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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from house Stop

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey you welcot to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Land and I'm Jay mcswoman.

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Speaker 1: And before we get going here, just a couple of

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Speaker 1: things I want to throw out. First of all, Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. That is the mothership.

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Speaker 1: That's where you need to go if you want to

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Speaker 1: check out all all of our podcast episodes, videos, blog

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Speaker 1: post links out to social media accounts, including the landing

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Speaker 1: page for this episode, which will be sure to fill

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Speaker 1: up with links to related content, as well as some

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Speaker 1: key outside sources. At the time of recording this our

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Speaker 1: our other co host, Christian just put up a wonderful

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Speaker 1: gallery about in d m A. That's right, tying into

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Speaker 1: previous two parter we did on in d m A

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Speaker 1: Slash Ecstasy and number two. You want to help out

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Speaker 1: the podcast here? Do you listen to us via iTunes?

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Speaker 1: If you do, want to check out that iTunes page

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Speaker 1: and throw a nice review up there for us, Give

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Speaker 1: us a nice, nice fresh feedback on how we're doing here,

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Speaker 1: just to just to tweak that algorithm a little more

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Speaker 1: in our favor and help the show continue on as

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Speaker 1: it has been all right, Robert, I noticed something about you.

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Speaker 1: What's that, Joe? I notice you have blonde hair. I do.

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Speaker 1: I do naturally occurring blonde hair naturally, So you don't die, No,

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Speaker 1: it just it just grows out of my my head

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Speaker 1: this way. And you weren't struck by lightning or affected

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Speaker 1: in some way by a god. No, no, I didn't

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Speaker 1: witness any kind of pan dimensional being and have my

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Speaker 1: my hair changed color as as is want to happen. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So one can assume that you get your blonde hair

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Speaker 1: from your jeans. Yes, so you inherited it from your parents, right,

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Speaker 1: that's right, nice and nice and vertical. And there's nowhere

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Speaker 1: else you could have gotten it from, right, Well, unless

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Speaker 1: I happen to have a run in with a gene steeler. Now,

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Speaker 1: what is a gene stealer, Robert, Well, a Jane Steeler.

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Speaker 1: This is uh, you know, in this episode we're gonna

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Speaker 1: be talking about horizontal gene transfer, which is a very

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Speaker 1: real thing. But my first exposure to this this topic

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Speaker 1: really came in the form of tabletop gaming science fiction,

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Speaker 1: specifically the war Hammer forty thousand Universe. Hold on, I'm

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Speaker 1: putting on my seatbelt. Okay, Robert Warhammer, Yes, tell me, okay,

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Speaker 1: just without getting just two geeky about it all. And

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Speaker 1: I know some of our listeners are are certainly fans,

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Speaker 1: if if not of the tabletop game, then some of

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Speaker 1: the video games and that have spun out of it

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Speaker 1: and the overall world, the sort of expanded universe of

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Speaker 1: it all. But yeah, this is a tabletop board game

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Speaker 1: in which far future fantasy armies battled each other. It's

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Speaker 1: it's started out in the UK. Is this kind of

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Speaker 1: just sci fi upgrade of an existing fantasy world that

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Speaker 1: itself was kind of an amalgam of different elements, you know,

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Speaker 1: Tolkien and Dungeons and dragons and all these the Barians

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Speaker 1: and the Barbarian for sure, all of it, you know,

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Speaker 1: wrapped up into one. And then they took it, they

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Speaker 1: put it in the far future, and then other things,

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Speaker 1: I mints begin to spill into it. So it's kind

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Speaker 1: of a beautiful genre, Mutt. Yeah, you know, they ended

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Speaker 1: up borrowing a little bit here, a little bit here,

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Speaker 1: and and so if you look at Warhammer forty thousand

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Speaker 1: as a as a universe, you can definitely see bits

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Speaker 1: and pieces of everything else. A little aliens, a little

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Speaker 1: hell raiser here and there, then Horizon, uh, you name it.

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Speaker 1: It's probably has wormed its way in there at some point,

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Speaker 1: or another terminator certainly, But but it still feels very

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Speaker 1: unique and exciting, and I've always been a fan of it. Well,

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Speaker 1: we all love space monsters here, and I get that

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Speaker 1: you're heading towards a particular space monster. Yes, the tyrannid

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Speaker 1: gene Steeler. This is an influence infiltration branch of an

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Speaker 1: all consuming hive mind from another galaxy. Uh. And the

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Speaker 1: way that this plays out in the game world, um,

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Speaker 1: is that the tyranted hive fleet is headed towards our galaxy,

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Speaker 1: our future scenario, so it deploys this gene Steeler species

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Speaker 1: ahead of time to a chosen plant it And so

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Speaker 1: these genes dealers are big, hulking, six lenned killers. Uh.

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Speaker 1: They're deadly in a stand up fight. But their ultimate

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Speaker 1: aim is to infect members of the planet's intelligent population

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Speaker 1: with their own genetic material. These a and an ovipositor

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Speaker 1: like tongue. The injected tiny embryonic mass into the host organism.

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Speaker 1: And this uh, this seed is largely inert, but it

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Speaker 1: carries out three primary functions. Okay, so it's it uh,

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Speaker 1: psychically enslaves the host mind to a localized version of

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Speaker 1: the tyrand hive mind. Okay, so it's like one of

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Speaker 1: those brain stealing funguses, yeah yeah, or any of these

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Speaker 1: various parasitic wasp interactions with a host. You know. It's

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Speaker 1: so it's it enslaves the host mind. Then it alters

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Speaker 1: the host DNA, causing it to pass on hybrid genestealer

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Speaker 1: genetics to its offspring while also infecting it's made. Oh

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Speaker 1: that's interesting. So the person that it's infecting isn't just

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Speaker 1: a host, Like, it doesn't implant an embryo in the

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Speaker 1: body to you know, develop there and then eventually burst

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Speaker 1: out with lots of great joy and celebration, but it

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Speaker 1: puts its genes into your genome, right yeah. And then

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Speaker 1: after that it alters the host behavior more, forcing them

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Speaker 1: to care for this monstrous hybrid that's born. And then

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Speaker 1: the monstrous hybrid and everyone else in this sort of

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Speaker 1: growing genesteal or family continues to carry out the will

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Speaker 1: of the high mind, undermining defenses on the planet, producing

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Speaker 1: less monstrous host from generation to generation until they just

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Speaker 1: blend in perfectly and uh, and and until they're in

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Speaker 1: the in the position to just unstabilize the planet enough

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Speaker 1: for the full blown invasion to hit. I'm reminded of

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Speaker 1: Patrick McGoohan and Braveheart. When he's speaking of the people

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Speaker 1: of Scotland he says something like, if we can't get

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Speaker 1: them out, we'll read them out. Does his creepy mustache twirling, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: yeah he would. Uh. That's pretty much the tyrant approach here.

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Speaker 1: So it's I'm going to take control of your genome

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Speaker 1: by putting my own genes in. Yeah, that's pretty terrific.

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Speaker 1: Now we have to say, as a side note that Robert,

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Speaker 1: you showed me a trailer to some non existent movie

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Speaker 1: that looked like it looked like VHS Platinum. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I love this. What what was the deal with this thing?

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Speaker 1: So there's there's as so far, there has not been

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Speaker 1: an official Warhammer forty thousand Gene Steeler movieum, but there

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Speaker 1: have been some fan trailers over the years, and there's

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Speaker 1: a If you go to a stuff abou your mind

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Speaker 1: dot com, if you just type in gene Stealer one

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Speaker 1: word into the search bar, you'll find a couple of

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Speaker 1: posts in which I've embedded this, but yeah, some fans

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Speaker 1: of forty K made a trailer, a fan trailer for

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Speaker 1: a non existent fan film about space marines battling to here,

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Speaker 1: and it's basically the Space Hulk board game scenario and

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Speaker 1: it's oh, it's just it's delightful. It looks like one

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Speaker 1: of those via one of those grimy, grainy, low grade

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Speaker 1: VHS movies you'd get from the eighties that had you know,

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Speaker 1: cyborg sen It. Like I think I've mentioned these before,

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Speaker 1: they all came out after Terminator. It's like once Terminator

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Speaker 1: was out, bam, people knew what to do with their

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Speaker 1: with their small budget for movie making. Yeah, just barging

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Speaker 1: it up out there and all these you know, just

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Speaker 1: throw up, throw some sort of a camera lens over

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Speaker 1: your left eye and go at exactly, tape some electronics

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Speaker 1: to your body and and you are borg grime to infinity. Also,

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Speaker 1: I noticed some of the costumes and this thing kind

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Speaker 1: of looked like members of Guar. Yeah, and I does

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Speaker 1: Warhammer did that inspire Guar? I don't know enough about

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Speaker 1: Goar to comment on that, but I mean Gore has that.

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Speaker 1: They certainly have those like giant shoulder pad. It kind

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Speaker 1: of sent the thing going on spikes that they do

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Speaker 1: remind either they were influenced by some of the space

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Speaker 1: ort designs, especially in Warhammer, or it was the other way,

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Speaker 1: or maybe it's a little bit of transfer back and forth. Okay,

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Speaker 1: a little lateral transfer. Yeah, I definitely get a Warhammer

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Speaker 1: since from looking at guar on stage. Okay, Well, sticking

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Speaker 1: with sci fi for just a minute before we get

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Speaker 1: to the actual science. When I think about the idea

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Speaker 1: of genes stealing in an alien species, I my brain

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Speaker 1: obviously goes to one of my favorites, which is the

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Speaker 1: alien universe, the xenomorphs of of alien aliens, Alien three,

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Speaker 1: and the others I don't pay attention to, which I

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Speaker 1: should add was definitely an influence on the creation of

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Speaker 1: the gene stealers in Warhammer. Yeah, uh I, I can

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Speaker 1: certainly see how that would be based on what you've described,

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Speaker 1: because I am reminded of the alien life cycle. So, so,

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Speaker 1: what happens in the life cycle of a xeno more

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Speaker 1: if it's kind of like insects we know here on Earth,

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Speaker 1: sort of sort of, but with some kind of fantastical

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Speaker 1: elements put in. But so you've got a queen that

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Speaker 1: lays an egg. The egg hatches, and out of the

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Speaker 1: egg comes a little scuttling creature called a face hugger.

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Speaker 1: And this is a parasite that finds a host and

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Speaker 1: attaches itself to the host's face and then plants the

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Speaker 1: seed of a larval organism inside the host. So grabs

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Speaker 1: your face. It's sort of squirts eggs in your mouth

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Speaker 1: and then down in your torso the larval organism grows.

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Speaker 1: This is known as a chest burster because it pops

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Speaker 1: out of your chest when in the most famous scene

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Speaker 1: from the first movie. But it also seems to, at

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Speaker 1: least according to definitely by the third movie, this is

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Speaker 1: clear that it incorporates significant portions of the host animals genome,

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Speaker 1: or at least its hereditary traits, which would have to

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Speaker 1: pretty much come from its genome as far as we

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Speaker 1: know um. And so the chest burster emerges from the

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Speaker 1: host and it carries phenotypic traits of the host organism. So,

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Speaker 1: for example, a chessburster that comes out of an adult

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Speaker 1: human is bipedal, but an alien that pops out of

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Speaker 1: a dog or another four legged animals strides on all fours.

