Speaker 1: How do prions infect healthy proteins? Someone please ask about
Speaker 1: Aunt Lion Queen's.
Speaker 2: What does a concert sound like near a black hole?
Speaker 2: Can medical maggots help make a wound hole?
Speaker 1: Biology, physics, archaeology, forestry. We like medicine, so thank you chemistry.
Speaker 2: Do you have questions about particles or cats? We'll find
Speaker 2: answers to all of that.
Speaker 1: Whatever questions keep you up at night. Daniel and Kelly's
Speaker 1: answer will make it right.
Speaker 2: Welcome to another Listener Questions episode on Daniel and Kelly's
Speaker 2: Extraordinary Universe. Him Daniel, I'm a particle physicist with a
Speaker 2: growing interest in biology, and I love here feedback from
Speaker 2: listeners about the new podcast format.
Speaker 1: Hello, I'm Kelly Wiener Smith. I study space and parasites.
Speaker 1: I also love hearing from the listeners, and I'm excited
Speaker 1: about the kind of creepy crawley stuff we're talking about today.
Speaker 2: I am too. There's so much about our natural world
Speaker 2: which is amazing. Even if we don't understand quantum gravity
Speaker 2: and how all the particle bits come together to make
Speaker 2: this bizarre world, it's still totally worth studying. With so
Speaker 2: many incredible, gooey mysteries and the.
Speaker 1: Non gooey mysteries are good too. I'm also becoming a
Speaker 1: budding physics enthusiast. You gave me the other day a
Speaker 1: pod in physics, and I'll take it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It turns out people can be interested in physics
Speaker 2: and in biology and and all sorts of crazy things
Speaker 2: about our extraordinary universe. And I just wanted to read
Speaker 2: a snippet from a listener who wrote to me and
Speaker 2: encourage anybody out there to write to us questions at
Speaker 2: Daniel and Kelly dot org. Send us your questions, send
Speaker 2: us your feedback, send us your ideas, send us your
Speaker 2: hopes and dreams, send us your love letters from fifth grade, whatever,
Speaker 2: and we'd love hearing from you. Particular listener has a
Speaker 2: long history with me and wrote that he originally quote
Speaker 2: had the idea that I wouldn't be as interested in
Speaker 2: a podcast that wasn't focused entirely on physics. How wrong
Speaker 2: I was. I have found myself fascinated by the biology episodes,
Speaker 2: especially the recent episodes on insulin and gender, and I
Speaker 2: have to feel like I'm going along for the ride. Also,
Speaker 2: like I didn't know how fascinating biology was, and so
Speaker 2: I'm really grateful to get to explore all these topics.
Speaker 1: And I'm so grateful for everyone who's given the biology
Speaker 1: a chance, everyone who sort of came for the physics
Speaker 1: but is staying for the biology and hopefully is enjoying
Speaker 1: it as well. And the listener mentioned the insulin episode.
Speaker 1: We are super lucky to have Katrina Whitson coming for
Speaker 1: a little guest appearance on the show again today. But yes,
Speaker 1: I read that email too, and it absolutely made my month.
Speaker 1: I love when we get emails like that.
Speaker 2: Me too. And also, you can't mention Katrino without referring
Speaker 2: to all of her accolades. I know if you're aware
Speaker 2: she's the Whites And Endowed Chair at the Whites And Institute.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, wow incredible. I have been dying to
Speaker 1: get an adjunct position at the Whites And Research Institute.
Speaker 2: The review process is really strict. Yeah, a bunch of
Speaker 2: snobs over there.
Speaker 1: I've met Katrina. I'm not sure about that. She seems
Speaker 1: very nice.
Speaker 2: No, of course, we'd love to have you anyway. Today
Speaker 2: we are talking about your questions about this extraordinary universe,
Speaker 2: physics questions, black hole questions, weird protein questions. We'd love
Speaker 2: to answer your question on the podcast. Please do right
Speaker 2: to us questions at Danielankelly dot org. Again, if you
Speaker 2: write to dot com, you'll be sending your message to
Speaker 2: a very lovely couple who just got married, but that's
Speaker 2: not us.
Speaker 1: Congratulations Daniel and Kelly. We wish you a beautiful forever together.
Speaker 2: And Daniel and Kelly dot com. If you guys have questions,
Speaker 2: send them to us. We'd love to have you guys
Speaker 2: on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniels and Kelly's.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: Our first question today is an amazing question by Niall
Speaker 1: about pry on or pre on. I don't know I'm
Speaker 1: going to say it, however, you know it comes out
Speaker 1: of my mouth at the time, but let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and hear the question.
Speaker 3: Hi, Kelly and Daniel, my name is Nile, and I
Speaker 3: have a question regarding preons and preon diseases. I understand
Speaker 3: that preons are misfolded proteins that are capable of causing
Speaker 3: significant damage to our nervous systems if we are exposed
Speaker 3: to them. However, I am particularly interested in understanding why
Speaker 3: preon diseases are infectious slash contagious. Specifically, I'm wondering what
Speaker 3: causes our normal properly folded proteins to adopt the misfolded
Speaker 3: preon structure when exposed to them, rather than just defaulting
Speaker 3: to their correct structure. I would greatly appreciate any insight
Speaker 3: you can provide on this topic. Thank you so much,
Speaker 3: And I love the show.
Speaker 1: This is a fantastic question that I did not know
Speaker 1: the answer to, and you'll see that by the end,
Speaker 1: I spent five hours slamming my head against the lit
Speaker 1: and eventually we called in someone smarter than either of us,
Speaker 1: and that's where Katrina comes in. But let's back up
Speaker 1: a little bit, all right, So how do diseases usually
Speaker 1: replicate and transmit? So, if you have a bacterial infection,
Speaker 1: like you've got a cold, the bacteria get into your
Speaker 1: body and then those bacteria start making more and more
Speaker 1: of themselves and they, you know, spread throughout your body.
Speaker 2: That's kind of creepy, right, You're being like colonized by
Speaker 2: some malevolent force.
Speaker 1: It is pretty creepy. Yeah. And then if you get parasites,
Speaker 1: like you know, the parasites that I love to talk
Speaker 1: about so much, something like tapeworms or nematodes, what usually
Speaker 1: happens there is every single infection you get is because
Speaker 1: you have accidentally, for example, consumed an egg that was
Speaker 1: in the environment. And so the way you get more
Speaker 1: of those infections is you accidentally encounter and consume more
Speaker 1: of those eggs. For viral infections, the way you get
Speaker 1: more of those is that the virus injects some of
Speaker 1: its genetic material.
Speaker 2: So gross, so gross.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I know I hate viruses and bacteria, but
Speaker 1: none of them are as bad as ticks. Ticks are
Speaker 1: the worst. Yes, So they inject genetic material into your
Speaker 1: own cells, hijack your cell's machinery, and your cell essentially
Speaker 1: makes more viruses for the virus.
