Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, if it
Speaker 1: says G T C A C G A C A
Speaker 1: G G, then you shouldn't eat trimp or nuts. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Stricklin, I'm Lauren Folk, and I'm Joe McCormick. That
Speaker 1: was a strange one, But today is going to be
Speaker 1: part two of a two part episode we're doing on
Speaker 1: d n A. So last time, what did we talk about, y'all?
Speaker 1: How we talked about a d n A A lot.
Speaker 1: We we talked about the the history of humans knowing
Speaker 1: about DNA. We talked about what it is and what
Speaker 1: it does, where it might come from, where it may
Speaker 1: come from Mail Night, interesting research that we're learning about
Speaker 1: DNA in more recent years, and uh, and in ways
Speaker 1: we can use it for medical purposes. Yeah, And today
Speaker 1: we wanted to look at other ways we could use
Speaker 1: DNA as a technology as a tool. And some of
Speaker 1: them are ways that you're probably familiar with if you've
Speaker 1: ever watched any like police procedural type stuff or anything
Speaker 1: like that. But we've got a lot of other uses,
Speaker 1: including some pretty mind blowing ones. Actually, I'd say all
Speaker 1: of these are mind blowing because DNA as a as
Speaker 1: an English literature major who hasn't had any kind of
Speaker 1: uh organic chemistry or biology courses in a very long time,
Speaker 1: this is all fascinating and terrifying to me because they're
Speaker 1: a long molecules. Man, you don't know what they're do
Speaker 1: you have nightmares where you're just climbing down the infinite
Speaker 1: twisting ladder and you never reached the bottom. I have
Speaker 1: nightmares where Mr DNA is chasing me through the kitchen,
Speaker 1: and it's not exactly that's it, Mr DNA chasing me
Speaker 1: down an endless hallway, over and over. Let's get on
Speaker 1: with the show, all right. Okay, well let's start with
Speaker 1: the present. We're gonna it into some potential future technological
Speaker 1: uses of DNA. But what do we use DNA for
Speaker 1: today besides making our own bodies? Ah? Well, it's it's
Speaker 1: honestly pretty pedestrian stuff. Okay, maybe maybe not pedestrian, And
Speaker 1: that's that's a dismissive word that that belies the wonder
Speaker 1: and amazement of stuff like like personal identification. Okay, we
Speaker 1: we can take a sample of stuff and tell who
Speaker 1: it came from. That's pretty rad I like how you
Speaker 1: say stuff. Well, I mean, you know, there's it can
Speaker 1: be a bone fragment, it can be some blood, it
Speaker 1: can be hair, plus could be your eyeball. Yeah sure. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and as as we all know, like in forensics
Speaker 1: or paternity tests or historical studies of human remains, like
Speaker 1: Richard the third or whatever that is. Uh, is that
Speaker 1: the guy that we found under a car part? To
Speaker 1: call him? Just checking that I wasn't thinking about something
Speaker 1: else anyway. So yeah, yeah, we we can do all
Speaker 1: of those things with DNA today, and and it's it's
Speaker 1: probably the largest commercial field that we are using DNA
Speaker 1: as a tool in currently. Another upcoming one is DNA
Speaker 1: sequencing as a branch of consumer health. Uh, because depending
Speaker 1: on what country you currently call home, you can either
Speaker 1: directly order or have a doctor order genetic tests, um,
Speaker 1: you know, tests that sequence your DNA either from a
Speaker 1: few specific genes or from your entire genome. And right now,
Speaker 1: mostly those tests are being used to tell you your
Speaker 1: your likelihood of developing certain diseases like a cancer or
Speaker 1: or or heart disease stuff like that. But in the future,
Speaker 1: This might be a commonly used way of helping people
Speaker 1: make all kinds of honestly pretty mundane lifestyle choices about
Speaker 1: like diet and exercise and sleep patterns and sun exposure
Speaker 1: and and all kinds of stuff. That's a whole other
Speaker 1: episode though, And it's also something that I know some
Speaker 1: doctors are a little skittish about because they're worried that
Speaker 1: people will go to private companies. In fact, this was
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that in America it's been a
Speaker 1: big issue of the of the FDA regulating it. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: about going to a company and getting one of these, uh,
Speaker 1: these sequences printed out for you to tell you, like
Speaker 1: how likely are you to develop these things? Because they're worried.
Speaker 1: Doctors are worried that people will start to make medical
Speaker 1: decisions without having a full understanding of what it is
Speaker 1: they're actually being presented with. Oh yeah, right, Because, as
Speaker 1: we were talking about in the previous episode, DNA is complicated.
Speaker 1: G and genes are not and we we've said before
Speaker 1: on the show jeans are not on off switches that
Speaker 1: that necessarily lead to a particular thing, And it's really
Speaker 1: your entire genome together with a whole lot of environmental
Speaker 1: effects that determine what's going to happen in your body.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, I mean, I mean, caution is definitely necessitated,
Speaker 1: and it will be interesting to see where it goes,
Speaker 1: especially in this near future that's kind of like wild
Speaker 1: West we're living in where we have more information then
Speaker 1: we know how to read. Another use for DNA though,
Speaker 1: Currently is UM is creating recombinant DNA, which is a
Speaker 1: a molecule of DNA that's been synthesized in a lab
Speaker 1: to include genetic information from more than one organism, and
Speaker 1: you know that, the idea being that the resulting organism
Speaker 1: will have beneficial properties or capabilities. And the most famous
Speaker 1: example of this is is GMO crops genetically modified organisms
Speaker 1: that are you know, meant to be eaten by us.