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Speaker 1: And this is the example we see in the third

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Speaker 1: Alien film, right, So it's it's obviously getting something from

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Speaker 1: its host. It's not just uh, it's not just dwelling

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Speaker 1: in the host, but it's learning something about body plans

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Speaker 1: and behavior from the host organism. And that's kind of interesting. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean in the sort of the alien world, depending

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Speaker 1: on you know, what origin story, origin theory you want

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Speaker 1: to go with, Like, this thing is either evolved or

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Speaker 1: designed to just wipe out a planet's native population, and

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Speaker 1: so it would make sense that it then steals from

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Speaker 1: the most successful um creatures on that planet. Exactly what

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Speaker 1: better way to adapt to any native ecosystem than to

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Speaker 1: steal the traits of the thing that already survives there.

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Speaker 1: So any anyway, I think that's a really clever feature

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Speaker 1: of the Alien universe design, and I've always kind of

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Speaker 1: liked that. But here's where we get to the real science.

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Speaker 1: Because if we're talking about organisms getting traits from other organisms, typically,

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Speaker 1: how does that occur in nature? The obvious answer, the

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Speaker 1: one everybody already knows, and the thing that's been talked

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Speaker 1: about and understood in biology for for decades now, more

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Speaker 1: than decades again, going back for a long time, we've

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Speaker 1: we've understood the general principle of vertical gene transfer, even

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Speaker 1: before we understood what role DNA played in in the

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Speaker 1: transmission of genes and exactly how Even before men daily

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Speaker 1: in genetics, we had a basic idea that you can

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Speaker 1: inherit traits from your parents. Yeah, so this is sexual

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Speaker 1: and asexual reproduction. Yeah, whichever brand of reproduction you prefer

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Speaker 1: or practice. We're talking again about vertical gene transfer. Up

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Speaker 1: and down. Think of a family tree, right, go, it

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Speaker 1: goes down, It doesn't go sideways, it doesn't go up,

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Speaker 1: it goes down. Um and uh, you know again, a

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Speaker 1: biological parent passes its genes onto its biological offspring. In

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Speaker 1: the case of sexual ref deduction, two sets of conspecific

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Speaker 1: genes merged. And in the case of a sexual reproduction, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, you basically have kind of a cloning scenario. One.

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Speaker 1: They rely entirely on mutation for variation in their DNA,

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Speaker 1: so there's very little, uh, differentiation in the offspring. Now,

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Speaker 1: many organisms also engage in both. It's worth saying you

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Speaker 1: do have some very you know, very strictly a sexual

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Speaker 1: creatures out there. You have some strictly sexual creatures, But

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Speaker 1: then you have some that engage in both depending on

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Speaker 1: what the the reproductive climate happens. To be sure, Like,

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Speaker 1: you might have a plant that can produce uh spores,

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Speaker 1: but then I also do UH do pollination, you know,

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Speaker 1: reproduction like the hydra as I remember as an example

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Speaker 1: of this, not the mythical hydro, but of course the

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Speaker 1: the real natural world. Hydra can reproduce a sexually by budding,

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Speaker 1: or it can produce reproduce sexually, depending on what it

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Speaker 1: has at its disposal. Wouldn't it be great if we

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Speaker 1: had that option? Would be so strange to live in

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Speaker 1: a world humans. So you can reproduce sexually if you

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Speaker 1: want to maybe gain some resistance to parasites and and

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Speaker 1: strengthen your genome by recombination with another, you can sexually reproduce.

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Speaker 1: But if you're in a pinch and you need to

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Speaker 1: have kids and and a healthy made is not available,

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Speaker 1: you just clone yourself. Yeah, I think that's where we

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Speaker 1: may be going, you know. And uh and it's I

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Speaker 1: think it's not going to be that weird of a

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Speaker 1: thing when it becomes a regular, viable, everyday option for

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Speaker 1: personal reproduction. Well, that probably deserves an episode of its

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Speaker 1: own sometime in the future certainly. Yet even this near

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Speaker 1: future cloning scenario we're talking about, this is still vertical

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Speaker 1: gene transfer. It's still parent to child, parent to offspring,

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Speaker 1: exactly right. And so this has led us to develop

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Speaker 1: a sort of loose model of evolution of life on

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Speaker 1: Earth that's referred to usually as the tree of life.

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Speaker 1: This is evolution as Darwin imagined it in uh in

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Speaker 1: on the Origin of Species. Now, the subject of today's

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Speaker 1: episode is going to complicate the applicability of this model,

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Speaker 1: but we'll get to that in a minute. So what

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Speaker 1: is the tree of life? The tree of life says

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Speaker 1: parent organisms pass their genes on to offspring, So you

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Speaker 1: have to imagine sort of an arrow starting at the

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Speaker 1: top of a page and traveling down and throughout the process.

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Speaker 1: Variation is introduced through independent mutation. So there's an error

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Speaker 1: in copying of DNA and a random change is introduced

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Speaker 1: for good or for ill, and then through natural selection

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Speaker 1: uh the advantageous changes are preserved and the ill changes

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Speaker 1: are erased. And so eventually, over time enough mutations into

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Speaker 1: the gene pool of an isolated population that it becomes

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Speaker 1: sufficiently different that we consider it a different species, and

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Speaker 1: then a new arrow splits off of the main arrow

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Speaker 1: as it runs down the page, and this becomes a

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Speaker 1: branch in the trunk of the tree of life. Now

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Speaker 1: you have to imagine that to account for all of

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Speaker 1: the life on Earth. This is happening millions and millions

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Speaker 1: of times, mapping out a all of the organisms on

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Speaker 1: the planets, Branches peeling off of the trunk and off

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Speaker 1: of other branches, just sort of pouring down the page

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Speaker 1: like a genetic waterfall. And that's like that, that's the

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Speaker 1: tree of life. But you notice that all of the

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Speaker 1: movement on the page is, as we've said, vertical. It's

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Speaker 1: going from the top to bottom. Now, what if there

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Speaker 1: were a way to get genetic information to travel in

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Speaker 1: a different direction along the page. Presumably it can't travel

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Speaker 1: from bottom to top, right, because if the top to

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Speaker 1: bottom direction is the arrow of time, essentially, then you're

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Speaker 1: destroying causality exactly, universe turns inside out. Yeah, so you

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Speaker 1: can't travel back up the page unless you get a

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Speaker 1: gene that gains a mutation permitting time travel. Uh. Is

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Speaker 1: that part of Warhammer? No? No, they as far as

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Speaker 1: I know, it isn't. But they do use event horizon

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Speaker 1: style faster than light to travel. Oh oh man, another

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Speaker 1: reason I got to check this out. But anyway, you

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Speaker 1: can't go back up the page. But what if you

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Speaker 1: didn't have to go straight down? What if a gene

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Speaker 1: could travel sideways across the page rather than straight down.

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Speaker 1: And this gets to the concept that we're going to

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Speaker 1: be focusing on today. It's horizontal gene transfer. So I

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Speaker 1: want to back up and talk about a sort of

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Speaker 1: fascinating precursor experiment to the main concept that we're getting to.

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Speaker 1: And this is something that's known as Griffith's experiment. So

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Speaker 1: before we even knew that hereditary traits were passed on

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Speaker 1: through d n A, an English bacteriologist named Fred Griffith

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Speaker 1: published findings from a really weird experiment and unfortunately it

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Speaker 1: involved killing some mice with pneumonia. That's gonna happen, yeah,

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Speaker 1: But anyway, Griffith started with two different strains of bacteria,

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Speaker 1: which was strepped to caucus pneumonia. So I pronounced that

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Speaker 1: sounds good to me, pneumonia. I believe in it. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So there are two strains of this bacteria. You've got

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Speaker 1: an R strain and that stands for rough, and this

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Speaker 1: strain of the bacteria is harmless. You can put it

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Speaker 1: in the mouse and the mouse is fine it it's

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Speaker 1: immune system takes care of it. It's just not a problem.

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Speaker 1: But then there is an S strain standing for smooth,

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Speaker 1: and that means that this bacterium is contained inside a

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Speaker 1: little capsule. This is a bio structure of a kind

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Speaker 1: that helps the bacterium survive encounters with the host's immune system.

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Speaker 1: A suit of power arm Yeah, it's a yeah. It's

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Speaker 1: like an armored exoskeleton for for the bacterium. It allows

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Speaker 1: it to resist phagocytosis, where you know where the immune

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Speaker 1: system cell engulfs and eats the other cell. And for

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Speaker 1: this reason, the S strain is dangerous and it can

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Speaker 1: kill any lab mice. It in effects. You take it on,

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Speaker 1: you can get pneumonia and die. Okay, so what did

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Speaker 1: he What did he find? Andy and Jack? So we

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Speaker 1: found you inject mice with the harmless R strain and

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Speaker 1: they're fine. Okay, it's rough, it's not gonna hurt them.

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Speaker 1: You inject mice with the S strain, they get sick

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Speaker 1: and die. You inject mice with dead S strain and

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Speaker 1: they're fine. So you can cook the S strain to

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Speaker 1: kill all the bacteria. And of course this dead bacteria

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Speaker 1: doesn't hurt the mice. You can dead strain no problem.

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Speaker 1: But if you inject the mice with a combination of

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Speaker 1: the two previously harmless injections, the R strain and the

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Speaker 1: dead cooked S strain, the mice die. Ah, So the

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Speaker 1: harmless R strain is taking something. It's it's it's robbing

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Speaker 1: the corpse of the of the of the dead strain

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Speaker 1: and taking something from it and incorporating it into itself.

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Speaker 1: That seems to be what's happening. It looks like the

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Speaker 1: R strain bacteria are scavenging the dead S strain bacteria

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Speaker 1: for the genes needed to produce those capsules to make

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Speaker 1: them S strain bacteria that are virulent and will kill

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Speaker 1: the host. And what do you know? Griffith looked at

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Speaker 1: the dead mice from the final group, and they contained

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Speaker 1: live S strain bacteria, even though he had not put

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Speaker 1: any live S strain bacteria into them. And this formed

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Speaker 1: the basis of experimental confirmation for a process that would

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Speaker 1: eventually come to be known as transformation. And they didn't

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Speaker 1: have the terms to fully understand or describe exactly what

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Speaker 1: was going on. Yet, you know, like I said that,

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Speaker 1: this was before we even knew that d n A

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Speaker 1: was the thing that passed genes from from parent to child.

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Speaker 1: But this was an example of what would come to

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Speaker 1: be known as horizontal gene transfer, and so horizontal gene

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Speaker 1: transfer also known as lateral gene transfer. Though I think

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Speaker 1: I see the term horizontal more often used these days,

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Speaker 1: it seems like lateral is an older term. But it's

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Speaker 1: the exchange of dn nay between organisms of the same generation.

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Speaker 1: So it's not that the bacterium divides and makes a

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Speaker 1: copy of its genome, but that one way or another,

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Speaker 1: some of its genes get inserted into the bacterium next door.

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Speaker 1: So that's pretty weird and pretty cool on its own.