Speaker 2: All of these things have nucleic material, right, this DNA
Speaker 2: or RNA or something, and all these things. People argue
Speaker 2: about whether viruses are alive or not, but like they
Speaker 2: have this code inside of them. That's what they all
Speaker 2: have in common.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's right. And so when the first person
Speaker 1: suggested that what's happening with what ended up being called
Speaker 1: prion diseases is that it's actually a protein that is
Speaker 1: essentially replicating, not by sort of copying itself using genetic
Speaker 1: material like you would expect, but is essentially touching other
Speaker 1: proteins and making those other proteins infectious. That was a
Speaker 1: bit controversial for a while because that's not how we
Speaker 1: usually see infections transmitting in any of the ways that
Speaker 1: we sort of understand this.
Speaker 2: Are you underplaying it a little bit, a bit controvert, Like,
Speaker 2: wasn't that sort of laughed out of the room for
Speaker 2: a while, People are like, that's impossible.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, no, we were all very skeptical. It took
Speaker 1: a while for that to be widely accepted.
Speaker 2: And for those of us who are not biologists or biochemist,
Speaker 2: remind us what you mean when you say protein. You're
Speaker 2: using in a technical sense, not like chicken breasts or
Speaker 2: tofu on top of your salad. When your server asks
Speaker 2: if you'd like to add protein? You mean something about
Speaker 2: the chemical structure, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I mean chicken breast is made of proteins.
Speaker 1: So your genetic code contains the information that your body
Speaker 1: needs to make proteins. And proteins are strings of amino acids,
Speaker 1: and they essentially make up all of your body, and
Speaker 1: they help your chemical reactions happen, and they are ubiquitous, and.
Speaker 2: They're incredible little molecular machines. Right, they do stuff. They
Speaker 2: come from the DNA and then they fold into these shapes.
Speaker 2: They're like little robots, right, They're amazing. The engineering here
Speaker 2: is just.
Speaker 1: Astounding, delicious in your salad and fantastic in your body.
Speaker 1: So the listener to know about prions. So these are
Speaker 1: protinaceous infectious particles, is the fancy way of sort of
Speaker 1: saying it. And there's a couple different ways that proteins
Speaker 1: can transmit disease. So one of them is that they're
Speaker 1: sort of infectious in the way you might usually think
Speaker 1: of infectious material. So, for example, if you eat meat
Speaker 1: that has the mad cow prion in it, and you
Speaker 1: consume that meat, that prion can then move around your
Speaker 1: body and cause your proteins to become abnormal. So that's
Speaker 1: infectious in a way that we sort of are used
Speaker 1: to thinking about infectious material.
Speaker 2: And just to make sure I'm following, when you say
Speaker 2: prion is a protinaceous infectious particle, it's still just a protein.
Speaker 2: Is just like a weird protein in a particular shape, right,
Speaker 2: It's not like it's turned into a particle the way
Speaker 2: we talk about it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, forget the physics, man, forget the physics.
Speaker 1: We're in bio world.
Speaker 2: Right now, I'm listening to biologists talk about particles, but
Speaker 2: it has nothing to do with particles. That's great.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether particles in biology are more confusing
Speaker 1: than particles in physics, but either we're gonna buddle through.
Speaker 2: All right. So you can get these in your body
Speaker 2: and they can turn some of your proteins into preon's.
Speaker 2: What's another way that you can get one of these
Speaker 2: horrible diseases.
Speaker 1: Another way you can get one of these horrible diseases, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: is if you end up with a mutation in your
Speaker 1: own genes, and then your genetic code now produces a
Speaker 1: protein that folds in a way it's not supposed to fold.
Speaker 1: And usually when you get this heritable gene that has
Speaker 1: this bad mutation, you don't start making these weird proteins
Speaker 1: until you're a little bit older, like sixties or more.
Speaker 1: Funny story, I was talking to a neighbor the other
Speaker 1: day who said something to the effect of, oh, well,
Speaker 1: when I'm talking to young people, they're not so interested
Speaker 1: in this, And I was like, oh, I'm interested. And
Speaker 1: then I realized that he didn't mean me exactly. He
Speaker 1: could tell I was interested because I was one of
Speaker 1: the old people, and he was talking about other people. Anyway.
Speaker 2: Did I ever tell you about the time I was
Speaker 2: accidentally c seed on an email where they were looking
Speaker 2: for a young ish professor to take on some roll
Speaker 2: and somebody said whites and is he youngish anymore? I'm
Speaker 2: not sure?
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, nice. Oh I thought I
Speaker 1: just had a little gray in my hair. And someone
Speaker 1: told me I was rocking the salt and pepper look,
Speaker 1: which was very nice. But that was the first time
Speaker 1: I realized that I had transitioned to salt and pepper. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you and I are aging, but hopefully we don't have
Speaker 1: this mutation.
Speaker 2: All right, So this mutation just means that you produce
Speaker 2: a protein through the normal mechanism of like DNA RNA protein,
Speaker 2: But it's one of these bad proteins. Yes, you said
Speaker 2: that it doesn't fold the way it's supposed to. Is
Speaker 2: it that it doesn't fold the way the DNA tells
Speaker 2: it to, or that it folds in a way that's damaging.
Speaker 1: It folds in a way that's damaging if you have
Speaker 1: this mutation. Mutations often result in changes in an amino
Speaker 1: acid in the sequence that makes up a protein, and
Speaker 1: when you have a change in that amino acid, it
Speaker 1: can change the shape of the protein. So the protein
Speaker 1: might be doing what the genetic code told it to do,
Speaker 1: but now it's folding up in a configuration that's bad
Speaker 1: for you and can go and cause other proteins to
Speaker 1: do it too.
Speaker 2: All right, So you can either get through from outside
Speaker 2: the body or you can just have your genetic code
Speaker 2: do these terrible things. Is that it or is there
Speaker 2: another thing we have to worry about.
Speaker 1: The third way is what they call spontaneous. So you've
Speaker 1: got proteins, and actually, something that I learned while doing
Speaker 1: this research is that sometimes your proteins will change shape
Speaker 1: and then go back to their normal shape. Wow, while
Speaker 1: they're in your body, and it doesn't seem efficient, just
Speaker 1: like be consistent, man, But so I guess sometimes they
Speaker 1: will sort of get out of their configuration and when
Speaker 1: they go back into their configuration, they don't go back correctly,
Speaker 1: and so now they've got this bad shape. And once
Speaker 1: you've got either the heritable or the spontaneous version of
Speaker 1: these prions, they start to act infectious. So they go
Speaker 1: around and they make other prions abnormally shaped as well.
Speaker 2: Weird. That's incredible that one protein can turn another protein bad.
Speaker 2: It's like the bad influence protein.
Speaker 1: This spontaneous prion thing. This is like stay up at
Speaker 1: night worrying about what all your proteins are doing. I'm
Speaker 1: not worrying about my kids anymore. I'm worried about whether
Speaker 1: or not my proteins are behaving. But I'm sure it's fine.
