1 00:00:01,920 --> 00:00:06,480 Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey 2 00:00:06,559 --> 00:00:10,640 Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Bola bam Here. Back in September, we 3 00:00:10,680 --> 00:00:14,319 Speaker 1: did an episode about Crisper, the genetic engineering tool that's 4 00:00:14,400 --> 00:00:18,840 Speaker 1: based on how bacteria protect themselves from viruses. Often compared 5 00:00:18,880 --> 00:00:22,840 Speaker 1: to a pair of molecular scissors. Crisper uses specialized proteins 6 00:00:22,960 --> 00:00:27,160 Speaker 1: called casts a short for Crisper associated enzymes to cut 7 00:00:27,200 --> 00:00:31,560 Speaker 1: strands of DNA or RNA at a precise, preprogrammed location. 8 00:00:32,400 --> 00:00:35,920 Speaker 1: Then the system can insert or remove the desired gene 9 00:00:35,920 --> 00:00:41,320 Speaker 1: at that site, and while a gene edited organism. Today, 10 00:00:41,560 --> 00:00:43,440 Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about a few ways that the 11 00:00:43,440 --> 00:00:48,480 Speaker 1: technology is being experimented with, for example, growing spicy tomatoes 12 00:00:48,520 --> 00:00:53,720 Speaker 1: and decaf coffee beans. Imagine biting into a vine ripened tomato. 13 00:00:54,120 --> 00:00:58,800 Speaker 1: What flavors come to mind? Sweet? Bright? Maybe a little savory? 14 00:00:59,160 --> 00:01:03,760 Speaker 1: What about spice? See Thanks to an international team of geneticists, 15 00:01:03,800 --> 00:01:07,680 Speaker 1: that might be the future flavor profile of some tomatoes. 16 00:01:08,480 --> 00:01:12,000 Speaker 1: Researchers in Brazil and Ireland have proposed Crisper as a 17 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:16,280 Speaker 1: means of activating dormant capsaiusnoid jeans in tomato plants. The 18 00:01:16,319 --> 00:01:20,120 Speaker 1: same genetic sequence that gives chilies their kick. In addition 19 00:01:20,160 --> 00:01:23,440 Speaker 1: to creating the perfect bloody Mary, the plants promise an 20 00:01:23,440 --> 00:01:27,839 Speaker 1: economical alternative to traditional peppers, which are notoriously tricky to grow. 21 00:01:29,600 --> 00:01:32,800 Speaker 1: Crisper can also offer a boost to your daily breakfast routine, 22 00:01:33,120 --> 00:01:37,160 Speaker 1: or rather take the boost away. A United Kingdom company 23 00:01:37,280 --> 00:01:41,120 Speaker 1: is currently developing a coffee bean engineered to grow caffeine free. 24 00:01:41,560 --> 00:01:43,959 Speaker 1: That's a big deal because today's coffee beans have to 25 00:01:43,959 --> 00:01:47,640 Speaker 1: be chemically decaffeinated, usually by soaking them an ethyl acetate 26 00:01:47,800 --> 00:01:52,120 Speaker 1: or methylene chloride. This harsh chemical bath strips out both 27 00:01:52,160 --> 00:01:55,680 Speaker 1: the beans caffeine and some of their flavor. Crisper Coffee 28 00:01:55,720 --> 00:01:58,320 Speaker 1: promises a jitter free cup of Joe with all the 29 00:01:58,400 --> 00:02:03,600 Speaker 1: roasty goodness of full cat. But what about no hangover wine. 30 00:02:04,680 --> 00:02:06,760 Speaker 1: If you've ever wished you could have a night out 31 00:02:06,760 --> 00:02:09,480 Speaker 1: on the town without suffering a head splitting hangover the 32 00:02:09,520 --> 00:02:12,400 Speaker 1: next morning, you might be in luck. A team of 33 00:02:12,440 --> 00:02:15,280 Speaker 1: scientists at the University of Illinois have used their genetic 34 00:02:15,320 --> 00:02:17,720 Speaker 1: scissors to boost the health benefits of a strain of 35 00:02:17,800 --> 00:02:21,000 Speaker 1: yeast