Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and
Speaker 1: Robert Today. I know you wanted to talk about something
Speaker 1: that you saw at a panel at the World Science Festival,
Speaker 1: and this topic was something that I hadn't really thought
Speaker 1: all that much about. Maybe maybe it'd come up a
Speaker 1: little bit before. But it's uh, GMOs and not GMO
Speaker 1: wheat or GMO corn or GMO mosquitoes, but GMO astronauts.
Speaker 1: That's right. This Uh the panel that I ended up attending.
Speaker 1: This was one of their salons at World Science Festival,
Speaker 1: Evolution Beyond Earth. It was. It was one of the
Speaker 1: highlights for me because it basically revolved around a discussion
Speaker 1: of genetically modifying humans for space exploration. And this is
Speaker 1: a great topic because it touches on some stuff that
Speaker 1: we've covered before. The idea of augmenting humans for space,
Speaker 1: uh is an idea that goes back decades, and we'll
Speaker 1: get into that. And it also touches upon just genetically
Speaker 1: modifying organisms in general and the crisper technology, something that
Speaker 1: we've been we've wanted to talk about on the show
Speaker 1: for years, and I feel like this gives us a
Speaker 1: proper science fiction flavored excuse to discuss it within uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a particular set of parameters. Okay, So today
Speaker 1: we are going to be doing our best to try
Speaker 1: to give a simple, straightforward explanation what the Crisper gene
Speaker 1: editing process is and what it does, but also to
Speaker 1: uh explore a little bit of what they talk about
Speaker 1: in this panel about genetically modifying astronauts and ask should
Speaker 1: we do it? Should we make our spacemen and space
Speaker 1: women of tomorrow creatures of the gene scalpel? Well, if
Speaker 1: you phrase it like that, um, I mean, really it
Speaker 1: seems like a reasonable proper position, doesn't it. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you consider I want you could consider the options. Okay,
Speaker 1: you could potentially terraform another world. You could you could
Speaker 1: strain to bring a particular human environment into space. You know, basically,
Speaker 1: can a canned version of Earth throw it into space
Speaker 1: and let people live in that? Or perhaps you can
Speaker 1: just change what people are. You can make you can
Speaker 1: either adapt people to existing environments beyond Earth or tweak
Speaker 1: them in such a way that you're not having to
Speaker 1: bend over backwards to create an environment for them beyond Earth.
Speaker 1: And this is this is an idea that is resonated
Speaker 1: in science fiction for some time. A few different examples
Speaker 1: come to my mind. I don't I don't know if
Speaker 1: if any of these, uh, we're knocking around your head
Speaker 1: as well, or if you have your own examples to
Speaker 1: to discuss. No, let's hit yours man, all right? Well? Um.
Speaker 1: The first is a novel by a Clifford D. Simic,
Speaker 1: who is a kind of a legend and science fiction circles.
Speaker 1: He was very prolific. He is probably best known for
Speaker 1: a collection of short stories, but he wrote titled City.
Speaker 1: One of the tales I think involves um speaking dogs,
Speaker 1: like a race of intelligence talking dogs that wait. Telepathic
Speaker 1: dogs are just like saying words out loud with their
Speaker 1: dog mouths. I think they're they're speaking, but I'm not certainly,
Speaker 1: because there's not one that I've read. One book of
Speaker 1: his that I have read though, is N sevens The
Speaker 1: Werewolf Principle. And this is this is a great book
Speaker 1: in a number of ways because essentially, I I don't
Speaker 1: know the origin of it, but it feels like someone said, hey, Clifford,
Speaker 1: can you write a space werewolf book for us. I
Speaker 1: think that's something people would like to read, and who wouldn't.
Speaker 1: But he does a fantastic spin on it that is
Speaker 1: just so thoroughly, so thoroughly late sixties, early seventies, you know,
Speaker 1: science fiction. Uh So, it's a wonderfully weird novel in
Speaker 1: which a human space traveler is augmented to rapidly adapt
Speaker 1: to alien worlds. He's sort of an android designed to
Speaker 1: scan and mimic alien species for research purposes. He's one
Speaker 1: of only two constructed, and he's sent out to alien worlds,
Speaker 1: uh two hundred years ago. He visits a number of
Speaker 1: these planets and then he returns to Earth and begins
Speaker 1: to experience transformations into these into certain certain monstrous forms.
Speaker 1: He's having an identity crisis. And in the background to
Speaker 1: all this, the the the the earth setting that all
Speaker 1: of this has taken place on Invote includes flying houses
Speaker 1: because humans have these, you know, these space age houses.
Speaker 1: Why I stay in one spot when you can have
Speaker 1: your house moved from spot to spot. And also the
Speaker 1: woods are teeming with brownies or maybe not teaming. Teeming
Speaker 1: is not the right word. But we've reached the point
Speaker 1: as a human species to realize. Oh yeah, most of
Speaker 1: the mythical creatures that we taught, we spoke about and
Speaker 1: sing songs about, they weren't real. Up for brownies, brownies
Speaker 1: were real. Are brownies like fairies? Yeah, they're just like
Speaker 1: a race of fairies and they live in the Pope Woods.
Speaker 1: And I don't I don't recall to what extent they
Speaker 1: actually play a part in the plot of the werewolf principle,
Speaker 1: but just that they're there because the world its own
Speaker 1: unique stent. You know. I'm glad to hear that there's
Speaker 1: a space werewolf novel because that's something that there could
Speaker 1: stand to be plenty of. I'm waiting for the Space
Speaker 1: Mummy novel. When does that happen? Well, there was that film.
Speaker 1: I forget the title of it or the titles, but
Speaker 1: it was. It was featured on Mystery Sentence. Theater three
Speaker 1: thousand had an ancient astronauts money is like, was it
Speaker 1: the Frankenstein and the Aztec Mummy? No, but maybe that
Speaker 1: was also space Mummy. But this one was like visitor
Speaker 1: from another world or something to that effect. No, I
Speaker 1: don't know what that is. Well, anyway, I will agree
Speaker 1: that it is an under utilized sub genre, the space mummy.
Speaker 1: That's what we should be going back to. Ye, So
Speaker 1: if you're in the middle of writing a space vampire novel,
Speaker 1: give it up, just put it on hold. Give us
Speaker 1: space mummies first. Yeah, and then the sequel can be
Speaker 1: space mummies versus space werewolves. Now, another sci fi property
Speaker 1: that comes to mind is a two thousand nine film
Speaker 1: that I know some people did not enjoy, but I
Speaker 1: actually really enjoyed this one to two thousand nine Pandorum
Speaker 1: like some things about it. Yeah, I I embraced the
Speaker 1: mixed review. I embraced all of it. This is the
Speaker 1: one that had Dennis Quaid in it. It did. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: I will say it's not one of Dennis Quaids finer performances.
Speaker 1: It's no enemy mine. But the plot, the look at
Speaker 1: the film I thought was great and the plot was
Speaker 1: kind of cool. They so they're a colonists aboard and
Speaker 1: interstellar arc named the Elysium, and the colonists are augmented
Speaker 1: to rapidly adapt to the environment of their destination exoplanet,
Speaker 1: which is a world called Tennis. But of course, something
Speaker 1: goes horribly wrong and a portion of the crew wakes
Speaker 1: up early, they go a little crazy, and their descendants
Speaker 1: rapidly adapt to the environment of the spaceship and they
Speaker 1: become the essentially become a race of cannibal mutant trog lafuna.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the descent in a spaceship instead
Speaker 1: of a cave. Yes, yeah, I think that's a that's
Speaker 1: a fair assessment, and it also reminds me a bit
Speaker 1: of a movie that came out of along the same time, uh,
Speaker 1: known as eden Log. Did you happen to see this? No?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Eden Log is is hauntingly familiar.
Speaker 1: It's like a more artistic French reflection of the same film.
Speaker 1: So I would say, if if anyone out there enjoyed Pandoram,
Speaker 1: go see eden Log, or if you enjoyed parts of Pandorum,
Speaker 1: go watch eden Log. You probably won't understand what's happening.
Speaker 1: But when has that ever gotten in the in the
Speaker 1: way of a good good time in a science fiction movie.