Speaker 2: This is a whole fascinating area though. Protein folding. We
Speaker 2: describe it as if it's like DNA RNA protein, but
Speaker 2: it's very complicated.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: You build this sequence of amino acids and when they fold,
Speaker 2: they're like settling into a lower energy state. They're like
Speaker 2: relaxing into it. And it's really hard to know what
Speaker 2: that state is. You can look at the DNA code.
Speaker 2: It's not easy to predict the configurations of proteins that
Speaker 2: come out of that sequence. There was a huge result
Speaker 2: recently alpha fold where people were able to predict these
Speaker 2: things very well using AI. Really an incredible breakthrough. People
Speaker 2: have been working on that for decades.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is fantastic. Let's go into one real example.
Speaker 1: Fritz Feld Jacob disease. So sorry about my pronunciation, apologize
Speaker 1: ahead of time.
Speaker 2: I'm not even going to correct you because I enjoy
Speaker 2: listening to your mispronunciations.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you know how to pronounce it correctly?
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure it's quartz failed yakup disease, but I
Speaker 2: like the way you said it.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, well thanks, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Especially like the way you like tiptoe through it in
Speaker 2: a terrified.
Speaker 1: But from now on, it's CJD.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So for CJD, what happens is that in older people
Speaker 1: sometimes you sporadically get a protein that folds up incorrectly.
Speaker 1: Now you've got this abnormal form. And I read a
Speaker 1: bunch of papers that suggested that as various vertebrates age,
Speaker 1: our proteins are sort of more likely to fold the
Speaker 1: wrong way because aging is a real pain in the
Speaker 1: rear end. And then in ten to fifteen percent of
Speaker 1: the cases, this has to do with a genetic mutation
Speaker 1: that's giving the protein essentially bad instructions, and every once
Speaker 1: in a while, in a rare case, you can get
Speaker 1: it transmitted. So, for example, if you get a cornea
Speaker 1: transplant from somebody who has CJD, then you can get CJD.
Speaker 1: So it's important to screen for this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and so unfortunately, once you get it, we don't have
Speaker 1: any treatment, and usually the symptoms get worse quite quickly
Speaker 1: by the time the symptoms are identifiable, and according to
Speaker 1: the CDC website, it causes a person's brain to break
Speaker 1: down or stop working normally, which I'm sure we can
Speaker 1: all is not a way we would like our brains
Speaker 1: to be described.
Speaker 2: No, I do not want my brain to turn into
Speaker 2: a smoothie.
Speaker 1: No, no me either. I think most people initially started
Speaker 1: hearing about prions when they learned about bovine sponge of
Speaker 1: worn and cephalopathy BS bad cow disease, and this showed
Speaker 1: up in cows. Turns out cows were getting it from
Speaker 1: one another because we were feeding cows cow parts. And yeah,
Speaker 1: bad idea.
Speaker 2: Cannible cows annible cows, right.
Speaker 1: And you might remember from when we were feeding pigs
Speaker 1: pig parts that that was bad for the transmission of
Speaker 1: trick and ella. So in general, it seems like it's
Speaker 1: a bad idea to feed animals animal parts, although I
Speaker 1: do feed my chickens chickens sometimes. Oh I know, maybe
Speaker 1: I'm asking for it.
Speaker 2: That's horrible. Yeah, there's something really creepy about that. I
Speaker 2: don't know why I like chickens eating pork whatever, chickens
Speaker 2: eating chickensoh.
Speaker 1: They don't seem to mind. They love the nuggies. They
Speaker 1: love the chicken nuggies. All right?
Speaker 2: What kind of sauces do they like to like? The
Speaker 2: dip it? Are they into the barbecue?
Speaker 1: No, they don't. We have the dexterity for that. I
Speaker 1: don't know. If you've seen chicken claws, they're not real good.
Speaker 1: They can scratch and that's about it.
Speaker 2: All right. So we know that getting these preons is bad.
Speaker 2: You get these terrible diseases and they spread from body
Speaker 2: to body, and even if you eat like meat that's
Speaker 2: been cooked. We're used to like cooking something to kill it.
Speaker 2: But if you cook a preon, is it then better?
Speaker 2: Is it like denatured or can you still get it
Speaker 2: from cooked meat? You know?
Speaker 1: As far as I can tell. One of the things
Speaker 1: about these preons that is incredible is that they're really
Speaker 1: resistant to things like cooking, and so you can cook
Speaker 1: your burger and if it had bs, there's still some
Speaker 1: chance that you could get it.
Speaker 2: I heard that even if you irradiate these things, like
Speaker 2: zap them with radiation, they're super dup or robust, which
Speaker 2: is one reason that they're able to spread from one
Speaker 2: to the other. And so it's like really hard to
Speaker 2: kill a preon. Like when they do brain surgery in hospitals,
Speaker 2: they just throw away everything that touched the brain because
Speaker 2: it might have a preon in it, and you do
Speaker 2: not want that stuff to spread.
Speaker 1: We are so stink and lucky that preon diseases are
Speaker 1: not more common. Thank your lucky stars everybody.
Speaker 2: So then let's get to the heart of the listener's question,
Speaker 2: right he's asking about the fundamental mechanism, like how does
Speaker 2: this happen? You were talking about one preon turning ou
Speaker 2: a normal protein into another preon. Do we know how
Speaker 2: that happens?
Speaker 1: If by we you mean Katrina, the answer is yes.
Speaker 1: Let me quickly summarize the three problems that you need
Speaker 1: to understand to understand prions. So, one, an abnormal protein
Speaker 1: is made. This is pretty much what we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: the various ways that you start getting these abnormal proteins.
Speaker 1: Problem too, is that the prion starts causing more prion
Speaker 1: proteins to be made, so it interacts with the healthy
Speaker 1: proteins in the area and starts turning them into bad proteins.
Speaker 1: And then problem three is that these proteins start clumping together,
Speaker 1: and it's these clumps that start causing problems. So the
Speaker 1: brain has trouble clearing these clumps out. So the listener
Speaker 1: wanted to know the details for problem too. How does
Speaker 1: one prion cause another protein to start misfolding and becoming
Speaker 1: another one of these sort of infectious prions. And I
Speaker 1: was so annoyed because I found so many papers, and
Speaker 1: every paper was like, Okay, here's how we're gonna illustrate
Speaker 1: how it works. And they were like, the normal protein
Speaker 1: is a circle and the abnormal protein is a square,
Speaker 1: and the circle becomes a square, and then the square
Speaker 1: interacts with other circles and turns them into squares. And
Speaker 1: I was like, that doesn't really explain what's happening.
Speaker 2: That's just a cartoon.
Speaker 1: It's just a cartoon. How does the circle turn the
Speaker 1: squares in? Anyway? Eventually I threw my hands up and
Speaker 1: we were so happy that we know a biochemist. And
Speaker 1: so Daniel, go ahead and introduce your amazing wife.
Speaker 2: That's right, Katrina actually has a PhD in biochemistry protein
Speaker 2: folding DNA all this kind of interaction. She did her
Speaker 2: PhD on like how proteins cut DNA and interact with it.