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Speaker 1: So what are the primary avenues along which this kind

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Speaker 1: of thing happens. Well, there are several different HDT mechanisms,

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Speaker 1: but scientists identify three core transfer mistace. So we've got

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Speaker 1: that first one transformation, right, transformation that's the uptake of

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Speaker 1: naked DNA, and it's a common method, but it's mostly

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Speaker 1: limited to bacteria and it only permits the exchange of

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Speaker 1: short DNA fragments. Right, So these little sort of severed

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Speaker 1: circles of isolated DNA known as plasmids. Right, But then

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Speaker 1: there's something called transduction, and this is the transfer of

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Speaker 1: DNA from one bacterium to another via their bacterial fadges. Now,

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Speaker 1: generally this requires close related bacteria, and the transfer size

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Speaker 1: depends on the size of the bacterial foge head. So

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Speaker 1: this might be kind of a crude analogy. But for

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Speaker 1: for a crude analogy, imagine if you could take on

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Speaker 1: traits of another person's genome by by getting bitten by

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Speaker 1: the same mosquito that they were bitten by. So in

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Speaker 1: this case, that you've got a virus, a bacteria phage

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Speaker 1: that that hits one bacterium, takes some of its genome,

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Speaker 1: hits another bacterium, and now there's been some cross pollination

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Speaker 1: of the genes. Yes, and by the way, I would

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Speaker 1: love to see that incorporated into a vampire movie sometime. Oh,

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Speaker 1: but it continued. The third mechanism is conjunction. This is

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Speaker 1: the transfer of DNA by plasmid from a donor cell

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Speaker 1: to a recumbinant recipient. And this one requires cell to

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Speaker 1: cell contact, but it can occur between distantly related bacteria

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Speaker 1: or even bacteria and eukaryotic cells, and it can transfer

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Speaker 1: long fragments of DNA. Okay, so this is something more

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Speaker 1: like bacterial sex, and it's not really sex because obviously

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Speaker 1: they're not sexually reproducing with full recombination like like you

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Speaker 1: know humans would or something, right, But at the very

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Speaker 1: basics of it, it's it's just kind of what's it's

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Speaker 1: a conjugal union of prokaryotic cells. But but yeah, as

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Speaker 1: you said, this can apparently happen between even some prokaryotic

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Speaker 1: and eukaryotic cells. Uh. The difference that that's something we're

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Speaker 1: gonna be talking about in this episode. The main difference

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Speaker 1: being that a prokaryotic cell doesn't have a distinct nucleus

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Speaker 1: and the eukaryotic cell has a nucleus. Yeah. Prokaryots include

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Speaker 1: you know, microscopic single cell organisms, bacteria and standing bacteria.

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Speaker 1: But but then on the other hand, the eu carriats

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Speaker 1: that includes pretty much everything else. Yeah, okay, so those

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Speaker 1: are the basics, but we definitely want to stress that

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Speaker 1: horizontal gene transfer is a subject that's continuing to evolve.

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Speaker 1: Our understanding how it continues to evolve. Yeah, it's in fact,

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Speaker 1: one of the I would say, according to what I've read,

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Speaker 1: one of the biggest and most interesting controversies in microbiology

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Speaker 1: and genetics today. Yeah, and we continued as well discussed

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's some big findings that continue to come

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Speaker 1: out as we map various uh, various organisms genomes and

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Speaker 1: discover hey, there's some Pilford content in there. Um. We

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Speaker 1: already touched on the early twentieth century. Uh origins of

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Speaker 1: this really are sort of our earliest understandings of horizontal

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Speaker 1: gene transfer. Um. Another big study that is often mentioned

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Speaker 1: out there came in ninety one, and that's when Victor J.

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Speaker 1: Freeman published Studies on the virulence of bacterial fage infected

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Speaker 1: strains of Corina Bacterium diphtheria in the Journal of Bacteriology.

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Speaker 1: And this is a paper that explored the manner by

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Speaker 1: which a virulent strains of C. Ditheria infected with bacterial

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Speaker 1: foge yielded virulent C. Detherius strains. Okay, so that sounds

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Speaker 1: kind of like sort of like the Griffith study, seeing

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Speaker 1: how on one strain of bacterium can take on the

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Speaker 1: properties of another one, but this time it sounds like

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Speaker 1: it's talking about bacteria fage mediated transfer. So so that's

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Speaker 1: more that that transduction method, you know, the mosquito bites

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Speaker 1: one bacterium and then another. Okay, but you may notice

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Speaker 1: so far that we're primarily talking about prokaryotic life here,

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Speaker 1: like like we said, single celled organisms like bacteria and

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Speaker 1: archaea and uh. And we've known for a while now

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Speaker 1: that bacteria can trade jeans horizontally. That that's something that,

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Speaker 1: as we've showed, we started to learn in the twentieth century.

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Speaker 1: But one of the most startling discoveries of recent decades

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Speaker 1: is that we're starting to become aware how much horizontal

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Speaker 1: gene transfer might actually be taking place and have taken

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Speaker 1: place in the evolutionary history of eukaryotic organisms, more complex

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Speaker 1: organisms like plants, uh, fungi, and animals, And generally speaking,

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Speaker 1: here we're talking about the ex change of genetic material

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Speaker 1: between different species. One species steals or lifts genes from

427
00:25:06,880 --> 00:25:11,080
Speaker 1: another organism and incorporates the genes into its own genetic makeup. Now,

428
00:25:11,400 --> 00:25:14,480
Speaker 1: at the end, I think we should talk about exactly

429
00:25:14,520 --> 00:25:17,680
Speaker 1: how appropriate the metaphor of stealing or lifting is, because

430
00:25:17,960 --> 00:25:19,679
Speaker 1: because in many cases here, I think it'd be better

431
00:25:19,760 --> 00:25:22,360
Speaker 1: to take a look at exactly what the real active

432
00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:25,159
Speaker 1: agent in the processes. And of course it's it's not

433
00:25:25,240 --> 00:25:26,879
Speaker 1: going to be conscious. You know, you don't have an

434
00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:29,639
Speaker 1: animal trying to steal the genes of another animal as

435
00:25:29,680 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 1: far as I know. But that's the thing. The more

436
00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:34,119
Speaker 1: that we the more examples we see of it, the

437
00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:39,720
Speaker 1: more ubiquitous horizontal gene transfer appears to be, you start realizing, well,

438
00:25:39,760 --> 00:25:41,840
Speaker 1: this is this is not just some weird quirk that

439
00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:45,480
Speaker 1: pops up among some you know, very distantly related creature.

440
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:48,000
Speaker 1: This is more a part of the fabric of how

441
00:25:48,840 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 1: how life works. Yeah, well it's it's a thing that

442
00:25:52,280 --> 00:25:55,680
Speaker 1: should come more naturally to our intuitions than it does,

443
00:25:55,800 --> 00:25:59,560
Speaker 1: I think, because we tend to think of an animal

444
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:02,960
Speaker 1: or any organism's genome is a sort of like a

445
00:26:03,560 --> 00:26:08,960
Speaker 1: platonic essence of what that creature really is. But in fact,

446
00:26:09,119 --> 00:26:13,359
Speaker 1: your genome is not an unalterable platonic essence. I mean,

447
00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:16,960
Speaker 1: we know, of course that it can go through recombination,

448
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:20,560
Speaker 1: It can you know, be uh mixed up with another

449
00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:24,120
Speaker 1: genome through sex. It can have mutations that are introduced

450
00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:28,199
Speaker 1: independently somehow. We we've internalized all of those exceptions and said, well,

451
00:26:28,240 --> 00:26:32,960
Speaker 1: that's normal. That's part of the normal. Uh, that's normal modification.

452
00:26:33,040 --> 00:26:37,000
Speaker 1: It's a normal genetic modification. But you just don't get

453
00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:41,280
Speaker 1: the sense that genes should be jumping between different species

454
00:26:41,359 --> 00:26:43,920
Speaker 1: genomes like this. But it kind of makes sense because

455
00:26:43,960 --> 00:26:48,680
Speaker 1: your genome is it's molecules, you know, it's physical matter.

456
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:52,080
Speaker 1: It's not this little bundle of your soul coated into

457
00:26:52,359 --> 00:26:55,000
Speaker 1: you know, these little these little drawlings of d n A. Yeah.

458
00:26:55,359 --> 00:26:59,280
Speaker 1: And because it's molecules in physical matter, it is subject

459
00:26:59,480 --> 00:27:05,000
Speaker 1: to physical contact and cross contamination. But it's certainly it's

460
00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:07,320
Speaker 1: the more we we discover about it, really that the

461
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:11,960
Speaker 1: more we're having to to reframe how we understand what

462
00:27:12,200 --> 00:27:14,160
Speaker 1: life isn't who we are. Well, I think we should

463
00:27:14,200 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 1: switch to looking at some of these examples of eu

464
00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:21,160
Speaker 1: karyotic or more complex organisms that have been suggested as

465
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:24,240
Speaker 1: alleged gene stealers. Yes, because for the same reason we

466
00:27:24,320 --> 00:27:27,320
Speaker 1: started with a couple of Sci Fi examples to sort

467
00:27:27,359 --> 00:27:29,840
Speaker 1: of set the stage for what horizontal gene transfer is.

468
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:33,800
Speaker 1: The specific examples uh, from the natural world, I feel

469
00:27:33,840 --> 00:27:36,440
Speaker 1: like they work best to really let you understand what's

470
00:27:36,480 --> 00:27:38,720
Speaker 1: going on and what the ultimate impact is. By looking

471
00:27:38,720 --> 00:27:41,400
Speaker 1: at specific examples. So we're gonna take a quick break,

472
00:27:41,440 --> 00:27:43,600
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we are going to look

473
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:47,840
Speaker 1: at some brand new research regarding the old water bear.

474
00:27:55,920 --> 00:27:59,920
Speaker 1: All right, we're back, Joe, you're familiar with the water

475
00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:04,399
Speaker 1: a bear, dear Klein of Asa barin the tartar grade.

476
00:28:05,119 --> 00:28:08,159
Speaker 1: I love tartar grades. Man. The moths pickle it. That

477
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:12,840
Speaker 1: the slow stepper, which which I love because that makes

478
00:28:12,880 --> 00:28:15,280
Speaker 1: a tartar grade feel a little I don't know, like

479
00:28:15,560 --> 00:28:17,359
Speaker 1: like you could be a hip hop artist, you know,

480
00:28:17,520 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 1: the slow steppa. Oh, that's really cool. I yeah, I

481
00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 1: love tartar grades. That for a long time here at

482
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:26,639
Speaker 1: how stuff works. The background on my computer screen was

483
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:31,680
Speaker 1: a was a huge blown up microphotography image of a

484
00:28:32,119 --> 00:28:36,440
Speaker 1: tartar grade. And I don't know, something about these organisms

485
00:28:36,560 --> 00:28:39,680
Speaker 1: is so cool. I always like reading new news about them,

486
00:28:39,720 --> 00:28:42,240
Speaker 1: even if it's kind of boring news. Honestly, it's like

487
00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 1: study finds tartar grades live in a lake in Minnesota. Also,

488
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:49,800
Speaker 1: you know, well, yeah it's still tarta grades. I like it. Yeah,

489
00:28:49,840 --> 00:28:51,640
Speaker 1: they're they're pretty great because at one hand they're very

490
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 1: alien looking, and yet they wind up looking kind of cute.

491
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:58,440
Speaker 1: They look a little cuddly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they simultaneously

492
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 1: look like something that you want to cuddle, but that

493
00:29:01,120 --> 00:29:03,320
Speaker 1: if they were big enough, they would suck all your

494
00:29:03,400 --> 00:29:07,560
Speaker 1: liquids out. So when we're talking about tartar grades, we're

495
00:29:07,560 --> 00:29:12,360
Speaker 1: talking about members of the phylum Tartar gratta uh. And

496
00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:16,520
Speaker 1: there are more than eleven hundred species out there in

497
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:19,200
Speaker 1: that phylum that we know about, and they're they're just

498
00:29:19,280 --> 00:29:22,120
Speaker 1: pretty much everywhere, right Yeah. I mean you'll find them

499
00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:26,200
Speaker 1: in moss and lichens and hot springs, Antarctic ice, deep

500
00:29:26,280 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 1: sea trenches, Himalayan mountaintops. I mean, they're they're hardy little

501
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:33,400
Speaker 1: s o b s. And they can even as I'm

502
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 1: sure everyone is familiar with from headlines, they can even

503
00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 1: survive the extreme cold and radiation of outer space. Yeah.