Speaker 1: I should also point out that in Dan Simon's Hyperion novels,
Speaker 1: you have the the Alsters, humans who have adapted to
Speaker 1: life in space, granted suited and within ships, but still
Speaker 1: uh that they've been able to adapt due to extensive
Speaker 1: genetic self manipulation. And then the Expanse series based on
Speaker 1: the books by James S. A. Corey. You see belters
Speaker 1: who are who have adapted to to life on ships
Speaker 1: on the sort of the the outer limits of human
Speaker 1: habitation in the Solar System. Yeah, this is probably the
Speaker 1: example I would have mentioned if I was going to
Speaker 1: bring up genetic adaptation to space conditions, because obviously living
Speaker 1: in lower gravity environments, this would be problematic for humans
Speaker 1: who have been tailored by billions of years of evolution
Speaker 1: to survive on a Earth gravity world. If you're out
Speaker 1: in a small gravity world, you just probably need a
Speaker 1: different body, right, And so these differently adapted creatures. There's
Speaker 1: this one scene I remember in the Expanse of gravity
Speaker 1: torture Belters being brought back to Earth and tortured with
Speaker 1: Earth gravity. Yeah, just the the the the act of
Speaker 1: of living on a higher gravity world is torment to them.
Speaker 1: And that kind of underlines the reverse challenges of taking
Speaker 1: your You're taking a creature and expecting it to live
Speaker 1: in an environment that is tortured to them, that they
Speaker 1: that they just simply have not evolved to cope with.
Speaker 1: So the panel that I that I attended. It was
Speaker 1: moderated by neuroscientist Stuart fire Stain, and the panelists were
Speaker 1: geneticist Chris Mason geneticist Ting Wu who as a sort
Speaker 1: of trivia on Teing Woo. She is the wife of
Speaker 1: noted geneticist Georgia m. Church and also astrobiologist Caleb Sharf.
Speaker 1: So we we don't even have to consider the challenges
Speaker 1: of an alien planet to consider the the benefits or
Speaker 1: the potential benefits of of altering humans for space travel.
Speaker 1: In fact, you might say space travel itself is the
Speaker 1: harshest possible environment, maybe even more so than another plan
Speaker 1: And I guess depending on what the planet is like,
Speaker 1: because on another planet you'd at least expect to have
Speaker 1: some gravity, right, or you can only assume there will
Speaker 1: be like some level of robust radiation shielding, either in
Speaker 1: the form of a of a naturally occurring magnetosphere or
Speaker 1: like hopefully a substantial underground base or whatever. Your your
Speaker 1: off world colonies gonna consist of an atmosphere and an
Speaker 1: atmosphere which is also gonna entail a certain amount of
Speaker 1: radiation shielding. But your your your tin can, your your
Speaker 1: generation ship sailing across the space. Sailing across interstellar space,
Speaker 1: even that's going to be a different proposition. Unless you're
Speaker 1: going to a comet or small asteroid. The ship is
Speaker 1: probably a harsher environment and and uh and probably a
Speaker 1: long journey. Oh. An important point that that that the
Speaker 1: moderator Stewart Finstein made in this is that humans have
Speaker 1: proven incredibly adaptable here on Earth. And I think this
Speaker 1: leads into this idea that we should be able to
Speaker 1: survive anywhere. Right we live all over the world. We can,
Speaker 1: we can sustain ourselves in pretty harsh conditions. And yet, um,
Speaker 1: even though we've become a global species, even though we're
Speaker 1: considering this leap uh into becoming an interplanetary species species,
Speaker 1: we entertain quote a migration to a place that has
Speaker 1: never impacted our evolution in any way. That's a really
Speaker 1: good point. I mean, yeah, there's there's just been zero
Speaker 1: input whatsoever of for example, zero you know, microgravity conditions
Speaker 1: on on the evolution of any life form on Earth,
Speaker 1: no precedent whatsoever. So on the other hand, so on
Speaker 1: one hand, you can say that place is not for us,
Speaker 1: the space is horrible, why would you want to go there?
Speaker 1: But there are plenty that argue that, hey, we need
Speaker 1: to figure it out, that that life beyond Earth is
Speaker 1: vital to the long term survival of the human race.
Speaker 1: That if we're going to continue to exist long term,
Speaker 1: we have to exist places other than this world. Right.
Speaker 1: We can debate what the number is, but the natural
Speaker 1: ecology of Earth, or even the augmented ecology of Earth,
Speaker 1: does have some kind of natural carrying capacity. There's some
Speaker 1: maximum number of humans that it can sustain in terms
Speaker 1: of giving them clean air to breathe, freshwater, food space
Speaker 1: to live, all those kinds of things. At some point,
Speaker 1: we we will run out of that if we keep multiplying,
Speaker 1: and of course there are there there are hard stops
Speaker 1: for just the habitability of Earth in the long term
Speaker 1: future as well. Yeah, at some point the sun will
Speaker 1: sort of increase in size. That's not so great for
Speaker 1: the surface dwellers of the Earth. Yeah, and uh, And
Speaker 1: then there's there's another argument to be made here, and
Speaker 1: this is the one that that the astrobiologist Caleb sharfmin
Speaker 1: and the talk he said, he said a human exploration
Speaker 1: remains the best option for exploration, that robots can only
Speaker 1: get us so far, and that there's and the this
Speaker 1: you kind of get into a more I guess, philosophical
Speaker 1: argument for exploration when you're saying that, yeah, you can
Speaker 1: send robots, that you can send probes out. Uh, we can.
Speaker 1: We can move a joystick and then move a robotic
Speaker 1: arm in another world with some degree of lag time.
Speaker 1: But are we losing something? Is there something? Is there
Speaker 1: something lost in not having actual human exploration. Sure you
Speaker 1: can make that argument. I mean, I think I'm of
Speaker 1: the opinion that robotic exploration can get us a lot
Speaker 1: of what we need. We can get some good research results,
Speaker 1: we can reduce the risk of human death and injury,
Speaker 1: and reduce the risk of cross contamination of environments and
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. You can do a
Speaker 1: lot with robots. But there are some things that humans
Speaker 1: are sort of unique providers of. One is on site ingenuity.
Speaker 1: Robots at this point do not have the kind of
Speaker 1: intelligence and ingenuity and creativity that a human astronaut would have.
Speaker 1: If you were trying to trying to not just say,
Speaker 1: do a few specific tests on the surface of Mars,
Speaker 1: but to create a robust research environment on a faraway
Speaker 1: planet that makes sense. But then also on top of that,
Speaker 1: humans have inspiration potential for the rest of humanity in
Speaker 1: a way that robots don't. Not to say it's not
Speaker 1: inspiring to see the Curiosity rover, for example, moving around
Speaker 1: on the surface of Mars. But you can't deny there
Speaker 1: will be a very different kind of effect when there
Speaker 1: are human feet on the soil of Marsh, no doubt.
Speaker 1: And so we end up and then asking the question, well,
Speaker 1: how is this going to happen? How are we going
Speaker 1: to pull it off? And indeed, what changes might we
Speaker 1: want or need to make to the human body to
Speaker 1: enable those feet uh, those footsteps to actually take place
Speaker 1: on Mars. Well, I know one answer is we gotta
Speaker 1: got to replace these hands with crab claws. When are
Speaker 1: we finally going to get our clause? Robert, Well, I
Speaker 1: mean maybe there's an our baby steps though, right, Because
Speaker 1: if our knowledge of GMOs has thought us anything thus far,
Speaker 1: is that people are are going to be resistant to
Speaker 1: the idea of like rapid change. Right, They're not gonna
Speaker 1: go for crab clouds right off the bat, but maybe
Speaker 1: more subtle changes at any rate. Genesis Chris Mason says
Speaker 1: that we need to consider a five hundred year lab plan.
Speaker 1: So a multi stage plan to advance our understanding of
Speaker 1: the human genome, figure out exactly what we can tweak
Speaker 1: where we need to tweak it to adapt humans to
Speaker 1: better Uh. For instance, a thrive on a trip to
Speaker 1: Mars and then the subsequent stay on Mars, a subsequent
Speaker 1: colonization of Mars. So five dred years that's a pretty
Speaker 1: slow ascent, and I can see some benefits to that.