Speaker 2: So she like has her head around all of this stuff.
Speaker 2: So I asked her, Hey, can you explain to us
Speaker 2: how this actually happens? How two proteins come together and
Speaker 2: both end up bad? Like why don't they both end
Speaker 2: up good? You know, all these arguments are like template this,
Speaker 2: template that, Like why did they both end up bad?
Speaker 2: So I asked her on the cash last night, and
Speaker 2: here's what she had to say. Hey, Katrina, so how
Speaker 2: does a prion turn another protein into a preon?
Speaker 5: So proteins are just these chains of amino acids, and
Speaker 5: each block has different likeness for water, like some of
Speaker 5: them like to be near water, some of them hate water.
Speaker 5: The balance of those things forces the protein into a
Speaker 5: certain shape, so each protein makes a really unique shape. However,
Speaker 5: some proteins have more than one stable state, so they
Speaker 5: might be happy in a slightly different shape. And what
Speaker 5: preons do is they force the protein into an alternative shape.
Speaker 2: I think that's the bit we want to dig into.
Speaker 2: When two proteins come near each other, why does the
Speaker 2: preon force the good one into a preon shape rather
Speaker 2: than the good one, forcing the preon into a good shape,
Speaker 2: why does the preon win?
Speaker 5: And that shape is usually one that's a little hard
Speaker 5: to get itself out of, so they get stuck in
Speaker 5: that direction. So basically, if a protein forms the preon shape,
Speaker 5: which it usually does at a lower rate than the
Speaker 5: healthy correct shape, but if that happens, then when another
Speaker 5: healthy protein gets near it, it gets peer pressured essentially
Speaker 5: into forming that alternative but like disastrous and like disease
Speaker 5: forming alternative shape. This happens for certain sequences of proteins,
Speaker 5: and they often have repeat zones in them that are
Speaker 5: like making it easier for them to collapse into this
Speaker 5: unhealthy state. And so I can think of a couple
Speaker 5: cases of proteins that misfold where it's driven by having
Speaker 5: these like repeat zones. So that would mean that when
Speaker 5: the healthy protein touches the preon protein, imagine a lego
Speaker 5: clicking into a lego, it like clicks it together and
Speaker 5: forces it into this unhealth the alternative but stable state.
Speaker 5: All of the proteins are not like one hundred percent
Speaker 5: folded all the time. They're kind of like wiggling around
Speaker 5: a bit, and it makes it so they can kind
Speaker 5: of like explore which shape they're going to sit at,
Speaker 5: and the preon shape is harder to get out of.
Speaker 5: Once you get collapsed into that preon state, you're like
Speaker 5: a goopy mess.
Speaker 2: So the two come together, but the good protein is
Speaker 2: still flexible about its actual shape, while the preon is
Speaker 2: stuck into this deep local minimum. It's very stable configuration.
Speaker 5: Yes exactly, And so if you get stuck in that
Speaker 5: deep local minimum, it's harder to get back out of it,
Speaker 5: and if another protein gets nearby, it gets tempted into
Speaker 5: that goopy minimum. And molecularly, what I mean is that
Speaker 5: a region of the misfolded of the bad shape that
Speaker 5: the preon is forming will have mirrored sites, like it'll
Speaker 5: have interactions with the other healthy protein that will force
Speaker 5: it into that shape, and then it stays there because
Speaker 5: it's a local minimum that's hard to get out of.
Speaker 2: I see. So it's true that when the two proteins
Speaker 2: sort of try to fit together, they're more likely to
Speaker 2: end up similar. But the bad one, the preon one,
Speaker 2: is harder to pull out of than the normal one
Speaker 2: is to pull into the bad state, and so they
Speaker 2: both end up in the bad state.
Speaker 5: That's my understanding.
Speaker 2: So my takeaway from this is that it relates to
Speaker 2: the conversation we were having earlier about how proteins fold. But
Speaker 2: it's not easy to predict, like how a protein is
Speaker 2: going to fold, and it turns out sometimes they can
Speaker 2: fold in multiple different ways. And the preons are special
Speaker 2: and weird because they're like a very strong fold, like
Speaker 2: it's hard to get them back out of that. For
Speaker 2: people who like to think about optimization and minimum it's
Speaker 2: like a very deep local minima. They're stuck in it
Speaker 2: and it's extraordinarily hard to get them out, which is
Speaker 2: why cooking or radiation will not bust these guys. And
Speaker 2: if you have a preon meets a non preon, then
Speaker 2: it's much more likely they both end up as preons
Speaker 2: because it's harder to get the preon out of the
Speaker 2: preon configuration than it is to the normal protein out
Speaker 2: of its normal configuration.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and to build on that a little, often, when
Speaker 1: your body ends up with a protein that's shaped the
Speaker 1: wrong way, you send in what are called proteases, and
Speaker 1: they essentially break the protein into pieces that are easier
Speaker 1: to clean up and remove from the body. But these
Speaker 1: proteases can't get into these clumps or into these abnormally
Speaker 1: folded proteins, and so rather than getting cleared out, they
Speaker 1: remain and they start clumping and they cause problems.
Speaker 2: Amazing. Biology is incredible. What boggles my mind is all
Speaker 2: this stuff is happening all the time, and it mostly
Speaker 2: just works. I go about my day, I drink coffee,
Speaker 2: I think about particles, and inside all these little proteins
Speaker 2: and these molecular machines are doing their thing. Thank you,
Speaker 2: little biology particles.
Speaker 1: When you work great, We thank you. But understanding how
Speaker 1: proteins get abnormal and start clumping up is important, we
Speaker 1: think for understanding neurodegenerative diseases because sort of similar things
Speaker 1: happen where proteins start accumulating and clumping and causing problems.
Speaker 1: So you've got amyloid beta in TAO for Alzheimer's disease,
Speaker 1: alphas and nucleon for Parkinson's disease, and huntington for Huntington's disease.
Speaker 1: So sort of understanding what's happening here is a very
Speaker 1: active research field.
Speaker 2: All right, well, thank you for sending this question. In
Speaker 2: NIL it turns out to be a perfect union of
Speaker 2: our interests because not only is it biology and does
Speaker 2: it have the word particle involvement it. We also had
Speaker 2: to bring in Katrina sob.
Speaker 1: Bum and the whole whitesn Research Institute with the adjunct
Speaker 1: faculty included.
Speaker 2: That's right, Well, let's hear from Nile if we answered
Speaker 2: his question or just confused him further.
Speaker 3: Hi, Kelly and Daniel, thank you for this response. You
Speaker 3: definitely answered my question. I think the most surprising revelation
Speaker 3: for me is that the reason prions are infectious has
Speaker 3: more to do with chemistry and the molecular structure of
Speaker 3: proteins rather than some other sort of active biological process.