504
00:29:39,280 --> 00:29:41,360
Speaker 1: I think they're often cited as examples of the kind

505
00:29:41,400 --> 00:29:44,960
Speaker 1: of extreme a phile organisms that UH people like to

506
00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:48,760
Speaker 1: invoke when they're talking about things like the pan spermia hypothesis.

507
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:52,080
Speaker 1: You know, like the idea that that life forms uh

508
00:29:52,440 --> 00:29:56,600
Speaker 1: in early incipient life forms traveled from planet to planet

509
00:29:56,720 --> 00:29:59,440
Speaker 1: or from star to star on on comets or pieces

510
00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:01,520
Speaker 1: of matter through space, and you think, well, how could

511
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:04,959
Speaker 1: they survive? That people point to these really hardy organisms

512
00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:07,600
Speaker 1: like you know, a deep sea vent ar chia or

513
00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:10,239
Speaker 1: tartar grades or something to say, well, look, this thing

514
00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:13,960
Speaker 1: can survive almost anything. Yeah, because it's reasonably advanced but

515
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 1: very hardy. Um and and this is crazy. You can

516
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:19,800
Speaker 1: just you can just find them about anywhere. And according

517
00:30:19,840 --> 00:30:23,400
Speaker 1: to the International Society of Tartar Grade Hunters, UH, you'll

518
00:30:23,400 --> 00:30:25,880
Speaker 1: find their website by the way at Tartar Grade Hunters

519
00:30:25,960 --> 00:30:29,720
Speaker 1: dot Weebli dot com. Is that considered small game hunting.

520
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:32,920
Speaker 1: It's a very small game. I guess I'll include a

521
00:30:32,960 --> 00:30:34,520
Speaker 1: link to that on landing page for this episode of

522
00:30:34,560 --> 00:30:37,200
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. But according to

523
00:30:37,320 --> 00:30:40,920
Speaker 1: this website, UH, you can find them yourself by following

524
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:44,400
Speaker 1: some basic extructions on their website. I'm gonna read out

525
00:30:44,440 --> 00:30:47,960
Speaker 1: the short versions here, but they provide more detailed instructions

526
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:50,640
Speaker 1: as well as some alternate users submitted methods as well.

527
00:30:51,280 --> 00:30:54,440
Speaker 1: So you want to grab some terrestrial tartar grades, all

528
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:56,400
Speaker 1: you have to do is put a little like in

529
00:30:56,600 --> 00:31:00,880
Speaker 1: moss or whatever in a shower low plate of water.

530
00:31:01,600 --> 00:31:04,240
Speaker 1: H you agitate your sample, and you look through the

531
00:31:04,280 --> 00:31:06,560
Speaker 1: debris at the bottom of the dish for tartar grades.

532
00:31:06,560 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 1: Then you grab a micro microscope and you look at

533
00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:12,480
Speaker 1: tartar grades. Uh. And if you want some marine tartar grades,

534
00:31:12,840 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 1: you just go out to the beach. You wait, tell

535
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:17,360
Speaker 1: us low tide. You scoop a bunch of sand. At

536
00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:18,960
Speaker 1: low tide, you sort of work your way back up

537
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 1: to the high tide mark, and then you shock them

538
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:25,760
Speaker 1: with some fresh water. This uh, this shocks them into

539
00:31:25,840 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 1: letting go of their sand particles. And then you just

540
00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:30,480
Speaker 1: grab a colander or a sieve and you just start

541
00:31:31,120 --> 00:31:34,000
Speaker 1: moving it around. Bam, you've got some tartar grades. You

542
00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:36,120
Speaker 1: grab a microscope and you look at them. Okay, well

543
00:31:36,160 --> 00:31:37,800
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to do that. Now does it matter

544
00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:39,960
Speaker 1: that you actually stand at the beach and wait for

545
00:31:40,080 --> 00:31:42,160
Speaker 1: low tide or can you just come back at low tide?

546
00:31:42,160 --> 00:31:43,920
Speaker 1: I think you just come back at low t But

547
00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:47,880
Speaker 1: but yeah, they're they're everywhere. Um and and as we've discussed,

548
00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:50,160
Speaker 1: their party is all get out. Well I want to

549
00:31:50,240 --> 00:31:52,640
Speaker 1: hear about some horizontal gene transfer. I assume that's what

550
00:31:52,720 --> 00:31:55,480
Speaker 1: we're getting to yes there, because it turns out they

551
00:31:55,520 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 1: have quite a bit of a foreign DNA, which which

552
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:01,800
Speaker 1: that the head of the science headlines really had a

553
00:32:01,840 --> 00:32:04,880
Speaker 1: lot of fun with this, saying, you know, animal that

554
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: can survive in space has foreign DNA, thus implying in

555
00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:11,000
Speaker 1: the headline that they had foreign DNA from another planet.

556
00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 1: But this, this is not quite what's going on here,

557
00:32:14,440 --> 00:32:17,280
Speaker 1: but it's still super exciting. This is very very exciting

558
00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:21,040
Speaker 1: end of the tartar grade news pool, I would say. Uh, so,

559
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:23,040
Speaker 1: this is a new study that it was published just

560
00:32:23,160 --> 00:32:25,160
Speaker 1: in the last month in the Proceedings of the National

561
00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:28,120
Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences, and it's from the Universe researchers from

562
00:32:28,160 --> 00:32:31,000
Speaker 1: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. So they

563
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:34,560
Speaker 1: sequenced the tartar grade geno and in doing so they

564
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:38,720
Speaker 1: found that seventeen point five percent of the creatures DNA

565
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:43,200
Speaker 1: is foreign in nature. So they're nearly one six stolen

566
00:32:44,200 --> 00:32:48,800
Speaker 1: goods man. Yeah, so and that this is the new record.

567
00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:54,520
Speaker 1: Oh really Yeah, because previously microscopic rota first held the

568
00:32:54,600 --> 00:32:57,400
Speaker 1: record for encompassing the most foreign DNA and their genome.

569
00:32:58,120 --> 00:33:00,840
Speaker 1: But now the tartar grades come along and they pretty

570
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:05,240
Speaker 1: much doubled the pre existing score. Um so, now hold on,

571
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:09,080
Speaker 1: is that is that the record for eukaryotes or what

572
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:12,360
Speaker 1: does that include like bacteria and stuff. Yeah, I believe

573
00:33:12,400 --> 00:33:15,200
Speaker 1: this is the eukaryote. Yeah. I don't know what the

574
00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:17,560
Speaker 1: number would be for prokaryotes though, it just seems like

575
00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 1: with them trading, trading as much as they do. Yeah,

576
00:33:20,680 --> 00:33:23,200
Speaker 1: my understanding is that it's higher among them. So, as

577
00:33:23,240 --> 00:33:26,200
Speaker 1: it turns out, tarte grades acquire genes from various organisms.

578
00:33:26,240 --> 00:33:29,920
Speaker 1: They get it from fungi, plants, our chaa bacteria. Those

579
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:32,880
Speaker 1: are micro microorganisms that are similar to bacteria in size

580
00:33:32,920 --> 00:33:36,719
Speaker 1: and simplicity of structure, but the radically different in molecular organization.

581
00:33:37,200 --> 00:33:41,160
Speaker 1: But they mostly loot from bacteria, and the unc researchers

582
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:45,160
Speaker 1: theorized that this just might be the source of the

583
00:33:45,240 --> 00:33:48,719
Speaker 1: water bear strength. It's because their gene stealers, they harvest,

584
00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:52,280
Speaker 1: harvest the best genes from all the organisms. Yeah, because

585
00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:54,880
Speaker 1: when you when you look at life on Earth, like

586
00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:58,560
Speaker 1: the life that's able to thrive and the most extreme environments,

587
00:33:58,880 --> 00:34:00,760
Speaker 1: you know, be at a you know, around a deep

588
00:34:00,800 --> 00:34:03,520
Speaker 1: sea thermal vent or you know, at the top of

589
00:34:03,560 --> 00:34:06,880
Speaker 1: a mountain, the deepest part of the ocean, you're generally

590
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:10,760
Speaker 1: talking about bacteria, right, Yeah, And so the theory here

591
00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:13,439
Speaker 1: is that Yeah, they've basically stolen from the best they've

592
00:34:13,560 --> 00:34:17,279
Speaker 1: like the like the the the xeno morph. It has

593
00:34:17,360 --> 00:34:19,960
Speaker 1: gone after one of the most successful organisms on the

594
00:34:20,040 --> 00:34:22,480
Speaker 1: planet and said, hey, I'm going to take some of

595
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:24,960
Speaker 1: what's working for that organism, and then I'm gonna work

596
00:34:25,040 --> 00:34:27,920
Speaker 1: exceptionally well, and as soon as the predators arrive, it's

597
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:30,920
Speaker 1: gonna take their genes too. Yeah, and then yeah, the

598
00:34:31,160 --> 00:34:34,640
Speaker 1: xeno morph is realistically gonna win in any encounter. So

599
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:36,759
Speaker 1: how does this work? How does this go down? Well,

600
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:38,880
Speaker 1: the tartar grade, of course, is known for its ability

601
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:42,560
Speaker 1: to survive an extreme environment, such as extreme cold, extreme

602
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 1: dry situations. And when it does that, it's DNA breaks up,

603
00:34:47,360 --> 00:34:51,080
Speaker 1: and then when it rehydrates, the cell membrane and nucleus

604
00:34:51,160 --> 00:34:55,680
Speaker 1: around the DNA becomes permeable, permeable enough for foreign DNA

605
00:34:55,880 --> 00:34:59,239
Speaker 1: and molecules to leak through. So as the Tartar grade

606
00:34:59,280 --> 00:35:03,319
Speaker 1: then re high grates and essentially regenerates, it stitches its

607
00:35:03,360 --> 00:35:07,200
Speaker 1: own damage DNA and any foreign genetic bits together into

608
00:35:07,280 --> 00:35:10,719
Speaker 1: a single patchwork genome. Now it sounds to me, I

609
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:13,279
Speaker 1: don't actually know this from the research, and so I'm

610
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:15,839
Speaker 1: just guessing here. It sounds to me like that might

611
00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:18,719
Speaker 1: be kind of a I don't know, like a high

612
00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:23,200
Speaker 1: risk strategy, like high risk high reward because what you

613
00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:26,280
Speaker 1: just described, even though it might in many cases grant

614
00:35:26,360 --> 00:35:29,759
Speaker 1: you access to some very useful genes that help you

615
00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:32,440
Speaker 1: survive in tough environments, it sounds like it can also

616
00:35:33,440 --> 00:35:37,960
Speaker 1: likely cause bad copying problems and introduce garbage into your

617
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:41,120
Speaker 1: genome and kill you. Yeah, a lot of brundle fly

618
00:35:41,440 --> 00:35:43,759
Speaker 1: Tarte grades out there, you would think, and then those

619
00:35:43,920 --> 00:35:46,080
Speaker 1: I guess what, those would die out and it would

620
00:35:46,120 --> 00:35:48,960
Speaker 1: be the other strains that would survive or I don't know,

621
00:35:49,080 --> 00:35:51,040
Speaker 1: maybe it's got a good mechanism for making that not

622
00:35:51,280 --> 00:35:53,800
Speaker 1: such a low risk thing. That was just a I

623
00:35:53,880 --> 00:35:56,440
Speaker 1: wonder about that. Well, it does make me think back

624
00:35:56,480 --> 00:35:58,960
Speaker 1: to how many different Tarte grades we have again over

625
00:35:59,640 --> 00:36:02,880
Speaker 1: different the sees that we know of, So that seems

626
00:36:02,960 --> 00:36:06,120
Speaker 1: to h to balance well with this idea that that

627
00:36:06,239 --> 00:36:10,600
Speaker 1: they so so easily can start incorporating new DNA via

628
00:36:10,719 --> 00:36:14,360
Speaker 1: horizontal gene transfer. So that's a Tarte grade again. A

629
00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:18,160
Speaker 1: fabulous animal that probably deserves its own own podcast episode outright,

630
00:36:18,680 --> 00:36:20,640
Speaker 1: But we know now, we we knew it was an

631
00:36:20,640 --> 00:36:23,360
Speaker 1: amazing critter before and now we know that it is

632
00:36:23,440 --> 00:36:26,520
Speaker 1: engaging in horizontal gene transfer. What else do we have

633
00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:28,880
Speaker 1: on the superstar list here, Joe? Well, how about I

634
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:32,520
Speaker 1: love this example because do you love coffee? Robert? I

635
00:36:32,719 --> 00:36:35,680
Speaker 1: know I know the answer you. Yes, you do love coffee,

636
00:36:35,719 --> 00:36:38,600
Speaker 1: of course you do. But do you know how much

637
00:36:38,719 --> 00:36:43,799
Speaker 1: you should hate the coffee berry borer beetle? I do not, well? Uh,

638
00:36:44,080 --> 00:36:48,120
Speaker 1: coffee berry borer beetle also known as a hypothenamous hempei.