Speaker 1: Number one, that gives the technology plenty of time to
Speaker 1: get there. But number two, it's what you were talking
Speaker 1: about with baby steps and acclimatizing people. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: give people in general a chance to say, okay, this
Speaker 1: is fine, you know, because each generation the changes would
Speaker 1: be small. Yeah, so hopefully by the time crab class
Speaker 1: came along, everyone would be cool with it. And it's
Speaker 1: but it's also it's easy to say, well this that
Speaker 1: this sucks is an option because five years we're not
Speaker 1: going to be around to to see the fruits of
Speaker 1: that labor. But it also really plays to humanity strengths
Speaker 1: because no matter granted, we we often suffer for our
Speaker 1: ability to not um not calculate things long term, but
Speaker 1: yet at the at the same time, we do have
Speaker 1: a unique ability to plan beyond our own lifespan. So
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of a it's a special magic that
Speaker 1: that other organisms do not have. Even if it's a
Speaker 1: one that we are, we're not completely competent with ourselves. Yet,
Speaker 1: even if we're not great at it, we can at
Speaker 1: least do it. And as they say in the in
Speaker 1: the Space Program, doing a bad job is better than
Speaker 1: not doing it at all. They don't say that, do they.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that that might have been included on
Speaker 1: the voyager plates and not not positive all right, So
Speaker 1: before we consider the present solutions, before we consider genetically
Speaker 1: modifying humans for space, I think it's a it's a
Speaker 1: good opportunity to look back and see what two individuals,
Speaker 1: Nathan Klein and Manfred Klein's said in their their Cyborg
Speaker 1: paper back in nineteen sixty. Sure, because hey, if you
Speaker 1: want to modify human beings to explore space, you don't
Speaker 1: have to go straight to their genes. You could instead
Speaker 1: basically give them a few mods right now. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's that's basically what what these authors were arguing back
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty. They presented a grocery list of ways
Speaker 1: that technology and medical science could retrofit the human body
Speaker 1: for the star hopping lifestyle. And this is where the
Speaker 1: concept of the cyborg came from, was this paper in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty by the client, by the clients, by client
Speaker 1: and clients. Yes, one with a C, one with a K,
Speaker 1: one one with an ass on the end, one without it.
Speaker 1: So it always trips me up as well. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they made this argument early on to say, hey, you
Speaker 1: want to put people in space, you need to be
Speaker 1: willing to change people. And we were not willing to
Speaker 1: change people. Or we can look at it two different ways.
Speaker 1: Either we were not willing to do it, or we
Speaker 1: did not really have the the the scientific advances to
Speaker 1: make those changes, at least not the more radical changes
Speaker 1: that are proposed in this paper. This is a very
Speaker 1: if you if you go read this paper, the tone
Speaker 1: of it is incredibly gung ho, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's just so like, well, let's get her done, come on,
Speaker 1: changing humans for space. Yeah, yeah, it is very gung ho. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read a quick quote from it here to
Speaker 1: give you a taste. Solving the many technical problems involved
Speaker 1: in man's space flight by adapting man to his environment
Speaker 1: rather than vice versa will not only make a significant
Speaker 1: step forward in man's scientific progress, but may well for
Speaker 1: vide a new and larger dimension for man's spirit as well.
Speaker 1: So they're like, let's not just change ourselves for space,
Speaker 1: let's change ourselves for the principle of it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of It kind of gets back to the idea
Speaker 1: that if you change the body, you change the soul.
Speaker 1: When they're saying, hey, we're gonna in big in the body,
Speaker 1: We're gonna in big in that human soul. Uh, you're
Speaker 1: gonna it's a perfectly cromulent idea. So their recommendations were
Speaker 1: all very much in the vein of retrofits. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna get more into the idea of of sort of
Speaker 1: you know, front end changes via genetic modification. But they
Speaker 1: were all about taking the creature that is evolved for
Speaker 1: this world and adapting it to survive in the other
Speaker 1: or you know, in the space between worlds. Uh. That
Speaker 1: they made a point of not altering the heredity of
Speaker 1: the human being. Interesting, So here's another quote. In the past,
Speaker 1: evolution brought about the altering of bodily functions to suit
Speaker 1: different environments. Starting as of now, it will be possible
Speaker 1: to achieve this to some degree without alteration of heredity
Speaker 1: by suitable biochemical, physiological, and electronic modification modifications of man's
Speaker 1: existing modus vivindi. Okay, so the way of getting along
Speaker 1: in life previously we would make an adaptation to our
Speaker 1: genes in a way that could be transferred from adult
Speaker 1: to child. So it's a it's an indirect modification. It's
Speaker 1: not the Slamarckian idea of like, well, I had to
Speaker 1: reach up to a tree, so my arms got longer
Speaker 1: and my kids had longer arms. It's no, you're born
Speaker 1: with longer arms by accident you can reach the tree
Speaker 1: better unless your kids get that as well. That's, you know,
Speaker 1: the the accepted version of heredity. Now, of course, epigenetics
Speaker 1: and lots of weird things have sort of modified that
Speaker 1: slightly over the years, but still we basically are operating
Speaker 1: on a germline heredity model for for where our body
Speaker 1: traits come from. And they're saying, no, we don't have
Speaker 1: to do that anymore. We can change people who were
Speaker 1: alive right now. They don't have to get these changes
Speaker 1: from their their ancestors, and the changes are rather fascinating.
Speaker 1: The ones that they proposed. So they make suggestions in
Speaker 1: including the use of hypothermic hibernation for extended space travel,
Speaker 1: lowering body temperature, and administering various drugs through an automatic
Speaker 1: osmotic pump of course to alter enzyme levels, low gravity tolerance, etcetera.
Speaker 1: There's also the the idea that you could use a
Speaker 1: solar or nuclear powered inverse fuel cell in place of
Speaker 1: a lung. Isn't that just beautiful? A nuclear powered fuel
Speaker 1: cell for respiration. And then this is probably my favorite
Speaker 1: passage from the paper, fluid intake and output fluid balance
Speaker 1: in the astronaut could be largely maintained via a shunt
Speaker 1: from the uritors to the venous circulation after removal or
Speaker 1: conversion of noxious substances. Sterilization of the gastro intestinal tract
Speaker 1: plus intravenous or direct intra gastric feeding could reduce fecal
Speaker 1: elimination to a minimum. And even this might be reutilized.
Speaker 1: This is ambition, This ambition if I've ever seen it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the basic cybernetic replumbing of the human body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're looking at what the human body does. They're saying, like, look,
Speaker 1: pooping and peaking so much waste here. We gotta find
Speaker 1: a way to reclaim all of this waste from poop
Speaker 1: and p This enthusiasm reminds me of passage in Mary
Speaker 1: Roach's excellent book Packing from Mars, But she talks about
Speaker 1: the clash of culture between the NASA scientists and the
Speaker 1: astronauts themselves, especially early on when the astronauts themselves tended
Speaker 1: to be essentially cowboys. They were they were the they
Speaker 1: were the test pilots. They were that they were very
Speaker 1: man only men of the of of the sixties. Well,
Speaker 1: I think actually the astronauts may have better embodied this, uh,
Speaker 1: this client inclined, gung ho attitude of like, yeah, let's
Speaker 1: do whatever, get her done. Well to a point, because,
Speaker 1: as Roach points out, you have scientists who would say,
Speaker 1: all right, uh to and to enable this kind of
Speaker 1: space journey, that needs to be a certain amount of
Speaker 1: like repurposing fecal matter, We need to we need to
Speaker 1: figure out how to make the interior of the spaceship
Speaker 1: out of consumable products, that sort of thing. And and
Speaker 1: she said that there there would there would come a
Speaker 1: point where the at the astronauts that they caught wind
Speaker 1: of this idea, they would say Yeah, well we're not
Speaker 1: doing that. That's just that's too far. So how's that,
Speaker 1: how's that spaceship ready Salisbury stake meal coming? Well, it's
Speaker 1: it's still a work in progress. But well, I guess
Speaker 1: it does come down to the oh, just the the
Speaker 1: scope of what you're trying to do. Just this just
Speaker 1: this impossible dream of of of of taking terrestrial organisms
Speaker 1: and allowing them to to journey and even thrive beyond
Speaker 1: our world. You've got to You've got to enter into
Speaker 1: that with a very gung home change everything attitude. Otherwise
Speaker 1: how are you going to get there? Well? Yeah, there
Speaker 1: there are different ways you could approach this. So if
Speaker 1: you're talking about modifying astronauts for space travel, one way
Speaker 1: you could think about it is how do we get
Speaker 1: them through the mission? Right? How do we modify astronauts
Speaker 1: so that they can complete their mission objectives and survive
Speaker 1: the whole time and come back, versus thinking about modifying
Speaker 1: astronauts to be the kind of organism where this is
Speaker 1: the environment they thrive in. We're going to space is
Speaker 1: natural to them, and it's not just to get them
Speaker 1: through it without them dying or suffering debilitating illness, but
Speaker 1: to make them at home in these new environments like
Speaker 1: space and other planets. Does that make sense? So in
Speaker 1: order to carry all this up, why should we depend
Speaker 1: on crude aftermarket fixes like replumbing the human body and
Speaker 1: installing nuclear lungs? Why do that when we could achieve
Speaker 1: the ideal or you know, quote unquote ideal space faring
Speaker 1: human via modern and near future gene editing technology. And
Speaker 1: that is not as far fetched as it might sound.