Speaker 3: It was a really interesting discussion and super enlightening, although
Speaker 3: I do have to agree with Kelly that now knowing
Speaker 3: there's such a thing as spontaneous prem formation, this will
Speaker 3: keep me up at night. Thank you again.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're back and we are answering questions today from
Speaker 2: listeners who think deeply about the nature of space and
Speaker 2: time and whether their brain is infected by the meat
Speaker 2: they eat. So now we have a question from Owen
Speaker 2: and his daughter about concerts near black holes.
Speaker 6: Hi, Daniel and Kelly, I was curious my daughter plays violin,
Speaker 6: and if.
Speaker 3: She were to take a trip to a really deep.
Speaker 6: Gravitational well like close to a black hole or a
Speaker 6: neutron star, and recorded herself playing violin and then brought
Speaker 6: the recording back with the time dilation cause a key change,
Speaker 6: would it make the frequency higher or lower? Or when
Speaker 6: we played it back here on Earth would it be
Speaker 6: the same.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is a fantastic question. All right, let's start
Speaker 1: by talking about what is time dilation?
Speaker 2: Yeah, time dilation one of my favorite topics and very
Speaker 2: confusing aspects of special relativity. And one thing that's really
Speaker 2: important to understand about it is that there are two
Speaker 2: types of time dilation that work differently. It's important to
Speaker 2: keep them separate, especially for this question. One is the
Speaker 2: one we hear about a lot when you're like in
Speaker 2: a rocket ship moving fast. And this is velocity based
Speaker 2: time dilation, which you can summarize very easily just by
Speaker 2: saying moving clocks run slow. So if Kelly has a
Speaker 2: clock in her ship and she's moving very fast relative
Speaker 2: to me, I see her clock moving, so I see
Speaker 2: her clock going slow. Kelly doesn't see her clock moving,
Speaker 2: it's right in front of her. She sees it running
Speaker 2: at the normal time, and that's the right time. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's east coast time, which is whatever I prefer, best
Speaker 2: coast time.
Speaker 1: I think a world runs up East coast time, my friends.
Speaker 1: But all right, moving on.
Speaker 2: That might be true, Yeah, that might be true. High
Speaker 2: But the cool thing about this kind of time dilation
Speaker 2: is that it's symmetrical. Right. I see Kelly's clock is
Speaker 2: running slow because I see her moving quickly, but she
Speaker 2: sees my clock moving, which means she sees my clock
Speaker 2: running slowly. So we both see the other person's clock
Speaker 2: is running slower than ours. So it's symmetric, which is beautiful,
Speaker 2: but it also feels contradictory because you have this instinct
Speaker 2: to say, hold on a second, whose clock is really
Speaker 2: running slower? Right? Because our accounts are discrepant, And the
Speaker 2: answer is there's no single true answer. There is no authority,
Speaker 2: there's no single clock in the universe. Both of our
Speaker 2: accounts are correct, and you can't actually link it together
Speaker 2: into a complete understanding. It's just that everybody sees things
Speaker 2: differently from different perspectives.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, so now we've got our minds wrapped
Speaker 1: around velocity based time dilation. What is the other kind.
Speaker 2: The other kind is gravity. You don't have to be
Speaker 2: moving fast to have your clock run slow. You just
Speaker 2: have to be near a massive object like the movie
Speaker 2: Interstellar where they land on Miller's planet, which is super
Speaker 2: duper massive. When you're in space that's curved, time runs slower. So,
Speaker 2: for example, if you're standing on the surface of the Earth,
Speaker 2: your clock will run slower than a clock that's in
Speaker 2: orbit or run the Earth, or out in deep space
Speaker 2: where there's less curvature. You're further from masses, so your
Speaker 2: clocks run faster.
Speaker 1: So your clock would run much slower on Jupiter relative
Speaker 1: to Earth.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, And it would run much slower on the
Speaker 2: surface of the Sun, and much much slower near the
Speaker 2: event horizon of a black hole. And the amazing thing
Speaker 2: about this one is that it's not symmetric. Everybody can
Speaker 2: agree on it. Like if I'm in orbit with the
Speaker 2: clock and Kelly's on the surface of the Earth or
Speaker 2: the clock, we will both agree that her clock is
Speaker 2: running slower. I see her clock running slower, she sees
Speaker 2: my clock running faster. This is the only time in
Speaker 2: relativity when you can see something speed up. Mostly you're
Speaker 2: just seeing time slow down, But with gravitational time dilation,
Speaker 2: you can see things speeding up. So if you stand
Speaker 2: near the edge of a black hole, for example, you
Speaker 2: see the time in the to the universe go faster,
Speaker 2: and like fast forwards you to the future.
Speaker 1: So if you could live near a black hole, could
Speaker 1: you live forever? Is this what biologists have been looking for?
Speaker 2: Your time would still run normally, right, so you would
Speaker 2: still live eighty years or whatever in your time that
Speaker 2: might last eighty thousand years or eighty million years in
Speaker 2: the outside universe. So it's a way, definitely to fast
Speaker 2: forward to the future, but not to live infinitely long.
Speaker 1: Physics keeps disappointing.
Speaker 2: Sorry on, Okay, So those are the two kinds of
Speaker 2: time dilation that we need to understand to answer Owen's
Speaker 2: question about a daughter with a violin. But this one
Speaker 2: more piece we need, which is red shifting. Right. All
Speaker 2: this changing of time has consequences, like it changes how
Speaker 2: long things seem to be, because it affects when people
Speaker 2: measure the front and the back. And we can dig
Speaker 2: into the details of length contraction another time. But if
Speaker 2: you change the way clocks run, you also change the
Speaker 2: frequency of waves. Right, the wave length of a wave. So,
Speaker 2: for example, if light is admitted to you by an
Speaker 2: object that's moving away really really fast, it lengthens the
Speaker 2: wavelength of that light. It red shifts it. So things
Speaker 2: that are moving away from you get red shifted, things
Speaker 2: that are near black holes get red shifted. One way
Speaker 2: to think about it is that it's just all about
Speaker 2: time dilation. Clocks are slowed down and so the waves
Speaker 2: get slower and redder. If you'll watch a spaceship approach
Speaker 2: a black hole, it's not going to look normal to you.
Speaker 2: It's going to get redder and redder and redder, and
Speaker 2: then eventually become invisible.
Speaker 1: We're near a black hole, so we're talking about gravity dilation,
Speaker 1: and we are thinking about waves because sound is a wave,
Speaker 1: and we've just established that waves get spread out near
Speaker 1: a black hole because of the gravity dilation. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: on the same page.
Speaker 2: Let's get to Owen's question, but there's a few versions here.
Speaker 2: Imagine that Owen is far away from the black hole
Speaker 2: and his daughter is near the black hole, and she's
Speaker 2: playing the violin and he's watching and he's listening. So
Speaker 2: what's going to happen, Well, her time is going to
Speaker 2: be slowed down for him. So he's going to see
Speaker 2: her or moving and thinking and drinking and breathing in
Speaker 2: slow motion, and the light and sound that come from
Speaker 2: her will have longer wavelengths. So he will watch a
Speaker 2: video and he will see her moving in slow motion,
Speaker 2: and all the light will be redder than it normally is.