639
00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:52,000
Speaker 1: It's this tiny, tiny beetle like adults are between one

640
00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:56,040
Speaker 1: and two millimeters and it's a horrible, horrible pest on

641
00:36:56,160 --> 00:37:00,440
Speaker 1: coffee crops. It is just the bane of coffee growers. Instance,

642
00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:03,359
Speaker 1: it's native to Africa, but now it lives pretty much

643
00:37:03,440 --> 00:37:07,880
Speaker 1: anywhere coffee has grown. And this beetle isn't just a pest,

644
00:37:08,239 --> 00:37:14,000
Speaker 1: it is a gene stealer. So in February, research published

645
00:37:14,160 --> 00:37:17,440
Speaker 1: in p n AS revealed that the coffee berry borer

646
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:20,640
Speaker 1: beetle is a known case of an animal. So that

647
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:22,960
Speaker 1: this is interesting because it's you know, it's an insect.

648
00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:25,480
Speaker 1: It's a fairly complex animal. Yeah, we're moving up from

649
00:37:25,719 --> 00:37:28,319
Speaker 1: part of grades and from some of the earlier examples Yeah,

650
00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:33,759
Speaker 1: it has stolen demonstrably beneficial genes from bacteria. And that's

651
00:37:33,760 --> 00:37:35,960
Speaker 1: an interesting thing to point out. It's not just that

652
00:37:36,120 --> 00:37:39,839
Speaker 1: it has a gene that looks like it came from bacteria,

653
00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:41,880
Speaker 1: but we don't know what it does or it doesn't

654
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:45,240
Speaker 1: really help. It has a gene that very clearly helps

655
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:50,359
Speaker 1: the beetle survive. So it acquired a prokaryotic upgrade pack.

656
00:37:51,239 --> 00:37:55,120
Speaker 1: So the bacterial gene that the beetle has incorporated helps

657
00:37:55,200 --> 00:38:00,719
Speaker 1: with the digestion of a particularly difficult food, the harbohydrates

658
00:38:00,760 --> 00:38:04,040
Speaker 1: found in coffee beans. And you might be thinking to

659
00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:07,000
Speaker 1: yourself already, well, yeah, I love coffee, but a creature

660
00:38:07,080 --> 00:38:10,640
Speaker 1: cannot live by coffee alone, Like how much usable food

661
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:13,760
Speaker 1: energy is really there in a coffee bean. I love coffee,

662
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:15,960
Speaker 1: but I would not want to try to survive on coffee.

663
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:20,200
Speaker 1: It would just be a constant, horrible existence of the

664
00:38:20,400 --> 00:38:24,399
Speaker 1: fear coming in waves and waves. But the coffee berry

665
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:27,080
Speaker 1: borer beetle happens to have a gene known as h

666
00:38:27,400 --> 00:38:30,600
Speaker 1: h man one or man would you say it man

667
00:38:30,920 --> 00:38:34,000
Speaker 1: h h M a N one which allows it to

668
00:38:34,120 --> 00:38:40,520
Speaker 1: make a pro protein called manonaise, not mayonnaise, but manonaise,

669
00:38:40,800 --> 00:38:44,759
Speaker 1: and this protein is used in digestion to break down

670
00:38:44,840 --> 00:38:49,840
Speaker 1: and digest a kind of nasty polysaccharide sugar called and

671
00:38:49,920 --> 00:38:55,040
Speaker 1: I didn't make this up Galacta man in Galacta man. Yeah.

672
00:38:55,360 --> 00:38:57,960
Speaker 1: Before doing this episode, I've never heard of Galacta man in.

673
00:38:58,080 --> 00:39:00,799
Speaker 1: Before I looked it up. They were out playing a joke.

674
00:39:00,920 --> 00:39:03,399
Speaker 1: This is not an April Fools article. That's the real

675
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:06,800
Speaker 1: name of that sugar. So the scientists believe that the

676
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:12,520
Speaker 1: beetle gene somehow came from the beatles own gut bacteria.

677
00:39:13,440 --> 00:39:19,320
Speaker 1: So small scale hybridization with one's own indo symbient, this

678
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:22,080
Speaker 1: is a weird universe, yeah, because I mean we've covered

679
00:39:22,120 --> 00:39:23,799
Speaker 1: on the podcast here and I feel like a lot

680
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:26,040
Speaker 1: of our listeners are probably, you know, caught onto the

681
00:39:26,120 --> 00:39:30,840
Speaker 1: growing body of of science surrounding our own microbiome. But

682
00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:33,880
Speaker 1: we still kind of think of that is this internal population,

683
00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:37,880
Speaker 1: but not a population that's going to upgrade into management,

684
00:39:38,040 --> 00:39:41,120
Speaker 1: right right exactly. Yeah, So the question is how do

685
00:39:41,239 --> 00:39:45,200
Speaker 1: they know that the Beatles gene for digesting this, this

686
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:49,239
Speaker 1: horrible sugar found in coffee beans came from the bacteria

687
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:51,920
Speaker 1: and it's not just some you know mutation or insect

688
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:54,399
Speaker 1: gene or something. Well, from what I read, I believe

689
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:57,800
Speaker 1: they're not a hundred percent sure it came from the bacteria,

690
00:39:58,200 --> 00:40:01,080
Speaker 1: but they think the evidence is pretty strong that it did.

691
00:40:01,640 --> 00:40:03,840
Speaker 1: And the evidence includes the fact that the gene is

692
00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:08,280
Speaker 1: not otherwise present in insects. Uh. It looks very similar

693
00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:12,960
Speaker 1: to the bacterial gene for breaking down Galacta mannon. And

694
00:40:13,400 --> 00:40:17,520
Speaker 1: the scientists discovered that the gene sits book ended by

695
00:40:17,640 --> 00:40:22,279
Speaker 1: two sections of genetic code known as transposons, also known

696
00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:26,560
Speaker 1: as jumping genes, and so transposons were identified by the

697
00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:30,239
Speaker 1: geneticist Barbara mcclinic in the nineteen forties in Corn and

698
00:40:30,440 --> 00:40:32,560
Speaker 1: I was just thinking we should do a whole episode

699
00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 1: about Barbara mcclinic sometime. It would probably be the most

700
00:40:35,239 --> 00:40:38,239
Speaker 1: interesting way you can possibly discuss corn for an hour.

701
00:40:39,560 --> 00:40:43,200
Speaker 1: But anyway, So transposons, but she discovered this is the

702
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:46,840
Speaker 1: name for genes that can travel around and insert themselves

703
00:40:46,920 --> 00:40:51,960
Speaker 1: into different places within a genome. They're they're molecularly apt

704
00:40:52,239 --> 00:40:56,480
Speaker 1: to move and insert in different places throughout the genetic code.

705
00:40:57,160 --> 00:41:00,120
Speaker 1: So there we have an indication of alien DNA in

706
00:41:00,200 --> 00:41:04,279
Speaker 1: the beetle, plus a plausible method for insertion into the

707
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:07,759
Speaker 1: animals chromosomes, at least at that level. But this does

708
00:41:07,840 --> 00:41:11,400
Speaker 1: bring up an interesting question in in the idea of

709
00:41:11,480 --> 00:41:15,839
Speaker 1: horizontal gene transfer in complex animals like insects, how does

710
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:19,480
Speaker 1: it become part of the animals genome from generation to generation.

711
00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:23,600
Speaker 1: The prokaryotes are single celled organisms without a define nucleus,

712
00:41:23,640 --> 00:41:26,920
Speaker 1: and they can pretty easily incorporate new genes into the genome.

713
00:41:26,960 --> 00:41:30,440
Speaker 1: But with eukaryotes, how do you get the fugitive gene

714
00:41:31,080 --> 00:41:35,880
Speaker 1: into the chromosomes inside the nucleus? And then furthermore, it's

715
00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:38,560
Speaker 1: more complicated than that because you need to get them

716
00:41:38,640 --> 00:41:41,040
Speaker 1: not just into any nucleus, not just in like the

717
00:41:41,120 --> 00:41:44,480
Speaker 1: nucleus in the cells in your arm or something. If

718
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 1: you wanted to become part of the genome of the

719
00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 1: species continuing throughout the generations, it needs to get into

720
00:41:51,040 --> 00:41:55,279
Speaker 1: the chromosomes in the nucleus of the germ cells like

721
00:41:55,440 --> 00:41:58,520
Speaker 1: the sperm or egg cells. And as far as I

722
00:41:58,560 --> 00:42:01,440
Speaker 1: can tell, how this happened is not yet very well

723
00:42:01,560 --> 00:42:05,400
Speaker 1: understood unless there's there's research I'm not aware of yet,

724
00:42:05,440 --> 00:42:07,359
Speaker 1: And if any of our listeners know about that, we'd

725
00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:10,040
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear about that, because this part is fascinating.

726
00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:13,920
Speaker 1: How how do the genes get in there? For complex

727
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:19,200
Speaker 1: reproducing animals? Yeah, because there's no there's no alien species

728
00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:23,480
Speaker 1: coming in and shoving its ovipositor in or launching anything

729
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:25,960
Speaker 1: onto your face. Yeah. So so you can see at

730
00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:28,239
Speaker 1: the molecular level how it might work if you've got

731
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:31,239
Speaker 1: transposons at either end, that can you know, So you

732
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:33,719
Speaker 1: can see how it fits into the genome once it's there.

733
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:38,239
Speaker 1: But how does it get to the genome? I don't know.

734
00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:40,320
Speaker 1: There may be an answer to that I'm not aware

735
00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:44,120
Speaker 1: of yet, but very interesting question at least. Yeah, indeed.

736
00:42:44,520 --> 00:42:48,000
Speaker 1: But hey, those are not the only examples of gene

737
00:42:48,040 --> 00:42:52,000
Speaker 1: stealing animals. What else animals, plants, and all kinds of organisms.

738
00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:54,840
Speaker 1: What else have we got for stars? We have Asian clams.