Speaker 1: And when we come back from this break, are you
Speaker 1: ready for a break, Robert, I'm ready for a break.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll take a quick break, and when we
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to talk about the Crisper gene
Speaker 1: editing method. Alright, we're back, so again, gene editing Crisper.
Speaker 1: This is a topic that we've wanted to discuss for
Speaker 1: some time. I know we've had listeners who've reached out
Speaker 1: and said, he said, hey, do an episode on Crisper.
Speaker 1: And I don't know about you, but and I know
Speaker 1: you've you've covered Crisper, I think on other shows before,
Speaker 1: but I always found it a bit huh intimidating because
Speaker 1: there's there's too to look at Crisper and then draw
Speaker 1: in sort of the the more everyday examples of how
Speaker 1: it might be utilized in the fighting of diseases and whatnot,
Speaker 1: and then drawing in a lot of the continued controversy
Speaker 1: over GMO in general. It it becomes a bit intimidating,
Speaker 1: and I like I like the idea of discussing it
Speaker 1: here because it lines up nicely with a specific science
Speaker 1: fiction flavored UM use for its products. Sure, for the
Speaker 1: purposes of today's conversation, you can think of it as
Speaker 1: the tiny micro molecular structure that makes better astronauts. Okay,
Speaker 1: So CRISPER has been in the news for several years now,
Speaker 1: and if you're one of those people who've heard about
Speaker 1: it but you've been afraid to ask what it is,
Speaker 1: you're not alone. We we get this question popping up
Speaker 1: all the time. A lot of people, I think I've
Speaker 1: heard of it, and they know it's a genetic technique.
Speaker 1: They know genetesists are going crazy about its potential, both
Speaker 1: for good and for ill, but they're not quite clear
Speaker 1: what exactly is it. So I'm going to try to
Speaker 1: give the easy version to explain what it is UM
Speaker 1: without getting overly complicated. So CRISPER is the most common
Speaker 1: shorthand for this new form of genetic technology that's revolutionizing
Speaker 1: our ability to edit the genomes of living organisms. The
Speaker 1: ability to edit a genome has already existed, so it's
Speaker 1: not that we can edit genomes whereas we could not before.
Speaker 1: That's existed at least since the nineteen nineties. But the
Speaker 1: CRISPER tool kit is making the process easier, more efficient,
Speaker 1: more precise, and cheaper. Now, when I say that it's
Speaker 1: a tool or a technology, this can be a little
Speaker 1: bit misleading because CRISPER is not something that was invented
Speaker 1: in a lab. Rather, it was identified in living microbes
Speaker 1: and then harnessed and modified for human scientific use. So
Speaker 1: CRISPER is part of the natural immune system. It's the
Speaker 1: immune function of single, single celled organisms like bacteria and archaea,
Speaker 1: and it allows them to protect themselves against viruses. But
Speaker 1: you still might be asking, wait a minute, but what
Speaker 1: is it? What's the thing? So I'll try to explain
Speaker 1: that as clearly as I can. CRISPER stands for clustered
Speaker 1: regularly inner spaced short palindromic repeats, and in a direct sense,
Speaker 1: these are just segments of DNA. So you've got the
Speaker 1: genome of a prokariotic organism, for example, of bacterium of E. Coli,
Speaker 1: and it's got its DNA, and along that DNA of
Speaker 1: this E. Coal I, you'll find places where there are
Speaker 1: these clusters of DNA that read the same forwards as
Speaker 1: they read backwards their palindromic, just like palindromes in words. Robert,
Speaker 1: do you have a favorite palindrome? I've got the I
Speaker 1: love Rats Live on No Evil Star. Oh, man, that
Speaker 1: that one is great. I don't think I've ever heard
Speaker 1: that one before. But that's impossible to follow. I think
Speaker 1: I saw that on the internet at some point. I
Speaker 1: assume someone has a book with that title. That would
Speaker 1: that's a great book title, Rats Live on No Evil Star.
Speaker 1: It implies like rats may live on a good star.
Speaker 1: It it feels like it should have there should be
Speaker 1: some wisdom in their right plasma rats like where someone's like, man,
Speaker 1: I just I haven't really down about the state of
Speaker 1: the world today. Well you know what what they say,
Speaker 1: Rats live on no Evil Star? Right on? Yeah, it
Speaker 1: has that fortune cookie vibe. But anyway, so there are
Speaker 1: these segments of DNA that read the same forwards as
Speaker 1: backwards and in between them. So that's where the term
Speaker 1: inner space comes in the eye and crisper. In between
Speaker 1: these palindromic repeats are segments of DNA that exactly match
Speaker 1: the DNA of viruses that are bacteria killing viruses like
Speaker 1: bacteria phages. So in a similar way to how your
Speaker 1: body makes antibodies, so your immune system can harget and
Speaker 1: destroy germs that have already infected you in the past,
Speaker 1: a bacterium makes copies of viral DNA and its genome,
Speaker 1: so it can recognize that viral DNA in the future
Speaker 1: and destroy it. But how does this happen? Well I
Speaker 1: mentioned that crisper is shorthand. It's sort of a shorthand
Speaker 1: for a tool kit of genes and proteins associated with
Speaker 1: crisper in the wild, and one of these systems is
Speaker 1: the Crisper CAST nine system. This is one of the
Speaker 1: main ones that's actually being talked about when people talk
Speaker 1: about crisper. So CAST genes are genes, they're Crisper associated genes,
Speaker 1: which is where CAST comes from. And like all genes,
Speaker 1: they're also made of DNA and they're part of the genome.
Speaker 1: So DNA of course creates proteins, and proteins can do
Speaker 1: work inside a cell. So CAST DNA makes DNA editing proteins.
Speaker 1: If you think about your DNA has this part that
Speaker 1: generate proteins that can make edits to your DNA. For example,
Speaker 1: these would be enzymes called nucleases that are able to
Speaker 1: snip DNA at certain points like scissors. So let's try
Speaker 1: to imagine you are a prokaryotic cell. So you are
Speaker 1: a cell of the bacterium Streptococcus pyogenes. Robert, can you
Speaker 1: put yourself in that frame of mind? How hard is it? Well?
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's more of a challenge than imagining
Speaker 1: myself as a hoppit or a dwarf. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I can do it. Okay, So you're this Streptococcus
Speaker 1: bacterium and your CAST genes in your genome create this
Speaker 1: big blob of proteins called CAST nine for Crisper associated
Speaker 1: protein nine. And this CAST nine is is this protein
Speaker 1: structure that's equipped with nucleases. Remember those are the enzymes
Speaker 1: that can snip DNA, and it's also equipped with strands
Speaker 1: of RNA matching all of the viral DNA that you've
Speaker 1: stored up in your genome over the generations. So this
Speaker 1: CAST nine object floats around inside you, inside this cell,
Speaker 1: and if a virus comes along and squirt some of
Speaker 1: its DNA into you, the CAST nine system can latch
Speaker 1: onto that viral DNA with its matching set of crisper
Speaker 1: RNA and then bust up that viral DNA with its nucleases. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's got the profile of the viral DNA it
Speaker 1: wants to catch, and it's got these proteins, these nucleases
Speaker 1: that can destroy that viral DNA. Now, if it comes
Speaker 1: across viral DNA that's not already stored in your genome,
Speaker 1: it can also make a copy of that viral DNA,
Speaker 1: snip a hole in the crisper part of your genome,
Speaker 1: and insert it so that you were protected in the future.
Speaker 1: So this gets incorporated into future generations of your germline.
Speaker 1: Now that's some amazing molecular technology. But the way it
Speaker 1: comes in to the scientific research is what if we
Speaker 1: could harness that for our own purposes, And that's what
Speaker 1: scientists within the past few years have been doing. So
Speaker 1: the Crisper CAST nine technology is a modified version of
Speaker 1: this biological system, and what it does is it allows
Speaker 1: scientists to insert whatever DNA they want as the model
Speaker 1: for the Crisper RNA in the cast nine system. So
Speaker 1: this Crisper cast nine tool can be given a target
Speaker 1: segment of DNA and then it can go in with
Speaker 1: precision and snip that and only that section out of
Speaker 1: your genome. You. Now, this can be useful if you
Speaker 1: want to, for example, knockout a gene that's causing some
Speaker 1: unwanted effect. Or it can even be used to insert
Speaker 1: a specific string of DNA code at a targeted location,
Speaker 1: and that's really interesting. So it can punch a hole
Speaker 1: in a gene that you want knocked out, or it
Speaker 1: can go in and make an edit. It can cut
Speaker 1: open a hole, insert what you want, and move back out.