Speaker 2: If it's really dilated, it'll be invisible. It won't be
Speaker 2: in the visible spectrum anymore, and it'll happen slower, so
Speaker 2: the key will be lower and be like in the
Speaker 2: old days when your tape deck is running out of
Speaker 2: battery and everything zones low.
Speaker 1: You said, key is key the same thing as frequency.
Speaker 1: These music words go past me.
Speaker 2: Ooh, I'm so not an expert in that. But the
Speaker 2: wavelength will get longer and the frequency will go down,
Speaker 2: which I think means a lower key.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's how I imagine whale sound.
Speaker 2: But he's not asking about that scenario. He's asking about
Speaker 2: what happens if a recording is made near the black hole. Right,
Speaker 2: So now let's do another scenario. Let's say Owen is
Speaker 2: next to the black hole, also with his daughter. Right,
Speaker 2: she's next to the black hole. She's playing the violin
Speaker 2: he's there right next to her, what does he see?
Speaker 2: Everything looks normal to him because she experiences it normally
Speaker 2: and he's there with her. So yes, somebody far away
Speaker 2: will see them both in slow motion, but from their perspective,
Speaker 2: everything is happening normally. The outside universe is fast forwarding.
Speaker 2: So if he's there with her, everything seems normal.
Speaker 1: Okay, But what if they're recording it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Right? I love these versions of the questions. So
Speaker 2: if instead of Owen, you have Owen's video camera and
Speaker 2: it's there with her, and it takes a video of
Speaker 2: what's happening near the black hole, it's going to record
Speaker 2: what Owen would have seen, which is a normally occurring
Speaker 2: violin performance. Right, You then take the video somewhere else.
Speaker 2: The video hasn't changed. You play it back on your
Speaker 2: TV at home. You're going to just play back a
Speaker 2: normal recording, and so everything is going to look normal
Speaker 2: on the video because it was taken near the black hole,
Speaker 2: where everything seems normal to the people near the black hole.
Speaker 1: Now, are you sure that's right? Because that sort of
Speaker 1: matches my intuition, which usually means it's wrong. So because
Speaker 1: I'm really good at this, But all right, I'll go
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 2: There are other weirder versions of this question, you know,
Speaker 2: that depend on exactly how the information is encoded. Like
Speaker 2: we're talking about literally sending waves from the black hole
Speaker 2: and interpreting them literally. If instead you have computers and
Speaker 2: they're coming this in binary, then they can avoid the
Speaker 2: time dilation effects. There's some subtle wrinkles there if you've
Speaker 2: word the question differently, But the way he asked it,
Speaker 2: the answer is that the concert would appear normal if
Speaker 2: it was filmed near the performers.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's go ahead and see what Owen thinks
Speaker 1: of this answer and if there's any follow up questions.
Speaker 3: Wow, thanks for answering my question. You guys, you know
Speaker 3: I think you nailed it.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: All Right, so we wrapped up a question that was
Speaker 1: beautiful playing music in deep space near a black hole,
Speaker 1: and now we are descending into the depths of biology
Speaker 1: to discuss magots. All right, what does Jonathan want to
Speaker 1: know about maggots?
Speaker 4: Hi, Kelly, I remember reading about medical maggots five or
Speaker 4: ten years ago. As I recall, it was an experimental
Speaker 4: procedure back then, but showed real promise in the fight
Speaker 4: against drug resistant bacteria? Where are we today on this
Speaker 4: Can I stop worrying about superbugs now? Thanks?
Speaker 2: I thought we had already reached maximum grossness on this episode.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize we were just in the foothills of
Speaker 2: grossness and now we're climbing to the peak.
Speaker 1: Oh, Daniel, we have just begun.
Speaker 2: All right, take us there, Kelly. What do we need
Speaker 2: to know about medical maggots?
Speaker 1: All right? So, apparently for centuries, folks have realized that
Speaker 1: if you find maggots in someone's wounds, those people with
Speaker 1: maggots in their wounds tend to have faster healing wounds
Speaker 1: than people who don't have maggots in their wounds. So
Speaker 1: you might be thinking it would be better to not
Speaker 1: have maggots in my wounds, But if you want your
Speaker 1: wound to heal quickly, apparently it would be good to
Speaker 1: have it. And this bit of disgusting wisdom was known
Speaker 1: by Genghis Khan, the Mayans, and other indigenous peoples, according
Speaker 1: to videos I watched on YouTube from reputable sources like
Speaker 1: the BBC.
Speaker 2: You know, I think that's incredible because I think it's
Speaker 2: often included as like things we did before we really
Speaker 2: understood science, you know, leeches and maggots and drilling holes
Speaker 2: in people's heads and praying to the gods and whatever.
Speaker 2: But actually this is another example of sort of pre
Speaker 2: modern science experimental understanding. Right, you're saying, people like looked
Speaker 2: at the data and they're like, maggots are gross, but
Speaker 2: they do seem to help people. Maybe we should use maggots.
Speaker 2: I mean, isn't that scientific. Isn't that hypothesis forming and
Speaker 2: drawing conclusions from data.
Speaker 1: Well, so my understanding is that for a long time
Speaker 1: folks noticed that there seems to be this association, but
Speaker 1: they might not have had control over, for example, the
Speaker 1: fly life cycle to be ab to purposefully infect people
Speaker 1: with maggots. The first documented instance of someone purposefully placing
Speaker 1: maggots in someone's wound was in the American Civil War.
Speaker 1: And you know, can you imagine being the first person
Speaker 1: where someone's like, no, really, these maggots are gonna do
Speaker 1: you wonders.
Speaker 2: But and this is gonna be great for a biology
Speaker 2: podcast in a couple hundred years.
Speaker 1: Trust us, that's right. It'll all be worth it when
Speaker 1: Kelly and Danie'll get to gross out over there.
Speaker 2: Here's the big payoff, all right, that's right.
Speaker 1: And then an orthopedic surgeon in World War One named
Speaker 1: William Behar started applying maggots to wounds that wouldn't heal
Speaker 1: at Johns Hopkins University for a patient community of children. Wow,
Speaker 1: And from that, medical maggots kind of took off. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, you get medical maggots that are very
Speaker 1: common in America, Canada, Europe. Hospitals open in sectories so
Speaker 1: that they can have medical maggots on hand whenever you
Speaker 1: need them, and you can order them from a company
Speaker 1: called Surgical Maggots out of Pearl River, New York.
Speaker 2: And so other than looking gross and being gross, what
Speaker 2: are these maggots doing in these wounds?
Speaker 1: So the first thing they're doing that's helpful is what's
Speaker 1: called debridement. So essentially they are removing the dead and
Speaker 1: dying tissue in the wound. So they are secreting and
Speaker 1: excreting stuff that starts breaking down the dead tissue and
Speaker 1: it makes it into sort of like a slurry. And
Speaker 1: then the maggots suck up that slurry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yam, yum yum yum, yeh yum yum. Yes, I'm
Speaker 2: trying to get into this I'm like, let's go the
Speaker 2: non gross route. Let's just like really marinate in the biology.