739
00:42:54,960 --> 00:43:00,880
Speaker 1: They're strictly a sexual, but these hermaphroditic mom us spice

740
00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:03,640
Speaker 1: things up a bit to avoid just complete genetic stagnation,

741
00:43:04,160 --> 00:43:06,160
Speaker 1: and so in this case it means a little gene theft.

742
00:43:06,480 --> 00:43:09,440
Speaker 1: While they generally fertilize their own eggs, they sometimes fertilize

743
00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:12,560
Speaker 1: those of of another clam species, and this gives the

744
00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:17,120
Speaker 1: resulting offspring an injection of fresh alien genes. Um. We

745
00:43:17,239 --> 00:43:22,680
Speaker 1: mentioned rotifers earlier, the delloid rotifers. Uh. They sometimes they're

746
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:25,439
Speaker 1: referred to as the quote ancient a sexuals. I don't

747
00:43:25,440 --> 00:43:27,879
Speaker 1: really know anything about these. What's the deal. They're they're

748
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:31,040
Speaker 1: they're pretty cool. They're an all female species of near

749
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:34,319
Speaker 1: microscopic animals and they've been sex free for about eighty

750
00:43:34,400 --> 00:43:37,520
Speaker 1: million years, and they're you know, they're they're a variety

751
00:43:37,560 --> 00:43:39,560
Speaker 1: of them, and they look really cool. Um, you know

752
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:42,719
Speaker 1: when when you look at their their bodies, uh, under

753
00:43:42,760 --> 00:43:45,600
Speaker 1: a microscope. And as we previously noted, they used to

754
00:43:45,680 --> 00:43:49,320
Speaker 1: have the record for the most pilfered genes among the

755
00:43:49,560 --> 00:43:52,480
Speaker 1: eukaryots according but according and according to a two thousand

756
00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:55,200
Speaker 1: and twelve University of Cambridge study, that number was ten

757
00:43:55,320 --> 00:43:58,239
Speaker 1: percent of their expressed genes were pilfered from roughly five

758
00:43:58,640 --> 00:44:02,240
Speaker 1: other species. So then they incorporate the fore in DNA

759
00:44:02,440 --> 00:44:06,400
Speaker 1: from fungi, plants and bacteria of course, while they're patching

760
00:44:06,480 --> 00:44:10,600
Speaker 1: up their own own ruptured cell membrane. So so very similar. Uh,

761
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:13,440
Speaker 1: it sounds like to what we're discussing with the tartar grades.

762
00:44:14,239 --> 00:44:17,759
Speaker 1: And then there's Galderia sulfur ari These are is a

763
00:44:17,840 --> 00:44:21,720
Speaker 1: single celled red algae that thrives and sunlit hot springs,

764
00:44:21,760 --> 00:44:24,520
Speaker 1: but it also manages UH to stay alive in deep

765
00:44:24,600 --> 00:44:28,000
Speaker 1: dark depths, and the algae simply stole some genetic strap

766
00:44:28,040 --> 00:44:32,440
Speaker 1: traits from simpler bacteria and archaea organisms. Up next, this

767
00:44:32,520 --> 00:44:36,920
Speaker 1: one is a very exciting UH organism to mention here,

768
00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:40,480
Speaker 1: and that is Alicia chlorotica. So if you ever see

769
00:44:40,480 --> 00:44:44,040
Speaker 1: a sea slug with the power of photosynthesis, you can

770
00:44:44,120 --> 00:44:48,799
Speaker 1: rest assured that they stole it, right, they stole photosynthesis. Yeah,

771
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 1: the the you know, the the domain of of plants. Yeah,

772
00:44:51,680 --> 00:44:54,719
Speaker 1: I typically think that is sort of a fundamental UH

773
00:44:54,920 --> 00:45:00,000
Speaker 1: separator indicator for for plants versus animals. Plant can photosynthe

774
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:02,880
Speaker 1: the size it has the chloroplasts that it needs. Animals

775
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:05,440
Speaker 1: don't have that, except this one does because it stole

776
00:45:05,520 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 1: it from algae um. They they actually produce chlorophyll. They're

777
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:13,279
Speaker 1: a chlorophyll producing mollusks. And the slugs even passed the

778
00:45:13,360 --> 00:45:17,440
Speaker 1: chlorophyll producing trade onto their off bring though they have

779
00:45:17,520 --> 00:45:19,799
Speaker 1: to eat a bunch of algae to actually carry out

780
00:45:19,920 --> 00:45:23,960
Speaker 1: that photosynthesis. But yeah, this is like an obvious trade like,

781
00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:26,000
Speaker 1: it's one thing to say, Oh, it turns out this

782
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:29,040
Speaker 1: organism it has some trades that it stole, like this one,

783
00:45:29,239 --> 00:45:31,920
Speaker 1: you could tell something as weird as going on. It's

784
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:34,320
Speaker 1: like a turtle on a fence post. You know, you

785
00:45:34,360 --> 00:45:35,560
Speaker 1: don't know how it got up there, but you know

786
00:45:35,640 --> 00:45:37,719
Speaker 1: it has some help. And in this case the help

787
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:42,000
Speaker 1: came in the form of horizontal gene transfer. Nice. I'd

788
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:44,480
Speaker 1: actually read about that one a little bit before, and

789
00:45:44,560 --> 00:45:46,839
Speaker 1: that started me as one of the weirdest and most

790
00:45:46,960 --> 00:45:50,880
Speaker 1: interesting because that's um you know. One one of the

791
00:45:50,920 --> 00:45:52,960
Speaker 1: things that I've noticed in some of the literature is

792
00:45:53,080 --> 00:45:58,640
Speaker 1: that most often these these stolen genes tend to have

793
00:45:58,920 --> 00:46:02,799
Speaker 1: something to do with digestion or metabolism, which I think

794
00:46:02,920 --> 00:46:04,799
Speaker 1: is interesting because most of the time they are coming

795
00:46:04,920 --> 00:46:08,960
Speaker 1: from simpler organisms like bacteria or something. So you're not

796
00:46:09,040 --> 00:46:11,560
Speaker 1: going to steal a gene for i don't know, making

797
00:46:12,040 --> 00:46:15,920
Speaker 1: stag horns or something like that from bacteria, but very

798
00:46:16,000 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 1: likely you might steal a gene for being able to

799
00:46:18,840 --> 00:46:22,880
Speaker 1: process a certain type of molecule into food, and and

800
00:46:23,160 --> 00:46:25,400
Speaker 1: so that makes sense. But here here it's not a

801
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:29,080
Speaker 1: it's not a digestion molecule for like for a different

802
00:46:29,120 --> 00:46:33,000
Speaker 1: type of sugar or something. It's for sunlight itself. I

803
00:46:33,080 --> 00:46:36,080
Speaker 1: don't know. I find that very interesting. You know, it's

804
00:46:36,120 --> 00:46:39,560
Speaker 1: only fitting that since we started off talking about about

805
00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:42,080
Speaker 1: the alien xenomorph, which of course has a lot in

806
00:46:42,160 --> 00:46:47,480
Speaker 1: common with various uh parasitic wasps, it's it's perfect that

807
00:46:47,640 --> 00:46:51,359
Speaker 1: we also get to include a little parasitic wasp action here. Right.

808
00:46:51,560 --> 00:46:53,560
Speaker 1: In science in two thousand nine, there was an article

809
00:46:53,640 --> 00:46:59,880
Speaker 1: called polidinaviruses of Brackenid wasps derived from an ancestral new devirus,

810
00:47:00,560 --> 00:47:03,800
Speaker 1: and that suggested that they're so there are these parasitic

811
00:47:03,880 --> 00:47:08,920
Speaker 1: wasps that that they inject host caterpillars with these virus

812
00:47:09,120 --> 00:47:14,160
Speaker 1: derived particles that inhibit the caterpillars immune system, so that

813
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:17,279
Speaker 1: the wasps can implant their eggs in the caterpillar, and

814
00:47:17,360 --> 00:47:20,000
Speaker 1: then the eggs can hatch and eat the caterpillar from

815
00:47:20,040 --> 00:47:22,840
Speaker 1: the inside and get a nursery, get get a wonderful

816
00:47:22,880 --> 00:47:29,000
Speaker 1: little little corpse nursery. And so where where did the

817
00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:34,040
Speaker 1: wasps get these virus like particles that they inject into

818
00:47:34,360 --> 00:47:37,359
Speaker 1: the caterpillar in order to inhibit the immune system. Well,

819
00:47:38,120 --> 00:47:40,680
Speaker 1: the discovery is that the wasp genome learned how to

820
00:47:40,719 --> 00:47:44,800
Speaker 1: make these particles by incorporating the genome of a virus

821
00:47:45,600 --> 00:47:48,520
Speaker 1: about a hundred million years ago. And so the suggestion

822
00:47:48,680 --> 00:47:52,279
Speaker 1: is that it it pulled in the virus's genome, said

823
00:47:52,560 --> 00:47:56,200
Speaker 1: you're part of my body plan now, and used that

824
00:47:56,680 --> 00:48:00,279
Speaker 1: to make at a byproduct of the struct sure of

825
00:48:00,400 --> 00:48:04,439
Speaker 1: this virus to use as a weapon against these caterpillars. Wow,

826
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:07,480
Speaker 1: now that that is incredible. Yeah. And up next we

827
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:10,319
Speaker 1: have a plant. Uh. This is uh not quite as

828
00:48:10,360 --> 00:48:13,480
Speaker 1: exciting as parasitic wasps, but it concerns the sweet potato.

829
00:48:14,080 --> 00:48:17,080
Speaker 1: Is this a sweet potato that stabs you with virus particles? Uh?

830
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:19,920
Speaker 1: And fortunately not fortunately it hasn't picked up that habit.

831
00:48:20,000 --> 00:48:23,600
Speaker 1: But a two thousand fifteen study by Ghent University and

832
00:48:23,760 --> 00:48:27,799
Speaker 1: the International Potato Institute or or c I p SIP.

833
00:48:28,360 --> 00:48:30,319
Speaker 1: Uh they should have got a chip in there, an

834
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:35,759
Speaker 1: ache in there, somehow to naked chip International Hot Potato Universe. Yeah. Oh.

835
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:39,000
Speaker 1: They published in the journal p and As and revealed

836
00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:42,200
Speaker 1: that sweet potatoes from all over the world naturally contain

837
00:48:42,360 --> 00:48:46,759
Speaker 1: genes from the bacterium agro Bacterium. Uh. And in this

838
00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:48,799
Speaker 1: particular article they even go so far as to say

839
00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:51,920
Speaker 1: that you consider you could consider this a quote natural

840
00:48:52,120 --> 00:48:55,799
Speaker 1: GMO food product. Yeah, the implications for GMOs are kind

841
00:48:55,800 --> 00:48:59,360
Speaker 1: of interesting because, uh, what a lot of people seem

842
00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:01,640
Speaker 1: opposed to about gema. I mean, there are a lot

843
00:49:01,760 --> 00:49:04,799
Speaker 1: of different reasons people give for being opposed to, uh

844
00:49:05,080 --> 00:49:07,960
Speaker 1: to transgenic food crops, but a lot of it is

845
00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:11,440
Speaker 1: just kind of like, that's not natural. It's not natural

846
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:15,279
Speaker 1: to put genes from bacteria or a fish or something

847
00:49:15,400 --> 00:49:18,279
Speaker 1: like that into a plant in order to make it,

848
00:49:19,000 --> 00:49:21,400
Speaker 1: you know, do whatever be a more successful crop, be

849
00:49:21,560 --> 00:49:26,960
Speaker 1: resistant to uh to herbicides or pesticides or whatever it

850
00:49:27,080 --> 00:49:30,440
Speaker 1: is they're doing with it now. I do think people

851
00:49:30,520 --> 00:49:34,719
Speaker 1: should be should have concerns about the methods used to

852
00:49:34,800 --> 00:49:39,520
Speaker 1: produce the food they eat, but this one particular concern like, oh,

853
00:49:39,800 --> 00:49:43,680
Speaker 1: you know, transgenic crops, that's not natural. That seems untrue.