Speaker 1: And what this all amounts to is that we can
Speaker 1: edit our DNA and the DNA of other organisms with
Speaker 1: much greater precision, much easier than ever before. And obviously
Speaker 1: this is a big deal. This technology is going to
Speaker 1: be incredibly powerful. It's not just a future thing. It's
Speaker 1: already being used in the lab today as a research tool.
Speaker 1: But there is this really strong, robust argument among scientists
Speaker 1: and bioethicists about how it should be used. Right, But
Speaker 1: most people are okay with the idea of trying to
Speaker 1: develop uses that would, for example, heal a cancer causing
Speaker 1: mutation in an adult human, or cure some other disease.
Speaker 1: But other things are a lot more controversial when you
Speaker 1: consider ideas like editing the germline DNA, and that's the
Speaker 1: DNA that's not just part of your somatic cells, not
Speaker 1: just part of your body now, but the DNA that
Speaker 1: would get passed on from one generation to another. Because
Speaker 1: if you make edits to that, you're essentially editing all
Speaker 1: of the children and grandchildren and future to sentence that
Speaker 1: a person would have without the consent of those future descendants.
Speaker 1: You are modifying the human being. And in doing that
Speaker 1: you were I mean that that encompasses all the potential
Speaker 1: positives and negatives of that that godlike act. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and there are tons of other things to consider it.
Speaker 1: I think it's a very interesting debate about what should
Speaker 1: be done with this technology, if anything at all. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's hard to argue that we shouldn't use
Speaker 1: it for anything, because it's clearly a powerful research tool,
Speaker 1: not just for editing people as they exist, but just
Speaker 1: for for for example, identifying certain types of genes that
Speaker 1: do certain things. It's powerful in the lab to find
Speaker 1: things out about the human genome um, but there are
Speaker 1: tons of questions about what it should be used for.
Speaker 1: For example, we found this one really interesting article just
Speaker 1: from I think, published just a few days ago in
Speaker 1: June in the New York Times by Moises of Alaska's
Speaker 1: man Off called and it was an argument quote in
Speaker 1: favor of bad genes. Yeah, this is a great read.
Speaker 1: He so he points in the article, he points to UH,
Speaker 1: specifically to the case of sickle cell. So the gene
Speaker 1: itself is usually found in people of Sub Saharan Africa,
Speaker 1: the Middle East, in India, and having one copy of
Speaker 1: the gene can prevent the worst symptoms of malaria and UH.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you have if you have to, then you
Speaker 1: get into the that that's where the problems arise. Right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so it's a it's a gene that if
Speaker 1: you have two copies of this can cause a terrible
Speaker 1: disease that leads to a lot of suffering. But if
Speaker 1: you just have one copy of it, it can be
Speaker 1: incredibly beneficial in the environment. So it's not it's not
Speaker 1: just like a defect. It arose for a reason, it
Speaker 1: provides a survival advantage. Right, it's just when it when
Speaker 1: you end up having more than one, or when it
Speaker 1: becomes out of balance. It's kind of it's kind of
Speaker 1: the reality of life in general. Right. There are plenty
Speaker 1: things in our life, in our life that in moderation
Speaker 1: are very helpful, but it's when they become unbalanced. You know,
Speaker 1: having having one pet dog in your house is cool.
Speaker 1: Having twenty eighth is is an unbalanced reality. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and there are lots of cases of genes like this,
Speaker 1: Genes that may appear that that do in fact cause
Speaker 1: negative effects, but also do confer some strong advantage in
Speaker 1: certain environments. Yeah. For instance, a gene variants that cause
Speaker 1: lung disease cystic fibrosis. It's hypothesized that having just one
Speaker 1: copy of the gene protects against TB tuberculosis, also known
Speaker 1: as the White Plague of Europe of Esca's men Off
Speaker 1: points out, uh in one and people from Northwest Europe
Speaker 1: or Northwest European descent have it. So you're probably wondering
Speaker 1: at this point, why do we need to worry about
Speaker 1: established diseases? Why do we need to worry about ailments
Speaker 1: for which we already have uh uh, you know, more
Speaker 1: robust means of combating them. Well, the problem is that
Speaker 1: new pathogens for which we don't have cures continue to emerge,
Speaker 1: and some of these bad gene might be needed one day.
Speaker 1: So I was thinking about this in terms of Batman.
Speaker 1: It's like, if you have a situation where a Gotham city,
Speaker 1: you've managed to to rid yourself of all of these criminals,
Speaker 1: they're no more super villains running amuck. Let's kill Batman.
Speaker 1: Let's get rid of Batman. Why don't we have a Batman.
Speaker 1: He's just a distraction, right, He's probably a drain on
Speaker 1: the local economy. It's a lot of traffic pile ups. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and is and and is himself you know, an illegal
Speaker 1: entity by the way. But then the Joker shows up
Speaker 1: after you've gotten rid of Batman, yeah, or some new
Speaker 1: super villain that we can't even envision yet, And then
Speaker 1: are we going to have the basic vigilante tools to
Speaker 1: combat him and in the case of of our own genome,
Speaker 1: or we're gonna have the basic genomic tools in our
Speaker 1: body for our body to combat this threat. And I
Speaker 1: think this is a very interesting argument that I mean,
Speaker 1: part of it is that we just don't understand everything
Speaker 1: about our genome, and genes that do appear to cause
Speaker 1: some kind of negative effect may also be doing something
Speaker 1: important for us that we don't realize. That's right, And
Speaker 1: as Vasco's men Off points out, environment is also a
Speaker 1: key to here. So some of the gene variants now
Speaker 1: linked with disease probably don't cause as many problems in
Speaker 1: other environments, depending perhaps on microbes in their home environment. Uh,
Speaker 1: he'd be pointsed, for instance, uh, the biome of a
Speaker 1: less hygienic past. Uh, because you have to think about
Speaker 1: the fact that, uh, you know, it's it's basically the
Speaker 1: same scenario we have with space travel. The humans evolved
Speaker 1: within a very firm set of parameters, and even within
Speaker 1: our world they are there, they evolved in certain portions
Speaker 1: of of our environment, geologically isolated for long periods of time,
Speaker 1: and so you have to factor that into their into
Speaker 1: their genes, into the expression of those genes, and into
Speaker 1: the microbiome that become is uh pretty much standard for them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I mean the broader application to space travel is
Speaker 1: just that you don't know exactly what some of your
Speaker 1: genes that appear to be uh, useless or harmful in
Speaker 1: space might do for you once you're up there, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's actually a wonderful quote from this New York
Speaker 1: Times article that I think sums up a lot of
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here. He says, quote, we evolved
Speaker 1: in environments that are radically different from today's, and some
Speaker 1: of our genes may work better in those environments. This
Speaker 1: complicates the idea of trying to perfect the human genome
Speaker 1: with technology. Given how much the world has changed in
Speaker 1: just the past one hundred and fifty years and how
Speaker 1: much it's likely to change again in the next one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty the question is what environment will we
Speaker 1: optimize our genes for? Yeah, now, what if here's another thing.
Speaker 1: So imagine you've got people on an interstellar arc ship,
Speaker 1: you know, it's an intergenerational or multigenerational starship taking you
Speaker 1: to another planet, and you optimize their genes for survival
Speaker 1: on that spaceship on the journey so that they can
Speaker 1: survive and thrive in this spaceship environment. What if the
Speaker 1: way you've optimized them for the spaceship undercuts their ability
Speaker 1: to survive once they arrive at the target colonization planet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you run into a situation where you're having
Speaker 1: to first adapt the crew members, and then there's a
Speaker 1: different adaptation process that has to kick in for the
Speaker 1: intended colonists. Anyway, I mean, I think this is not
Speaker 1: necessarily an argument that we should never use crisper to
Speaker 1: modify the human genome. But I think it is a
Speaker 1: good word of caution to say, like, if there are
Speaker 1: areas where we're not sure we understand everything a gene does,
Speaker 1: and we're not we don't have a very clear picture
Speaker 1: of the full range of effects of a certain gene
Speaker 1: and what our life would be like without it, we
Speaker 1: should be careful about being being too cavalier to change things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, just we don't understand all of the ramifications
Speaker 1: necessarily for some of these changes, But that that's kind
Speaker 1: of baked into the challenge though, right is determining what
Speaker 1: tweaks we can make that are going to potentially benefit
Speaker 1: a human space traveler without creating any you know, additional constraints,
Speaker 1: creating additional problems or or situation that could be problematic
Speaker 1: later on. Yeah, And of course, all of the cautionary
Speaker 1: questions and ethical dilemmas about Crisper don't in there. There's
Speaker 1: a ton of stuff to consider, and um, that's probably
Speaker 1: a realm for future episodes where we can talk more
Speaker 1: about all of the controversies with Crisper. I know, just
Speaker 1: in the past few months, I think there have been
Speaker 1: there's been some back and forth with letters about the
Speaker 1: ethics and and the wisdom of using Crisper in the
Speaker 1: journal Nature. Yeah, and then on top of that, of
Speaker 1: course they're just uh, you know, the public's response to it.