Speaker 1: Ganny. You No, I love the attitude and I appreciate
Speaker 1: the energy and the motivation you bring to these discussions.
Speaker 1: You're really trying and I like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like, let's get a nice big ice cube.
Speaker 2: We'll have like a you know, a slurry cocktail. This
Speaker 2: sounds fantastic. You can get into anything, So start.
Speaker 1: Having themed drinks for some of these episodes, or themed
Speaker 1: meals like pasta for the parasite episodes. All Right, the
Speaker 1: stuff that if they release that starts breaking down the
Speaker 1: dead tissue tends to leave the living tissue alone. And
Speaker 1: so if you have a wound that's got a combination
Speaker 1: of dead and living tissue and you'd like to remove
Speaker 1: the dead stuff so you can specifically start working with
Speaker 1: helping the living stuff to recover. These are pretty helpful.
Speaker 1: They do it in sort of surgically precise ways, it seem,
Speaker 1: so that's benefit one. Benefit two is that some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that they're excreting and secreting has antimicrobial properties,
Speaker 1: so it's killing some of the bacteria that could be
Speaker 1: infecting the wounds. And while they're slurping that stuff up.
Speaker 1: They're also consuming the bacteria that could be infecting a wound,
Speaker 1: and you have like a thousand yard stare right now.
Speaker 2: I'm just wondering, like why maggots would do this, Like
Speaker 2: I mostly see maggots in garbage or whatever. That they
Speaker 2: didn't evolve in garbage, right, They must have evolved like
Speaker 2: eating feces and rotting carcasses and stuff. Is that why
Speaker 2: they're good at this? Because they evolved basically eating dead
Speaker 2: flesh or near dead flesh.
Speaker 1: So the horror truth is that there's lots of flies
Speaker 1: in this world, and they have lots of different life cycles,
Speaker 1: and so the carrion flies, what happens is that the
Speaker 1: mom comes along and she lays her eggs in dead tissue,
Speaker 1: and those eggs hatch and you get maggots that have
Speaker 1: to go through a couple different life cycles. And those
Speaker 1: maggots are competing with the bacteria who want to break
Speaker 1: down the dead stuff, and in some cases those bacteria
Speaker 1: release toxins that might not be good for the maggots.
Speaker 1: And so being able to consume the bacteria is good
Speaker 1: because you're accidentally going to consume some of them anyway,
Speaker 1: but also killing some of them remove some of the
Speaker 1: competitors in your food.
Speaker 2: So this is exactly what they evolved to do, right
Speaker 2: to I'll compete the bacteria and to eat all the
Speaker 2: dead stuff. Why don't they also eat the living flesh? Like,
Speaker 2: why do they leave that alone? That's awfully convenient.
Speaker 1: I'm going to preface this with I'm spitballing because you
Speaker 1: asked me lots of great questions. I don't necessarily always
Speaker 1: know the answers too, So my first guess is that
Speaker 1: mostly what these guys are doing is the moms are
Speaker 1: laying their eggs on stuff that is like totally dead,
Speaker 1: totally dead, and every once in a while they opportunistically
Speaker 1: find an open wound with some dead skin and they
Speaker 1: lay their eggs in there too, And so they are
Speaker 1: specialists on the dead stuff and are less interested in
Speaker 1: the living stuff. There's also a bit of a trade
Speaker 1: off I think between being able to infect and break
Speaker 1: down living tissue which has like an immune response and
Speaker 1: might try to fight back, versus just going after dead
Speaker 1: tissue which isn't going to fight back. That's my best guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, so they're lazy. They don't want to
Speaker 2: work hard. They just go for the easy dead stuff,
Speaker 2: and that amazingly works perfectly for our use case.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, and I mean I hate dipterance. So they
Speaker 1: go through a couple stages in the dead stuff. They
Speaker 1: have a wandering phase where they fall off of the
Speaker 1: dead thing and then bury underground, and that's thought to
Speaker 1: maybe help them avoid drying out or keep them safe
Speaker 1: from predators. So, like you know, crows will go around
Speaker 1: and they'll find dead insects in carcasses and eat them up,
Speaker 1: so they kind of and then they hatch as adults
Speaker 1: and they go off to complete their life cycle. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's all kind of complicated, So you can imagine
Speaker 1: that growing flies in a lab could be a little complicated,
Speaker 1: especially if you want to make sure that when you
Speaker 1: grow those flies they're grown under sterile conditions. So you
Speaker 1: don't want flies walking around on some dead, infected roadkill
Speaker 1: and then getting added to your wound because that would
Speaker 1: be pretty gross. So while this was popular in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, it was difficult to you know, cheaply provide
Speaker 1: maggots for wound debreadment and to find ways to contain them.
Speaker 1: So you definitely don't want your leg maggots or your
Speaker 1: foot wound maggots to escape. And then now they're like
Speaker 1: free in the hospital and they can like go and
Speaker 1: spread whatever diseases you had on your foot to somebody else.
Speaker 1: And it's also gross to have flies around, so it
Speaker 1: was kind of a pain. It was expensive because.
Speaker 2: The magots literally sprout wings and try to fly around.
Speaker 2: That's what they do. They'd call them flies, right, So that's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, that's right. They're going through their insect stages.
Speaker 1: They transform it or metamorphose into adults. And yeah, then
Speaker 1: they go when they fly around and they're super gross.
Speaker 2: Does that mean that if you have a wound with
Speaker 2: maggots on it, there's some like container that captures the flies.
Speaker 2: Then you have like dead flies on your wound you
Speaker 2: have to clean off all the time.
Speaker 1: We're going to get there. I was looking on the
Speaker 1: website of companies who grow medical maggots. But I'm almost there.
Speaker 1: I'm almost there, I promise. So in the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: antibiotics become widespread, and you know, quite frankly, if I
Speaker 1: had the choice between someone sprinkling maggots on my legs
Speaker 1: or giving me you know penicillin medication I can pop
Speaker 1: in my mouth. I'm going to go for the penicillin.
Speaker 2: But is that just because of the size. Like you
Speaker 2: can see maggots and they seem gross because penicilla is
Speaker 2: like a fungus and it's like also growing and attacking
Speaker 2: the bacteria. If the fungus was like bigger, if you
Speaker 2: had like mushrooms growing out of your wound, would that
Speaker 2: be as gross as maggots.
Speaker 1: Well, they're not like spreading fungus like you spread butter
Speaker 1: on a piece of bread, like onto your leg.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of marmite now, I'm like, mmm yum.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's like a pill that you take WHIRLI or
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it could be like a cream or something.
Speaker 1: But you know, the maggots they escape sometimes you can
Speaker 1: feel them moving around, and you know, I get that
Speaker 1: it's gross.
Speaker 2: We should have a whole episode on the biology of grossness,
Speaker 2: like why do we think some things are gross and
Speaker 2: other things? Where does that come from? Anyway back to maggots.