854
00:49:44,080 --> 00:49:46,760
Speaker 1: It kind of is natural for plants to get genes

855
00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:49,279
Speaker 1: from other places. Yeah. I think that's one of the

856
00:49:49,560 --> 00:49:52,160
Speaker 1: that's that's one of the lessons, uh that this topic

857
00:49:52,360 --> 00:49:54,880
Speaker 1: gives us. You know that that we learned that this

858
00:49:55,200 --> 00:49:58,400
Speaker 1: the horizontal gene transfer, means that this kind of genetic

859
00:49:58,440 --> 00:50:01,600
Speaker 1: modification occurs now truly, and it's not. It's not merely

860
00:50:01,680 --> 00:50:08,279
Speaker 1: to the domain of very ancient organisms or entirely fictional organisms. Uh.

861
00:50:08,520 --> 00:50:11,239
Speaker 1: It seems to be a part of life itself. Yeah.

862
00:50:11,760 --> 00:50:15,279
Speaker 1: So one of the strange things that you might be

863
00:50:15,400 --> 00:50:19,720
Speaker 1: starting to wonder is if you karyotic organisms like plants

864
00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:24,640
Speaker 1: and animals and fungi, if they swipe genes from other organisms,

865
00:50:25,239 --> 00:50:27,840
Speaker 1: does that mean that even the human genome contains a

866
00:50:27,960 --> 00:50:33,399
Speaker 1: decent amount of foreign DNA? And the answer is quite possibly. Uh.

867
00:50:33,800 --> 00:50:36,360
Speaker 1: Just this year in there was a paper published in

868
00:50:36,440 --> 00:50:41,120
Speaker 1: Genome Biology called expression of multiple horizontally acquired genes is

869
00:50:41,160 --> 00:50:45,600
Speaker 1: a hallmark of both vertebrate and invertebrate genomes, and they

870
00:50:45,680 --> 00:50:49,400
Speaker 1: combine previous and new research to suggest a running total

871
00:50:49,640 --> 00:50:53,120
Speaker 1: of a hundred and forty five genes in humans that

872
00:50:53,239 --> 00:50:56,280
Speaker 1: they think have leapt into the human genome from simpler

873
00:50:56,400 --> 00:51:01,000
Speaker 1: organisms at some point in our evolutionary past. Though, however,

874
00:51:01,280 --> 00:51:04,560
Speaker 1: an interesting thing they point out is that fewer HGT

875
00:51:04,840 --> 00:51:07,560
Speaker 1: genes seem to have showed up in the recent history

876
00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:10,839
Speaker 1: of primates. I want to read a quote from from

877
00:51:10,880 --> 00:51:15,719
Speaker 1: their findings. They say, genome wide comparative and phylogenetic analyzes

878
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:18,640
Speaker 1: show that h g T and animals typically gives rise

879
00:51:18,920 --> 00:51:23,760
Speaker 1: to tens or hundreds of active foreign genes, largely concerned

880
00:51:23,800 --> 00:51:25,960
Speaker 1: with metabolism, like we were talking about earlier. A lot

881
00:51:26,000 --> 00:51:27,640
Speaker 1: of these seem to have to do with how you

882
00:51:27,719 --> 00:51:31,040
Speaker 1: can digest and make energy out of different kinds of foods.

883
00:51:31,960 --> 00:51:35,440
Speaker 1: But picking back up with their their words, our analyzes

884
00:51:35,560 --> 00:51:39,120
Speaker 1: suggests that while fruit flies and nematodes have continued to

885
00:51:39,160 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 1: acquire foreign genes throughout their revolution, humans and other primates

886
00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:47,800
Speaker 1: have gained relatively few since their common ancestor. So I

887
00:51:47,920 --> 00:51:50,880
Speaker 1: interpreted this to mean that as you carry outes become

888
00:51:50,960 --> 00:51:54,800
Speaker 1: more complex, their rate of gene stealing can generally be

889
00:51:54,880 --> 00:51:58,520
Speaker 1: expected to decrease. So it could be mistaken about that interpretation,

890
00:51:58,600 --> 00:52:00,399
Speaker 1: but that's what I took away from it. Well, yeah,

891
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:03,600
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but think of gene theft in these organisms,

892
00:52:03,640 --> 00:52:06,560
Speaker 1: like thinking of each organism as say, you know, a

893
00:52:06,640 --> 00:52:09,160
Speaker 1: castle or some sort of a gaming like some sort

894
00:52:09,160 --> 00:52:11,239
Speaker 1: of a game scenario, right, Like it's one thing for

895
00:52:11,360 --> 00:52:13,120
Speaker 1: all this level of theft to be going on and

896
00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:16,440
Speaker 1: you know, among some crude huts out there on the plane,

897
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:19,520
Speaker 1: but then for it to take place within the castle walls,

898
00:52:19,840 --> 00:52:22,279
Speaker 1: for it to take place within the castle itself. For

899
00:52:22,400 --> 00:52:25,560
Speaker 1: it to take place in the king's bedroom or in

900
00:52:25,600 --> 00:52:28,640
Speaker 1: the throne room perhaps will be a better analogy. That

901
00:52:28,800 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 1: becomes it becomes increasingly more difficult to imagine it, and

902
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:34,560
Speaker 1: maybe that's the case. Well, yeah, and that is sort

903
00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:36,160
Speaker 1: of what I was talking about earlier when I was

904
00:52:36,200 --> 00:52:38,759
Speaker 1: bringing up this weird concern about you know, we have

905
00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:41,359
Speaker 1: cell nuclei, we have you know, we have all these

906
00:52:41,440 --> 00:52:44,040
Speaker 1: things that would seem to make it harder for this

907
00:52:44,239 --> 00:52:47,880
Speaker 1: kind of genetic cross contamination to occur. Yeah, So like

908
00:52:47,960 --> 00:52:50,320
Speaker 1: we're trying to figure out what's causing and how what

909
00:52:50,360 --> 00:52:52,600
Speaker 1: exact mechanism is taking place. It's kind of like looking

910
00:52:52,600 --> 00:52:54,600
Speaker 1: at the scenari and saying, how's the thief getting in here?

911
00:52:55,040 --> 00:52:57,719
Speaker 1: Where is he or she hiding? What's the escape route?

912
00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:00,800
Speaker 1: We're trying to understand exactly how that work. Yeah, And

913
00:53:00,920 --> 00:53:03,120
Speaker 1: so one thing about this last study I mentioned is

914
00:53:03,200 --> 00:53:04,879
Speaker 1: it should be pointed out that I read at least

915
00:53:04,920 --> 00:53:08,759
Speaker 1: a couple of comments from scientists essentially claiming not to

916
00:53:08,840 --> 00:53:12,120
Speaker 1: be convinced that the authors had shown that these genes

917
00:53:12,160 --> 00:53:15,759
Speaker 1: and complex animals like humans were projects or products of

918
00:53:15,880 --> 00:53:19,440
Speaker 1: horizontal gene transfer. For example, there was a science magazine

919
00:53:19,520 --> 00:53:22,400
Speaker 1: news right up of the study that cited a dissenting

920
00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:26,520
Speaker 1: opinion from the microbiologist Jonathan Eisen and while he didn't

921
00:53:26,600 --> 00:53:29,200
Speaker 1: rule out h GT and complex animals, he wasn't like

922
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:32,000
Speaker 1: that can't happen. He just felt that the authors of

923
00:53:32,040 --> 00:53:35,279
Speaker 1: the paper hadn't sufficiently ruled out other non h g

924
00:53:35,480 --> 00:53:38,840
Speaker 1: T explanations for the presence of these seemingly alien genes.

925
00:53:40,200 --> 00:53:43,360
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's an interesting frontier that I think the

926
00:53:43,440 --> 00:53:46,239
Speaker 1: science is still developing, and I'll be very interested to

927
00:53:46,320 --> 00:53:49,719
Speaker 1: see what else we learn and what comes of more

928
00:53:49,880 --> 00:53:52,920
Speaker 1: review of this type of science. But I want to

929
00:53:52,960 --> 00:53:55,520
Speaker 1: get back to the analogy I brought up earlier in

930
00:53:55,600 --> 00:53:59,120
Speaker 1: the episode. This this model that has been so common

931
00:53:59,440 --> 00:54:03,640
Speaker 1: in evolutionary thinking really since the time of Darwin, and

932
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:07,560
Speaker 1: it's it's the tree of life analogy. It seems that

933
00:54:08,480 --> 00:54:13,239
Speaker 1: we're discovering all the time that even complex eukaryotic organisms

934
00:54:13,480 --> 00:54:17,200
Speaker 1: trade genes with their contemporaries. And if this is true,

935
00:54:17,840 --> 00:54:19,640
Speaker 1: I think it might be the case that the tree

936
00:54:19,719 --> 00:54:24,600
Speaker 1: of life model, you know, flowing unidirectionally from trunk to branches,

937
00:54:24,719 --> 00:54:29,800
Speaker 1: from top to bottom, isn't necessarily the best analogy anymore. Instead,

938
00:54:30,040 --> 00:54:32,680
Speaker 1: maybe it should be more like the tumble we could life,

939
00:54:33,440 --> 00:54:36,120
Speaker 1: where there is sort of a basic one directional flow

940
00:54:36,320 --> 00:54:39,800
Speaker 1: of the branches. They don't go back toward the roots,

941
00:54:40,320 --> 00:54:43,719
Speaker 1: but there's a whole lot of perpendicular cross connections and

942
00:54:43,840 --> 00:54:47,680
Speaker 1: knots and tangles, and that there might not be a

943
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:52,399
Speaker 1: single trunk at the beginning, but rather another strange knot

944
00:54:52,600 --> 00:54:58,160
Speaker 1: of traded criss crossing genetic pathways. There's a great piece

945
00:54:58,239 --> 00:55:01,120
Speaker 1: that came out in Ian magazine Ene. It's a December

946
00:55:01,160 --> 00:55:04,160
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen essay called the Gene That Jumped by

947
00:55:04,280 --> 00:55:07,000
Speaker 1: Ferrish Jabbar. And I want to read just a quick

948
00:55:07,080 --> 00:55:09,440
Speaker 1: quote from this, and we'll be sure to include conclude

949
00:55:09,480 --> 00:55:12,560
Speaker 1: a link to this full essay on the landing page

950
00:55:12,600 --> 00:55:16,719
Speaker 1: for this episode. Um Jabbar rights quote. Standard evolutionary theory

951
00:55:16,760 --> 00:55:20,080
Speaker 1: does not account for the possibility of complex organisms suddenly

952
00:55:20,120 --> 00:55:24,760
Speaker 1: acquiring genes from other species, let alone how those foreign

953
00:55:24,840 --> 00:55:28,120
Speaker 1: genes might change a creature for better or worse. Think

954
00:55:28,160 --> 00:55:31,200
Speaker 1: of it this way. If the genomes of living species

955
00:55:31,239 --> 00:55:34,879
Speaker 1: are flowers on different branches of the great evolutionary tree

956
00:55:34,920 --> 00:55:40,000
Speaker 1: of life, horizontal gene transfer is a subversive wind whipping

957
00:55:40,080 --> 00:55:43,360
Speaker 1: pollen from one part of the tree to another. I

958
00:55:43,440 --> 00:55:47,040
Speaker 1: think that's beautifully expressed, and I really really liked this essay.

