:23:11

It almost seems too good to be true. So could

1:23:13

it really happen?

1:23:14

Well, the technology exists

1:23:17

now. There's a lot of other pieces

1:23:19

to work out, but in theory, it can

1:23:21

totally happen.

1:23:22

Really? Because right now,

1:23:24

it feels like we'd have to live in an alternate universe

1:23:27

for this to happen.

1:23:28

I know, right? But think back.

1:23:30

Remember that very first experiment

1:23:33

to cut and paste DNA into

1:23:35

a brand new organism?

1:23:37

The one we talked about in the first episode?

1:23:40

That's the one. That was the

1:23:42

start of synthetic biology. And

1:23:44

it would have been so hard to imagine

1:23:47

back then that what came

1:23:49

from that experiment is part

1:23:51

of our everyday lives now. And

1:23:54

maybe we're at one of those moments now where

1:23:57

a certain new technology begins

1:23:59

to change.

1:23:59

our lives in ways we may

1:24:02

not realize until much, much later.

1:24:04

Maybe, and then we can look back to

1:24:06

this moment and be like, I knew about this

1:24:08

before everyone else.

1:24:10

Yeah, so now is the time

1:24:13

to learn more about these technologies

1:24:15

before they revolutionize our lives,

1:24:18

like Ryan says.

1:24:20

He's just asking that simple but

1:24:22

really important question when someone says, OK,

1:24:24

we made this. We think, well, how? How did you make

1:24:27

it?

1:24:27

Now I want to ask the listeners,

1:24:29

what questions do you have? We'll

1:24:32

give you some time to think about those questions. And

1:24:34

in a moment, we'll be back to wrap up our

1:24:36

time in LifeLab.

1:24:47

So even though this series is coming to an

1:24:49

end, synthetic biology is

1:24:52

nowhere near done. It's going

1:24:54

to keep going, finding new

1:24:56

problems to solve and new ways

1:24:58

to solve them. So you're saying that we're

1:25:01

not at the last word on synthetic biology

1:25:03

here. Yes, exactly. We

1:25:05

know enough to know now that synthetic

1:25:08

biology is going to help shape

1:25:10

the future that we're going to live in.

1:25:12

And that's why I want to go back to our very

1:25:15

first guest. The future is

1:25:17

not happening to you. You

1:25:20

are part of the future. That's Christina

1:25:22

Agapakis.

1:25:23

The cheese lady. Yes, indeed.

1:25:26

Christina told me there's no reason to wait

1:25:28

for someone else to tell you what the future

1:25:31

is going to be like. You can imagine

1:25:33

it now. And we can be asking,

1:25:35

like, what do we want from technology?

1:25:38

I mean, I definitely want

1:25:40

climate change to be solved. And I'd even

1:25:42

considered bunny bacteria as a way to do

1:25:44

it.

1:25:44

I agree. But to

1:25:47

even know that bunny bacteria could

1:25:49

be a solution, you have to learn about it

1:25:51

first. You have to know that it even exists.

1:25:54

And you have to understand the problems

1:25:56

it can solve by asking questions

1:25:58

like, how are we going to solve this?

1:25:59

these problems actually being made, who

1:26:02

is part of addressing them, who is making

1:26:04

those world better, who is benefiting

1:26:06

and who is being harmed, and is

1:26:08

that fair? asking

1:26:10

those questions will help you figure out what you

1:26:13

think and get more curious

1:26:15

about the science in our everyday lives.

1:26:17

I think most people don't always

1:26:20

think day to day about how their clothes

1:26:22

are made or how their food gets

1:26:24

made or how their vitamins

1:26:26

get made and so I think there's ways

1:26:29

that biology

1:26:29

has already shaped that world

1:26:32

that we just don't know or think about. Maybe

1:26:34

what I hope for the kids in this generation

1:26:37

like is that appreciation of how things

1:26:39

are made like and of the living world.

1:26:42

Or how

1:26:42

the living world makes our things.

1:26:45

Science in our lives are tied together.

1:26:48

They can't be separated at this

1:26:50

point but our future lives are not

1:26:52

decided yet so every

1:26:54

one of us can be a part of that. LifeLab

1:26:57

is just the first step. Keep

1:26:59

learning about synthetic biology, keep

1:27:02

asking questions, and keep being thoughtful

1:27:05

because you never know when you'll have

1:27:07

the chance to make a decision that

1:27:09

could change the future.