Speaker 1: So that would involve a lot of evolutionary psychology. I
Speaker 1: think I'm totally down for tackling that. But so in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties, antibiotics come along, that solves a bunch
Speaker 1: of the problems. Maggots fall out of favor because they
Speaker 1: were kind of a pain in the rear. End. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties nineteen nineties, antibiotic resistance starts becoming a
Speaker 1: big problem. People have non healing wounds and it's starting
Speaker 1: to get harder and harder to kill the bacterial infections
Speaker 1: that are in those wounds. So medical maggots come back
Speaker 1: in style, and in two thousand and four, the Food
Speaker 1: and Drug Administration in the United States actually approves maggots
Speaker 1: as a medical device to treat things like diabetic foot
Speaker 1: ulcers that won't heal. And there's also some evidence that
Speaker 1: for some sort of limb issues, maggots can help with
Speaker 1: debridement and help with antimicrobial stuff, and in some cases
Speaker 1: people can keep their limbs because of what a great
Speaker 1: job the maggots did.
Speaker 2: So people are still using maggots today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, So maggots are making a comeback.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: They're not incredibly widely used, and based on the surveys
Speaker 1: that I read, that is mostly from what everybody calls
Speaker 1: the quote yuck factor end quote, And I totally get that.
Speaker 1: Apparently like, sometimes you can feel them moving around a little,
Speaker 1: but mostly what they're doing is moving around in dead tissues,
Speaker 1: so you don't usually feel it a lot. But here's
Speaker 1: what happens. They sprinkle some little maggots they're like a
Speaker 1: couple millimeters long in the wound, and then they have
Speaker 1: really fancy bandages that cover up the wound and keep
Speaker 1: the maggots in the wound and don't let them get out.
Speaker 1: There's a company called Monarch Labs, for example, that sells
Speaker 1: the Maggot Megapack, maggot t shirts and the le Flap
Speaker 1: du jore case dressing.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: It contains the maggots while still letting the maggots breathe.
Speaker 1: And what happens is the maggots spend a couple days
Speaker 1: in their larval form going around eating dead tissue, and
Speaker 1: then when they get to the stage where they would
Speaker 1: usually fall off and try to bury themselves in the soil,
Speaker 1: you remove the dressing, you collect all of the maggots,
Speaker 1: and then you just take them away. And the maggots
Speaker 1: have cleaned off the dead tissue, they have fought some
Speaker 1: of the bacterial infections, and there's fairly good evidence that
Speaker 1: actually outcomes are pretty good. Here's where some of the
Speaker 1: nuances of biology come in, because the answer is never clear.
Speaker 1: Some studies do find that the maggots do less well
Speaker 1: against particular species of bacteria. Sometimes the results are contradictory
Speaker 1: between studies, suggesting that you don't always get consistent results
Speaker 1: for obvious reasons. Pharmaceutical companies are trying to figure out
Speaker 1: if you can not have the maggots but still have
Speaker 1: the antimicrobial properties. So they're trying to understand what kind
Speaker 1: of compounds the maggots are secreting and excreting. And there
Speaker 1: is a drug called seratusin which was it sounds like
Speaker 1: derived from maggot secretions excretions, and it inhibits twelve strains
Speaker 1: of MRSA, which is that multi antibiotic resistance Staphylococcus aureus.
Speaker 1: Was that right?
Speaker 2: Sounds right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Nice?
Speaker 2: Is there some tech bro out there making like tiny
Speaker 2: robotic maggots that like walk around and eat dead flesh
Speaker 2: and ooze out this.
Speaker 1: Medicine maybe eventually, who knows what the future holds mag bots.
Speaker 2: That's a billion dollar idea right there.
Speaker 1: Somebody call me, yeah, well you should patent it while
Speaker 1: you're ahead. So there's other kinds of compounds that have
Speaker 1: been secreted that help with different kinds of bacteria. So
Speaker 1: folks are working on this, and there have been some
Speaker 1: studies on wounds in children that we're having difficulties sort
Speaker 1: of healing up, and they had multi drug resistant pseudomonous
Speaker 1: originosa in them, and they had been treated with things
Speaker 1: like antibiotics, but the bacteria were resistant, and they treated
Speaker 1: the kids with maggots, and the maggots really did seem
Speaker 1: to help. They still did some other follow up treatments,
Speaker 1: but the maggots seemed to be like the thing that
Speaker 1: helps these diseases turn the corner, and after thirty four days,
Speaker 1: these infections no longer had bacteria.
Speaker 2: Bo. Yeah, amazing, good job maggots.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But so our listener wanted to know if they
Speaker 1: can stop worrying about superbugs because we're all going to
Speaker 1: be using maggots. There's a couple problems with that. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, maggots tend to be used for a
Speaker 1: pretty narrow range of problems. So diabetic foot ulcers, pressure
Speaker 1: ulcers basically wounds on the exterior of your body that
Speaker 1: are having trouble healing, and we have problems with antibiotic
Speaker 1: resistant bacteria insider a body two And you know, drinking
Speaker 1: a slurry of maggots isn't going to help us with that.
Speaker 2: And it's super weird to have maggots like eating a
Speaker 2: wound on the outside of your body. I can't imagine
Speaker 2: having maggots that crawl around inside you.
Speaker 1: I don't think they'd survive for very long, but you'd
Speaker 1: feel them wiggling to their death and it would be unpleasant.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also imagine that if we started using maggots to
Speaker 1: the same extent that we use some of our current antibiotics,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't surprise me if resistance arose to whatever the
Speaker 1: maggots were producing as well. And so I don't think
Speaker 1: this is a panacea, but it is a solution that
Speaker 1: seems to be working pretty well for certain types of
Speaker 1: non healing wounds.
Speaker 2: Amazing. It's incredible how many times evolution has found the
Speaker 2: answer to a problem that we have. You know, it's
Speaker 2: just like, give it a billion years and so many mutations,
Speaker 2: they will explore the whole landscape and find an incredible solution.
Speaker 1: Yes, this field is called Darwinian medicine. I believe where
Speaker 1: you go to nature for some answers. I found a
Speaker 1: doctor named doctor Ronald Sherman, and I loved reading his
Speaker 1: papers because he was so excited about the maggots. So
Speaker 1: I want to wrap this up on a quote from
Speaker 1: the conclusion of one of his two thousand and nine papers.
Speaker 1: He said, medicinal maggots are as precise in their debreedment
Speaker 1: as a highly skilled microsurgeon, as attentive to their host
Speaker 1: wounds as the most dedicated wounds care nurse. It is
Speaker 1: no wonder that they have found their way into the
Speaker 1: hearts and wounds of so many.
Speaker 2: So hearts and wounds is the title of his autobiography.
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you for your enthusiasm, doctor Sherman, and let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and reconnect with Jonathan and see if we've
Speaker 1: answered his questions.
Speaker 4: Yes, indeed, you have answered my questions. Thank you. It
Speaker 4: looks like what was old is new once again.
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