959
00:55:47,280 --> 00:55:50,439
Speaker 1: I I recommend our listeners to check it out because

960
00:55:50,640 --> 00:55:53,160
Speaker 1: I think it's an excellent overview of the subject we've

961
00:55:53,200 --> 00:55:55,520
Speaker 1: been talking about today. Yeah, so if you find yourself

962
00:55:55,840 --> 00:55:58,279
Speaker 1: thirsting for more about this topic and you're not sure

963
00:55:58,320 --> 00:56:01,440
Speaker 1: where to go next, I've I would highly recommend that

964
00:56:01,680 --> 00:56:04,520
Speaker 1: at that essay. Okay, So there's one last thing I

965
00:56:04,600 --> 00:56:07,040
Speaker 1: do want to bring up before we we conclude our

966
00:56:07,080 --> 00:56:10,319
Speaker 1: discussion of horizontal gene transfer, and it's it's something about

967
00:56:10,320 --> 00:56:13,840
Speaker 1: the analogies we've been using throughout this episode. We've spoken

968
00:56:14,040 --> 00:56:18,200
Speaker 1: of the whole organism as a gene stealer. In the

969
00:56:18,280 --> 00:56:20,640
Speaker 1: case of this horizontal gene transfer, I'll take a gene

970
00:56:20,680 --> 00:56:22,560
Speaker 1: from you. I'll take a gene from you, and I'll

971
00:56:22,600 --> 00:56:24,480
Speaker 1: make it part of myself and pass it on to

972
00:56:24,560 --> 00:56:27,160
Speaker 1: my kids. But I wonder if it would make more

973
00:56:27,200 --> 00:56:31,040
Speaker 1: sense to think about it backwards instead of gene steelers

974
00:56:31,160 --> 00:56:33,719
Speaker 1: the whole organisms as gene steelers. To think about a

975
00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:38,759
Speaker 1: gene invader looking for a suitable host, Because from a

976
00:56:38,800 --> 00:56:40,840
Speaker 1: certain point of view, you can say it's not the

977
00:56:41,040 --> 00:56:45,080
Speaker 1: individual or even the entire genome that is the agent

978
00:56:45,239 --> 00:56:49,759
Speaker 1: driving evolution, But it's that each individual gene within a

979
00:56:49,920 --> 00:56:54,759
Speaker 1: genome competes for its own survival and reproduction. So if

980
00:56:54,800 --> 00:56:58,120
Speaker 1: you think about each genome sort of like an ecosystem

981
00:56:58,400 --> 00:57:03,080
Speaker 1: for genes, if a gene can survive outside the original

982
00:57:03,200 --> 00:57:07,640
Speaker 1: ecosystem where it originated by invading a different genome, why

983
00:57:07,680 --> 00:57:10,319
Speaker 1: wouldn't it do that too? Why not spread to more

984
00:57:10,480 --> 00:57:13,960
Speaker 1: fertile territory. And if it contributes to the overall health

985
00:57:14,040 --> 00:57:16,720
Speaker 1: of the ecosystem, and this and that would be the analogy.

986
00:57:16,800 --> 00:57:19,600
Speaker 1: But meaning it provides a survival advantage to the owner

987
00:57:19,680 --> 00:57:23,240
Speaker 1: of the host genome, all the better. Um. So I

988
00:57:23,360 --> 00:57:25,840
Speaker 1: think that's another interesting way of putting thinking about it,

989
00:57:25,920 --> 00:57:28,600
Speaker 1: to sort of flip this on its head, because we

990
00:57:28,800 --> 00:57:33,000
Speaker 1: know certainly that these organisms are not attempting to steal

991
00:57:33,160 --> 00:57:38,080
Speaker 1: genes consciously, but but the genes are out there and

992
00:57:38,400 --> 00:57:43,040
Speaker 1: that uh, and that the whole complexity of biological life

993
00:57:43,240 --> 00:57:46,960
Speaker 1: is driven by the desire of each gene to make

994
00:57:47,040 --> 00:57:50,320
Speaker 1: as many copies of itself as possible, And we've discovered

995
00:57:50,360 --> 00:57:52,680
Speaker 1: a new way it can do that. It doesn't just

996
00:57:53,000 --> 00:57:56,840
Speaker 1: divide and copy it doesn't just sexually reproduce, but it

997
00:57:56,920 --> 00:58:01,880
Speaker 1: can also kind of drift. It can also invade and

998
00:58:02,080 --> 00:58:05,040
Speaker 1: and take over somebody else's house and become part of

999
00:58:05,120 --> 00:58:08,320
Speaker 1: the new neighborhood. Yeah. I love the other way you

1000
00:58:08,360 --> 00:58:10,440
Speaker 1: put this because it does, I mean, it drives home

1001
00:58:10,560 --> 00:58:13,880
Speaker 1: how difficult it is for us to to take into

1002
00:58:13,920 --> 00:58:18,240
Speaker 1: account that there's no there's no consistent us. There's no

1003
00:58:18,920 --> 00:58:21,240
Speaker 1: that that we are not set in stone. That's certainly,

1004
00:58:22,120 --> 00:58:24,040
Speaker 1: and that works on several different levels. I mean, the

1005
00:58:24,280 --> 00:58:26,000
Speaker 1: me that I am now is not the me that

1006
00:58:26,120 --> 00:58:28,640
Speaker 1: I was ten years ago, or the personnel be ten

1007
00:58:28,680 --> 00:58:32,400
Speaker 1: years from now, where this continually changing individual, and even

1008
00:58:32,480 --> 00:58:36,360
Speaker 1: that individual is kind of a council of selves, and

1009
00:58:36,680 --> 00:58:40,160
Speaker 1: and then that that in that then the individual body.

1010
00:58:40,320 --> 00:58:43,160
Speaker 1: You know, we discussed the micro genome, we discussed all

1011
00:58:43,200 --> 00:58:45,919
Speaker 1: the individual parts that make make us up as a whole.

1012
00:58:45,920 --> 00:58:51,320
Speaker 1: Where essentially this large corporation of smaller things. And so yeah,

1013
00:58:51,400 --> 00:58:55,520
Speaker 1: when when one employee jumps and joins this corporation, we

1014
00:58:55,680 --> 00:58:58,040
Speaker 1: might think, oh, we have acquired an individual, we have

1015
00:58:58,120 --> 00:59:00,920
Speaker 1: inquired a trade, we've inquired a skill set, acquired a

1016
00:59:00,960 --> 00:59:03,439
Speaker 1: skill set into our being. But then on the other hand,

1017
00:59:04,200 --> 00:59:07,280
Speaker 1: there is an individual worker who simply said, Hey, there's

1018
00:59:07,320 --> 00:59:09,960
Speaker 1: a corporation that I can thrive in and uh, and

1019
00:59:10,000 --> 00:59:11,920
Speaker 1: I'm better at doing what I do than several of

1020
00:59:11,960 --> 00:59:14,680
Speaker 1: the current employees. I think I could I could carve

1021
00:59:14,720 --> 00:59:17,760
Speaker 1: out a place for myself in this new home. Yeah,

1022
00:59:18,440 --> 00:59:21,840
Speaker 1: economics starts with the individual, right, Yeah, there you go.

1023
00:59:23,560 --> 00:59:27,200
Speaker 1: So really we are like the Warhammer forty forty k universe.

1024
00:59:27,360 --> 00:59:30,160
Speaker 1: We were taking bits of Tolkien, and we're taking bits

1025
00:59:30,280 --> 00:59:34,720
Speaker 1: of of cone and the Barbarian. We're taking bits of Alien,

1026
00:59:34,920 --> 00:59:38,120
Speaker 1: of event Horizon, maybe of cone Heads. Why not cone Heads?

1027
00:59:38,440 --> 00:59:40,000
Speaker 1: I would love to see a cone Head army. And

1028
00:59:40,080 --> 00:59:43,480
Speaker 1: the Warhammer forty thousand universe. Um, yeah, I need going

1029
00:59:43,600 --> 00:59:45,960
Speaker 1: straight from France. Yeah, but yeah, I think I think

1030
00:59:46,000 --> 00:59:50,800
Speaker 1: Warhammer forty thousand is is an excellent metaphor for for

1031
00:59:50,920 --> 00:59:53,760
Speaker 1: the sort of a view on life that horizontal gene

1032
00:59:53,760 --> 00:59:57,000
Speaker 1: transfer gives us. That did all these elements come together

1033
00:59:57,960 --> 01:00:00,280
Speaker 1: and even though they're all kind of pilfred and olan

1034
01:00:00,360 --> 01:00:03,720
Speaker 1: and acquired, they all take on a unique form of life. Uh,

1035
01:00:04,240 --> 01:00:07,480
Speaker 1: in the the ultimate individual that you see in the

1036
01:00:07,640 --> 01:00:11,040
Speaker 1: ultimate franchise that you that you play with under tabletop.

1037
01:00:11,760 --> 01:00:14,000
Speaker 1: I was about to say that's deep. But instead what

1038
01:00:14,080 --> 01:00:17,040
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say is that's broad well put well put

1039
01:00:17,920 --> 01:00:21,160
Speaker 1: all right. So so there you go horizontal gene transfer

1040
01:00:21,440 --> 01:00:24,360
Speaker 1: and and again will include some some resources for you

1041
01:00:24,480 --> 01:00:26,640
Speaker 1: to move on to if you you feel like you

1042
01:00:26,880 --> 01:00:30,680
Speaker 1: want some more depth on this particular topic, right uh.

1043
01:00:30,720 --> 01:00:32,520
Speaker 1: In the meantime, again, head on over to stuff to

1044
01:00:32,560 --> 01:00:34,280
Speaker 1: All your mind dot com. That's what we'll You'll find

1045
01:00:34,400 --> 01:00:38,040
Speaker 1: all the podcast episodes, blog post videos, links out to

1046
01:00:38,080 --> 01:00:40,400
Speaker 1: our social media accounts, you name it. Again, the landing

1047
01:00:40,400 --> 01:00:43,240
Speaker 1: page for this episode will include probably some a cool

1048
01:00:43,280 --> 01:00:47,000
Speaker 1: little picture, and some links to related um podcast episodes, articles,

1049
01:00:47,040 --> 01:00:49,520
Speaker 1: etcetera on the website, as well as links out to

1050
01:00:50,240 --> 01:00:53,120
Speaker 1: some key resources we think that you will find engaging,

1051
01:00:53,200 --> 01:00:56,320
Speaker 1: such as that Ian magazine piece. And if you want

1052
01:00:56,360 --> 01:00:57,840
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us and let us know

1053
01:00:57,960 --> 01:01:01,800
Speaker 1: your favorite gene steeler and its fiction or fantasy or horror,

1054
01:01:02,000 --> 01:01:03,560
Speaker 1: or if you want to let us know about your

1055
01:01:03,600 --> 01:01:08,680
Speaker 1: favorite gene steeler cork, let's say, genetic invader in real

1056
01:01:08,760 --> 01:01:10,880
Speaker 1: life nature, you can email us and let us know

1057
01:01:11,040 --> 01:01:22,800
Speaker 1: and blow the mind and how stuff works stuck for

1058
01:01:22,920 --> 01:01:25,240
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it

1059
01:01:25,320 --> 01:01:26,439
Speaker 1: How stuff works? Dot com