that's used to ferment wine, and they've snipped out 36 00:02:21,000 --> 00:02:25,480 Speaker 1: the genes responsible for next day headaches. Zacora mices sarah 37 00:02:25,560 --> 00:02:29,520 Speaker 1: de si a. The yeast in question is a polyploid organism, 38 00:02:29,600 --> 00:02:32,240 Speaker 1: meaning that it has many copies of every gene, as 39 00:02:32,280 --> 00:02:36,239 Speaker 1: opposed to the sometimes usual too. This feature makes the 40 00:02:36,320 --> 00:02:40,639 Speaker 1: yeast both highly adaptable and extremely difficult to genetically engineer 41 00:02:40,880 --> 00:02:43,960 Speaker 1: using older methods, which could only target one copy of 42 00:02:43,960 --> 00:02:47,840 Speaker 1: a gene at a time, But Crisper allows genetic engineers 43 00:02:47,880 --> 00:02:50,240 Speaker 1: to cut across every single version of a gene in 44 00:02:50,240 --> 00:02:53,600 Speaker 1: one go. Using it, the Illinois team was able to 45 00:02:53,639 --> 00:02:56,680 Speaker 1: boost the amount of heart healthy resveratrol in their wine 46 00:02:56,960 --> 00:03:01,519 Speaker 1: while leaving the hangover on the cutting room floor. Of course, 47 00:03:01,800 --> 00:03:06,640 Speaker 1: altering plants is one thing. What about animals. Let's look 48 00:03:06,639 --> 00:03:10,280 Speaker 1: at the thorny case of horns and cattle. When it 49 00:03:10,280 --> 00:03:13,160 Speaker 1: comes to cattle farming, horns are usually a no go 50 00:03:13,880 --> 00:03:16,440 Speaker 1: on a fully grown bull. They pose danger to the farmer, 51 00:03:16,600 --> 00:03:21,079 Speaker 1: the other cattle, and occasionally to the animal itself. Traditionally, 52 00:03:21,320 --> 00:03:24,880 Speaker 1: farm raised cattle are d horned by annihilating the horn 53 00:03:24,919 --> 00:03:28,960 Speaker 1: producing cells on the animal's forehead, located on two bony 54 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:33,480 Speaker 1: proturbances called horn buds. The buds are destroyed by one 55 00:03:33,520 --> 00:03:36,880 Speaker 1: of several different painful means by cutting them out with 56 00:03:36,960 --> 00:03:41,320 Speaker 1: knives or by applying hot irons, electricity, or caustic substances 57 00:03:41,360 --> 00:03:45,760 Speaker 1: like sodium hydroxide. These practices can sometimes lead to facial 58 00:03:45,800 --> 00:03:49,760 Speaker 1: disfigurement or eye damage, but crisper might just offer a 59 00:03:49,800 --> 00:03:55,120 Speaker 1: more ethical alternative. Using crisper, scientists of engineered a gene 60 00:03:55,160 --> 00:03:59,280 Speaker 1: for hornlessness in cattle, effectively eliminating the need for horn 61 00:03:59,320 --> 00:04:03,680 Speaker 1: removal process in those animals. Even more interestingly, some of 62 00:04:03,720 --> 00:04:06,080 Speaker 1: these gene edited bulls have been able to pass the 63 00:04:06,120 --> 00:04:08,880 Speaker 1: trade onto their offspring, which is crucial for keeping the 64 00:04:08,920 --> 00:04:13,560 Speaker 1: trade in population circulation in scientific circles. This has been 65 00:04:13,600 --> 00:04:18,760 Speaker 1: seen as a potentially huge success story. Historically, the general 66 00:04:18,800 --> 00:04:23,400 Speaker 1: public has had less enthusiasm for gene tweaked crops and livestock, 67 00:04:23,760 --> 00:04:26,960 Speaker 1: although recent research suggests that those attitudes may be changing. 