Speaker 1: So as as King Wu pointed out in this panel,
Speaker 1: there they are many ethnic groups in particular that have
Speaker 1: not been well served by genetics and especially by eugenics
Speaker 1: and the task which was it's worth the pointing out
Speaker 1: both immoral science and bad science. So a failure on
Speaker 1: two fronts. Um, So you know, to some to some degree,
Speaker 1: it's it's unfair to to loop them together. But there's
Speaker 1: undeniably a connection between eugenics and and genetics. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can see people's understandable fear about the idea of
Speaker 1: making better humans. Like, Okay, so if somebody out there
Speaker 1: is trying to engineer humans to be better humans, do
Speaker 1: they have a specific idea about what better humans are
Speaker 1: and is that not just like uh, having fewer diseases,
Speaker 1: but do they also have aesthetic ideas? Yeah, and these
Speaker 1: are all questions we need to ask as we potentially
Speaker 1: enter into an age where where this kind of technology
Speaker 1: is utilized or more you know, we consider its use.
Speaker 1: But while a lot of groups take issue with gene atit,
Speaker 1: Woo points out that the most people, when when questioned
Speaker 1: about it, they're cooler with the idea of the technology
Speaker 1: being used to better protect astronauts in space. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I think people are generally cooler with the more specific applications.
Speaker 1: Feeling cancer patients, Okay, Yeah, I'm good with that. Modifying
Speaker 1: astronauts for space sounds great. Yeah, tear them up, do
Speaker 1: what you gotta do. But when it just comes to
Speaker 1: this general, free form, open ended should we change human beings,
Speaker 1: that starts to get a little squeaky. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's it's kind of always the case,
Speaker 1: right Like if you if you if you make the
Speaker 1: question broad enough, if you, for instance, were to say,
Speaker 1: should humans live in the sky, No, that sounds preposterous.
Speaker 1: Humans should not live in the sky. Humans were were
Speaker 1: you know, evolved or were created? If you want to
Speaker 1: go that route to to live here on the ground.
Speaker 1: We should absolutely not live in the sky. If we
Speaker 1: went in the sky, we'd fall down and die. But
Speaker 1: if you were to say, oh, well, should we create
Speaker 1: planes that we can we can fly around in some
Speaker 1: sort of vehicle that allow us to go from point
Speaker 1: A to point B. Could we create a luxury hotel
Speaker 1: on an airship and then if you if you're interested
Speaker 1: in it, and you have enough of money to flip
Speaker 1: the bill, you can go out there and spend the
Speaker 1: night in the air. Yes, that sounds much more reasonable.
Speaker 1: It's also kind of like if you ask people, would
Speaker 1: you be okay with scientists experimenting on ways to resuscitate
Speaker 1: people who have encountered twenty minutes of brain death, it
Speaker 1: might be like, well, sure, but if you say, should
Speaker 1: we be working on experiments to revive the dead? Yeah,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna get some pushback. Alright, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: another quick breaking. When we come back, we will continue
Speaker 1: our discussion about the genetically modified astronaut. Alright, we're back,
Speaker 1: so we should we should definitely drive home something that
Speaker 1: we've we've discussed in length and past episodes, the icularly
Speaker 1: Your Life as a Mars colonist, and that is that
Speaker 1: the traveling in space or and certainly traveling to other
Speaker 1: world it's gonna open you up to a number of
Speaker 1: unhealthy scenarios. I guess youho'ld say, yeah, I got. We
Speaker 1: also touched on this in five Reasons Never to Take
Speaker 1: your Space Helmet Off. So the big one, the one,
Speaker 1: that one that we spent a lot of time in
Speaker 1: that episode with, is of course radiation. Exactly. Now, there
Speaker 1: are in fact organisms that are naturally radio resistant organisms.
Speaker 1: I would tend to think, just intuitively if I had
Speaker 1: never read anything about this, the radiation is one of
Speaker 1: those things kind of like a fire or something that
Speaker 1: just kind of kills everything. But there are in fact
Speaker 1: vastly different levels of susceptibility to radiation in the animal
Speaker 1: kingdom and in organisms generally. And it's not just that
Speaker 1: there are some extreme aphile micro organisms that can survive radiation.
Speaker 1: I mean, we know about tartar grades and things like that,
Speaker 1: but there you know, even if you just look at
Speaker 1: animals like it looks like turtles have more radio resistance
Speaker 1: than dogs probably, so there is some room within large
Speaker 1: mammals like us to modify our bodies to be more
Speaker 1: resistant to radiation. Alright, So, so one potential there is
Speaker 1: if we can and again there are a lot of
Speaker 1: gifts and and and and butts and and all of this,
Speaker 1: But if we can figure out ways to alter the
Speaker 1: human genome to encourage a greater resistance to radiation, greater
Speaker 1: protection from radiation, that would be an area of opportunity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean there are lots of ways you can
Speaker 1: think that you might be able to do this. One
Speaker 1: would be the body already has natural DNA repair properties, right.
Speaker 1: If there's DNA damage, the genome will try to put
Speaker 1: itself back together, and of course, if it puts itself
Speaker 1: back together wrong, this can lead to a mutation that
Speaker 1: can have bad effects and maybe cause cancer or something
Speaker 1: like that. But you could try to genetically modify the
Speaker 1: human body so as to have stronger DNA repair precision
Speaker 1: and stronger DNA repair resilience. Or here's another possibility, Robert,
Speaker 1: remember when we did the episode about the eater of rads,
Speaker 1: the radiation resistant fungi that that supposedly, if these results
Speaker 1: are correct, and not only survive in the presence of,
Speaker 1: for example, gamma radiation, but can apparently gain some kind
Speaker 1: of usable bio energy from it. And this was done
Speaker 1: by absorbing the radiation through melaninrich cells. Now, I wonder
Speaker 1: if you could try to do something similar to take
Speaker 1: some inspiration from that and try to modify human somatic
Speaker 1: cells so that they have similar properties of of you know,
Speaker 1: internal chemicals and molecules that are absorbent of radiation and
Speaker 1: dissipating the radiation instead of allowing it to penetrate the
Speaker 1: DNA in your cells. Yes, so, so we're looking at
Speaker 1: ways to further protect the body against radiation and make
Speaker 1: it less susceptible to damage from radiation and UH and
Speaker 1: then potentially better repair itself. Okay, Now on top of that,
Speaker 1: one one UH issue that was brought up in this
Speaker 1: World Science Festival discussion is a cancer treatment in the
Speaker 1: reduction of cancer risk totally. Some of that falls in
Speaker 1: line with the radiation here for sure. But you know,
Speaker 1: at first this might seem like more of a terrestrial concern, right,
Speaker 1: But what if you're talking about a ten year trip
Speaker 1: and then you realize you've developed cancer three years in
Speaker 1: five years in so you can't take a risk. You
Speaker 1: can't risk an astro not coming down with cancer developing
Speaker 1: cancer uh during the trip, because they might not have
Speaker 1: time to make it back to Earth for treatment, or
Speaker 1: it might not even be in the cards for a
Speaker 1: return trip at all. Sure, I mean, if this is
Speaker 1: a colonization, or if it's a trip to Mars, this
Speaker 1: is going to be a multi year kind of thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, even if it's one of these, uh, these
Speaker 1: one way trips that we've in a lot of discussion about.
Speaker 1: The plan is probably not for you to get to
Speaker 1: Mars and then die immediately. I mean, that may happen.
Speaker 1: That's thus are the risks of such a venture, but
Speaker 1: you it would be it would be even more of
Speaker 1: a tragedy if it were to occur due to uh
Speaker 1: to the effects of cancer, um, you know, within the
Speaker 1: first year of landing on Mars totally. Now, what about
Speaker 1: the effects of micro gravity? This is obviously going to
Speaker 1: be one of the biggest challenges that biological systems encounter
Speaker 1: in space. We are adapted to an environment with Earth
Speaker 1: gravity with one G. You go to a place without
Speaker 1: one G, or at least without consistent one G, you're
Speaker 1: going to encounter some biological disturbances. Yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is the area where and I think we've covered some
Speaker 1: of the science on this show before, Like this is
Speaker 1: an area that there's been a lot of study, Uh,
Speaker 1: not necessary, a lot of great answers other than lots
Speaker 1: of exercise and uh and in certain vitamin supplements. Get
Speaker 1: on that treadmill. Uh yeah, and and tread use of
Speaker 1: to the treadmills. The use of exercise devices seems to
Speaker 1: be one of the key ways to make up for
Speaker 1: it because we don't have artificial gravity. Even though we
Speaker 1: have these these wonderful sci fi visions of of an
Speaker 1: artificial gravity created via centrifugal force via like a spinning
Speaker 1: space station, like a tourist or like the space station
Speaker 1: we see in two thousand one of Space Odyssey, we
Speaker 1: these ideas are largely unproven. Um and it I mean,
Speaker 1: we we do know you could create a force towards
Speaker 1: the floor if you did that. Yes, yeah, we we
Speaker 1: know we know that. Yeah, we know we could create
Speaker 1: the force, but we don't know exactly what it would
Speaker 1: be like to try and then function as an astronaut
Speaker 1: in such an environment, but for a really long period
Speaker 1: of time especially Yeah, and then think about if you
Speaker 1: get to maybe so if you're going to another planet.
Speaker 1: Once you get to the planet, you're not really going
Speaker 1: to have that option there the planet, You're just gonna
Speaker 1: be dealing with whatever the natural gravity of that planet is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was brought up in the talk by A. Caleb
Speaker 1: sharf h that we might have to if we were
Speaker 1: on one of these spinning artificial environment uh constructions, we
Speaker 1: might have to deal with the of course, the coreolis effects.
Speaker 1: What would happen if I threw an apple to you
Speaker 1: on board one of these space stations. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've never tried to throw an apple in a spinning drum.
Speaker 1: What would happen? I don't know. But it's one of
Speaker 1: those those new realities you would have to get used
Speaker 1: to just the way objects behave in the space, because
Speaker 1: you would be replicating gravity, but it would be it
Speaker 1: would be artificial gravity in in a in a in
Speaker 1: a very real sense. I mean, there are just so
Speaker 1: many ways that space messes with you in a systemic way.
Speaker 1: In some cases, I think it's not even totally clear
Speaker 1: when say, astronauts on the International Space Station exhibit symptoms,
Speaker 1: what in what ways the symptoms are informed by the
Speaker 1: different conditions of space. So you've got micro gravity, But
Speaker 1: it's not just the micrograp You've also got a different
Speaker 1: microbial environment, and you've got you know, you've got a
Speaker 1: million different things going on at once. Some of it's
Speaker 1: probably just stress and things like that. So we don't
Speaker 1: even know at this point for sure exactly what parts
Speaker 1: of space travel do what to you. In some cases
Speaker 1: we have a good idea, in other cases were not
Speaker 1: as sure. Yeah, and the talk, Mason also pointed out
Speaker 1: that when you when you get into space, thousands of
Speaker 1: genes become perturbed. So we have a short list of
Speaker 1: risk genes for space and an example of this would
Speaker 1: be stress response genes, DNA damage and repair genes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a lot of this was to be expected because
Speaker 1: gene expression changes all the time. It happens, it happens
Speaker 1: here on Earth every time you eat. It kind of
Speaker 1: goes back to our discussion about the the role that
Speaker 1: your local environment, your local microbiome, would have on the
Speaker 1: expression of your genes to and that could that gets
Speaker 1: into another fact of life in space pointed out by
Speaker 1: Mason and this, and that's that that microbes become more
Speaker 1: active in space. So salmonella, for instance, becomes more deadly
Speaker 1: for mice that have been studied in orbital environments. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we mentioned that in the Reasons Not to
Speaker 1: Take Your Space Helmet Off episode. So, yeah, once you
Speaker 1: get into space, it appears that space conditions, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: increase the virulence of pathogens, which is just great. Who
Speaker 1: decided that would happen? Um. Yeah, it increases the virulence
Speaker 1: of pathogens and depresses your immune function, right, it leads
Speaker 1: to these immune problems. Like we we talked in in
Speaker 1: that other episode about all the ways that space messes
Speaker 1: with your immune system, including creating these sort of almost
Speaker 1: allergic like effects. And so maybe that is one fruitful
Speaker 1: place to start looking about modification of humans. If you
Speaker 1: want to modify astronauts to survive in space, you might
Speaker 1: need to make changes to how the immune system is
Speaker 1: expressed and regulated by the genome. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: sounds like just across the board. You know, in the
Speaker 1: same way that an astronaut is does not it is
Speaker 1: probably not going to be your average physical specimen, you know.
Speaker 1: They they need to be Yeah, they need to be
Speaker 1: in shape, they need to they need to be able
Speaker 1: to survive the rigors of space. So in order to
Speaker 1: to tweak the genome you need to essentially tweak for
Speaker 1: just a really healthy person. So ignore you know, don't
Speaker 1: worry about crab clause just yet, Like, focus on creating
Speaker 1: a really healthy astronaut that's going to be able to
Speaker 1: withstand these changes that's gonna you know, for instance, not
Speaker 1: suffer as much bone and muscle loss due to the
Speaker 1: effects of micro gravity. You know. It's it's also worth
Speaker 1: noting in all of this that that some of these
Speaker 1: negatives that we're talking about, you know, or but are
Speaker 1: actually examples of the body adapting in real time. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not evolving, but adapting. Uh So, so all
Speaker 1: that bone and muscle mass uh that is lost unless
Speaker 1: you know, vigorous exercises kept up to sort of keep
Speaker 1: it in check. But that's essentially the body acclimatizing to
Speaker 1: this low gravity environment. It's being smart, it's using its
Speaker 1: resources wisely. Yeah, thing, I don't need to be strong.
Speaker 1: And then there are other changes that are happening as well,
Speaker 1: Like it was pointed out that you will end up
Speaker 1: with callouses on the tops of your feet as well,
Speaker 1: because it's not just the bottom so your feet that
Speaker 1: are coming in contact with the surfaces in your environment.
Speaker 1: You're becoming You're not this just top down gravity organism anymore.
Speaker 1: You're weird. Ye. And then there's the example of clothing.
Speaker 1: So Mason uh Or he talked a bit about in
Speaker 1: this about his work with the NASA astronaut twins Mark
Speaker 1: and Scott Kelly, because he did a number of of
Speaker 1: of of experiments who was essentially you know, looking at
Speaker 1: the at the genetic differences between the two after one
Speaker 1: of them returned from space and uh And he pointed
Speaker 1: out that that after Scott Kelly returned, like he could
Speaker 1: not wear clothing for a couple of days because just
Speaker 1: the feeling of clothing held down by gravity on his
Speaker 1: skin made him experience quote unquote pain. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: just that you become that unaccustomed to even just minor
Speaker 1: aspects of of gravity. It's hard to imagine your shirt hurts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and that's just and that's one of the small things.
Speaker 1: It's not even getting into you know, you know, potential
Speaker 1: you know, radiation or or or major bone and muscle
Speaker 1: mass loss. Oh. And then of course there's there's the
Speaker 1: fact that your circadian rhythm is screwed up and is
Speaker 1: you're trying to sleep unless you have your hands trapped down,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be floating in your face, you know, phantom
Speaker 1: hands coming at you. And this is something I hadn't
Speaker 1: thought about that Mason pointed out, is that you're you're
Speaker 1: setting there, you're laying there, floating there. However you want
Speaker 1: to look at it, strapped down, trying to sleep, and
Speaker 1: you're already up, like puffed up and snotty, just from
Speaker 1: just hey fever kind of condition, yeah, hey fever kind
Speaker 1: of condition. Just but by virtue of being in space
Speaker 1: and sharing everybody's micro biome. But you're also liable to
Speaker 1: wind up sweeping in a bubble of c O two
Speaker 1: what yeah, what he refers to as uh in your
Speaker 1: own respiratory excrement um, just by virtue of breathing into
Speaker 1: this this uh, this this microgravity environment. So like the
Speaker 1: gases don't disperse is easily, I guess. Yeah, I've never
Speaker 1: heard that before. I had not either, but it makes
Speaker 1: sense now. In a rare reversal of everything we've been
Speaker 1: talking about, of all these dire consequences of venturing into space,
Speaker 1: Mason points out that our telomeres actually get longer in space. Oh,
Speaker 1: the telomeres now are these um, these are things having
Speaker 1: to do supposedly with the natural length of cell division
Speaker 1: and reproduction in the human body. Yes, so yeah, you
Speaker 1: get into the like the whole science of telomeres, and
Speaker 1: we won't get into it here. There's a there's there's
Speaker 1: an article on how stuff works dot com that I
Speaker 1: wrote years ago about it. But the short version is
Speaker 1: that the telomere length is directly related to uh to lifespan.