68 00:04:27,960 --> 00:04:30,520 Speaker 1: But what if crisper were used for something a little 69 00:04:30,560 --> 00:04:35,560 Speaker 1: less Charlotte's Web and a little more Jurassic Park. Perhaps 70 00:04:35,600 --> 00:04:37,960 Speaker 1: the most far out used for crisper at the moment 71 00:04:38,080 --> 00:04:41,080 Speaker 1: is its potential to bring back entire species from the dead, 72 00:04:42,040 --> 00:04:46,400 Speaker 1: and right now there's serious talk about resurrecting one particular species, 73 00:04:46,920 --> 00:04:51,480 Speaker 1: the passenger pigeon. Passenger pigeons used to rove the forests 74 00:04:51,520 --> 00:04:55,200 Speaker 1: of North America in flocks hundreds of millions strong, darkening 75 00:04:55,200 --> 00:04:58,760 Speaker 1: the skies and thundering through woods and what conservationist although 76 00:04:58,839 --> 00:05:03,520 Speaker 1: Leopold described as a feathered tempest. However, that started to 77 00:05:03,600 --> 00:05:07,280 Speaker 1: change in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as European colonists 78 00:05:07,400 --> 00:05:12,600 Speaker 1: radiated across the continent. In addition to being ubiquitous, passenger 79 00:05:12,640 --> 00:05:16,320 Speaker 1: pigeons had the unfortunate quality of being delicious. They were 80 00:05:16,360 --> 00:05:19,680 Speaker 1: hunted in mass by hungry euro Americans, both for food 81 00:05:19,720 --> 00:05:23,280 Speaker 1: and sport. This probably wouldn't have been as devastating to 82 00:05:23,320 --> 00:05:27,600 Speaker 1: the bird's total population, except the colonists simultaneously destroyed much 83 00:05:27,600 --> 00:05:31,720 Speaker 1: of their nesting grounds. This brutal combination drove the species 84 00:05:31,760 --> 00:05:35,240 Speaker 1: into steep decline by the early twenty century. The last 85 00:05:35,360 --> 00:05:39,039 Speaker 1: known passenger pigeon, a bird named Martha, died in captivity 86 00:05:39,200 --> 00:05:44,360 Speaker 1: in nineteen fourteen. Now scientists are looking to crisper as 87 00:05:44,360 --> 00:05:47,680 Speaker 1: a way to bring these iconic birds back. A California 88 00:05:47,720 --> 00:05:51,560 Speaker 1: based biotech organization called Revive and Restore has a dedicated 89 00:05:51,640 --> 00:05:55,200 Speaker 1: passenger pigeon project, which aims to re establish the species 90 00:05:55,240 --> 00:05:58,599 Speaker 1: by modifying the genome of the closely related band tailed pigeon. 91 00:05:59,360 --> 00:06:02,080 Speaker 1: If successful, the group says they could use this approach 92 00:06:02,080 --> 00:06:05,280 Speaker 1: to resurrect all kinds of extinct or critically endangered creatures, 93 00:06:05,560 --> 00:06:09,200 Speaker 1: from the black footed ferret to the wooly mammoth. Whether 94 00:06:09,320 --> 00:06:12,320 Speaker 1: or not they should is, of course, still a matter 95 00:06:12,400 --> 00:06:15,640 Speaker 1: of some debate, but there's no denying that Crisper has 96 00:06:15,640 --> 00:06:18,320 Speaker 1: brought stuff of science fiction into the realm of the 97 00:06:18,320 --> 00:06:26,839 Speaker 1: potentially possible. Today's episode is based on the article spicy 98 00:06:26,880 --> 00:06:30,280 Speaker 1: Tomatoes hangover proof Wine. Is there anything Crisper Can't do? 99 00:06:30,440 --> 00:06:32,880 Speaker 1: On how Stuff Works dot Com? Written by Joanna Thompson. 100 00:06:33,320 --> 00:06:35,600 Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership 101 00:06:35,600 --> 00:06:37,360 Speaker 1: with how stuff Works dot Com, and it is produced 102 00:06:37,360 --> 00:06:40,239 Speaker 1: by Tyler Clay. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio 103 00:06:40,440 --> 00:06:43,119 Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever 104 00:06:43,160 --> 00:06:44,520 Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.