Speaker 1: So if timomeres are longer than than than life is longer.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the very brief explanation of it. So
Speaker 1: you could make an argument that if you were in
Speaker 1: that life and space lasts longer, that you could live
Speaker 1: longer in space, of course, if you were ignoring many
Speaker 1: of these other debilitating effects. So why did roy Baby
Speaker 1: come back to Earth? If he wants more life, maybe
Speaker 1: he should have stayed in space. Well, but I mean
Speaker 1: that's kind of the thing, right, that the telomeres were
Speaker 1: artificially shortened on replicance, I guess yeah, Or maybe it's
Speaker 1: because he came back because this is I don't know
Speaker 1: if if there's been much treatment on this, but the
Speaker 1: replicants in Blade Runner, where they made for use and
Speaker 1: off world scenarios for use in space. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems like you could probably create a
Speaker 1: replicant then that would live longer in space, and if
Speaker 1: a return to a higher gravity world, it would have
Speaker 1: a genetic effect on it that would kill it. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is almost a perfect example of one of the
Speaker 1: dangers of you say you want to create crisper modified
Speaker 1: astronauts thrive in space. What if their mission changed and
Speaker 1: they wanted to come back to Earth. A thing optimized
Speaker 1: for space would no longer be optimized for Earth. And
Speaker 1: there are many cases where if you want a genetic
Speaker 1: advantage in one environment, it's not just like a it's
Speaker 1: it's not just like a win with no drawback. You know,
Speaker 1: if you were to come back to Earth, it would
Speaker 1: actually hurt you. There's a there's a win loss, there's
Speaker 1: a trade off. Yeah. I guess part of it comes
Speaker 1: down to, like, how how far into the future are
Speaker 1: you gazing? You know, are you creating creating and maybe
Speaker 1: a too heavier turn, but are you augmitting augmenting people
Speaker 1: too to remain within this next phase? Are you essentially
Speaker 1: creating an an interplanetary humanoid species or subspecies? Are you
Speaker 1: are you creating subspecies then that are acclimatized to various
Speaker 1: soft world environments or are you are you saying, all right,
Speaker 1: these people are gonna come back to and then and
Speaker 1: then like, how does that affect their rights as a citizen? Uh,
Speaker 1: as a member of the human species. How much would
Speaker 1: you have to modify astronauts before they began to lose
Speaker 1: their sense of kinship with earth dwelling humans and earth
Speaker 1: dwelling humans lost their sense of kinship for the astronauts.
Speaker 1: I mean, we are incredibly genetically similar to chimpanzees and
Speaker 1: sometimes show a remarkable callousness despite how similar we are.
Speaker 1: How much would you have how many genes would you
Speaker 1: have to change before we no longer recognize the astronaut
Speaker 1: just the same animal as us. Well, and think of
Speaker 1: just spatial distance here on Earth And granted this kind
Speaker 1: of a clunky analogy, but uh, think of the callousness
Speaker 1: that one group of people can show for another on
Speaker 1: the other side of the Earth. And then imagine us
Speaker 1: sending people even greater distances, like distances between people that
Speaker 1: have not been possible until until the advent of interplanetary travel.
Speaker 1: In other words, the spatial distance between people will be
Speaker 1: greater than it has ever been in human history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what will be the ramifications of that? Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: tough thing to consider. Um, and then when you start
Speaker 1: factoring in the the increased time it takes to transmit
Speaker 1: information as interconnected as we are on on Earth, now,
Speaker 1: like that is not necessarily going to carry over to
Speaker 1: an interplanetary scenario. I'm thinking kind of you know, far
Speaker 1: future here, But can you imagine, you know, how out
Speaker 1: of the loop you feel when you come in fourteen
Speaker 1: minutes after the beginning of a public discussion on Twitter
Speaker 1: about from public event that just happened. Now, people on
Speaker 1: Mars are going to be like that constantly, where Mars
Speaker 1: will have to have its own Twitter. I guess it's
Speaker 1: the thing of Martian Twitter and Earth Twitter. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: the only way to do it from Mars Twitter. Now,
Speaker 1: I think it would be great. It would just be
Speaker 1: one person. Would you need a genetic modification in order
Speaker 1: to be able to keep up with the jokes on
Speaker 1: Mars Twitter? Yeah, I mean either red red humor gene maybe.
Speaker 1: I mean you do get into so many different when
Speaker 1: you when you start thinking you know, far future. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's so many a cultural changes that can occur, so
Speaker 1: many changes in value on top of various microbial changes
Speaker 1: that have taken place. Now, a lot of the changes
Speaker 1: we've talked about so far, the potential genetic changes have
Speaker 1: been to survive in a space environment, you know, just
Speaker 1: to get along with all of the natural hardships you'd face.
Speaker 1: But there are also things that you could imagine changing
Speaker 1: about people just to make them like more efficient in space.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things I can imagine would
Speaker 1: be like better eyesight for low light conditions. He wanted
Speaker 1: to have that in space to conserve power or all
Speaker 1: kinds of power conserving things like could you make people
Speaker 1: that had slower metabolisms and space so they needed to
Speaker 1: consume fewer resources. Would you make people who's I don't know,
Speaker 1: genetic engineering so their kidneys are more efficient so they
Speaker 1: don't don't need to drink as much water to stay
Speaker 1: healthy or something. Yeah, And I wonder, I mean, I
Speaker 1: can't help it draw in I guess kind of kind
Speaker 1: of clunky comparisons to other natural world organisms and say, well,
Speaker 1: if we had if we had this feature, would that
Speaker 1: make us a little uh, you know, a little better
Speaker 1: in a microgravity environment? For instance, I'm thinking like a
Speaker 1: cat's whiskers, Like if humans had cat whiskers, would they
Speaker 1: be better at floating around through various tubes and whatnot
Speaker 1: because they have a very ready read on the space
Speaker 1: or is the size of their body. Now, maybe humans
Speaker 1: instead of crab claws need spider spinnerets in space so
Speaker 1: that they can like shoot webs out and pull themselves
Speaker 1: from place to place in a microgravity environment. Huh. I
Speaker 1: wonder how would we spend I guess maybe we would
Speaker 1: like milk it from our nipples. That would be because
Speaker 1: because I don't know how, I like a spider man
Speaker 1: web shooter uh scenario would work. But I'm thinking back
Speaker 1: on the the goat we discussed that had been genetically
Speaker 1: augmented to produce spider silk from its uh it's utters
Speaker 1: the spider goat. Yeah, so if we could create our
Speaker 1: own spider nipple scenario, I can imagine like a shirtless astronaut.
Speaker 1: He's floating around in the cabin and he needs to
Speaker 1: move across the room, so he reaches down to his nipple,
Speaker 1: pulls out some some silk, and like throws a drag
Speaker 1: line across the room and then navigates on that. I
Speaker 1: commend you, Robert, but I think we've reached the end
Speaker 1: of this conversation probably so uh, anytime the spider goat
Speaker 1: is invoked, you've you've kind of reached the limits of
Speaker 1: human understanding. I guess, well, hey, you out there, what
Speaker 1: do you think would be one of the most useful
Speaker 1: or interesting genetic modifications for future astronauts and space colonists?
Speaker 1: Or do you think that we shouldn't dabble in trying
Speaker 1: to modify trying to modify humans except for maybe life
Speaker 1: threatening or survival needs. And to what extent should we
Speaker 1: focus on changing individuals into what extent should we focus
Speaker 1: on changing the species? Like, are you just changing an
Speaker 1: individual astronaut or a group of astronauts for a journey
Speaker 1: for a mission, or are you altering the human species
Speaker 1: entirely and creating a subspecies that's going to thrive in
Speaker 1: a particular environment. Yeah, I don't know. It's a really
Speaker 1: interesting question. So, yeah, you out there, let us know
Speaker 1: what you think. Yeah, hit us with those other science
Speaker 1: fiction examples. I'm sure there are tons of them. As always,
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