Speaker 1: And we we did a couple episodes all about this
Speaker 1: back in July, I believe, But but real, real, briefly
Speaker 1: about GMOs, y'all. Just because food has been genetically modified
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's bad or dangerous or unhealthy. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you put fish jeans in a tomato, it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that tomato is going to taste fishy. Ye. Now,
Speaker 1: of course That also doesn't mean that it's not possible
Speaker 1: to use genetically modified organisms in agriculture that might be
Speaker 1: environmentally unsound or something like that. But there's nothing inherently
Speaker 1: wrong with the process of modifying an organism's genes in
Speaker 1: a laboratory setting, because we do it outside a laboratory
Speaker 1: setting already all the time, constantly and unconsciously. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Although that that isn't the only use for recombinant DNA techniques.
Speaker 1: For for example, you've got bioremediation, which is a long
Speaker 1: word that means that we can use we can use
Speaker 1: organisms to clean up our messes basically. So okay, So,
Speaker 1: for example, researchers have engineered a kind of bacteria that
Speaker 1: eat harmful pollutants and excrete harmless by products. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: this is like when you spill food on the floor
Speaker 1: and you let your dog look it up, except instead
Speaker 1: of a dog, it's a whole lot of bacteria, and
Speaker 1: instead of food on your floor, it's an oil spill
Speaker 1: that's literally ruining the ecosystem of a very large area
Speaker 1: and and putting putting adorable penguins in dire danger. Um.
Speaker 1: It's also World Penguin Day, as we record this is it,
Speaker 1: It really is. It's DNA Day and World Penguin Day,
Speaker 1: same day. They have to share, fair enough, I mean penguins.
Speaker 1: Penguins are sharing to be fair though. It's National DNA Day,
Speaker 1: but World Penguin Day. Hold on, let me blow your mind.
Speaker 1: Did you know that all penguins on Earth have DNA
Speaker 1: except for one? And his name is Bruce. Bruce, what
Speaker 1: do you do? And Bruce? All right, I'm sorry we
Speaker 1: got off topic. So yes, you can. You can create
Speaker 1: bacteria that are like really efficient at degrading crude oil,
Speaker 1: and and so you spray colonies of these suckers over
Speaker 1: an oil spill and they help clean the area up. Um.
Speaker 1: There's been other projects where researchers created bacteria. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: there are bacteria that exist that break down t N
Speaker 1: t UM, which I'm not going to say the full
Speaker 1: name for because I can't pronounce it um, but but
Speaker 1: it's that explosive and it's it's commonly used for example
Speaker 1: in land mines and UH, and researchers create added genes
Speaker 1: to this type of bacteria that let them that make
Speaker 1: them glow when they break down t N t So
Speaker 1: you add these suckers to to soil in an area
Speaker 1: that you think might contain land mines, and then you
Speaker 1: can do like a helicopter survey and see if it's glowing,
Speaker 1: and if it is, you know that that you know
Speaker 1: a don't go there right now, don't don't walk around
Speaker 1: um and and be add more bacteria there and they
Speaker 1: can eventually process that t NT. Yeah that's amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it almost you could work intuitively. I mean, in a
Speaker 1: in a war zone, you might naturally want to avoid
Speaker 1: fields that are glowing. Right It's not actually no, right now,
Speaker 1: whenever anything's glowing, I'm like, oh, let me go over there.
Speaker 1: I bet that has a health potion in it, thinking
Speaker 1: like another Ravell. Never mind, we'll use the helicopters. So
Speaker 1: so let's let's talk about some other kind of cool
Speaker 1: emerging or possibly a slightly futuristic uses of DNA. And
Speaker 1: the first one we wanted to talk about is one
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear about because it's near and
Speaker 1: dear to my heart. As the host of the tech
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast, I really am curious to hear how DNA
Speaker 1: could be used as a diode, a little rectifier. Okay,
Speaker 1: So in April, some researchers from the University of Georgia
Speaker 1: right nearby here in Athens, and uh and Ben Gurion
Speaker 1: University in Israel published a paper in Nature Chemistry, and
Speaker 1: what this was was describing how they were able to
Speaker 1: construct an electrical diode on a single molecule of DNA,
Speaker 1: and if the researchers claims in the press are correct,
Speaker 1: this would be the smallest diode ever constructed by humans.
Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody's disputing that. It seems it
Speaker 1: seems legit. Yeah, yeah, anyway, it's the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that obviously you have to have the evidence to support
Speaker 1: it and everything, But why would you make such a
Speaker 1: claim if if you didn't, it's as small as diode?
Speaker 1: Come on, what's a diode anyway? So a diode is
Speaker 1: an electrical component. You put it in the circuit and
Speaker 1: it allows unidirectional flow of current, or actually what you
Speaker 1: should say is the current flows in one direction very easily,
Speaker 1: but encounters massive resistance if it tries to flow the
Speaker 1: opposite direction. And this can be used in a number
Speaker 1: of ways. For example, just one is as a fail
Speaker 1: safe device so as to prevent damage to equipment if
Speaker 1: the current in a circuit gets reversed. Yeah, it's absolutely imperative.
Speaker 1: Diodes are are one of the most basic units in circuitry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of similar to to like a solenoid
Speaker 1: valve in a in a hose or in an engine
Speaker 1: kind of situation, like when when you have any kind
Speaker 1: of fluid that you want to go from one place
Speaker 1: to another and definitely not go in the other direction.
Speaker 1: Uh So, yes, good times, they're exact. Yeah. So so
Speaker 1: one again, one of the most basic elements of circuitry.
Speaker 1: You're probably really familiar with l e ed s. Those
Speaker 1: are light emitting diodes. They actually serve a purpose beyond
Speaker 1: just emitting light. They actually they are also kind of
Speaker 1: like that that's sort of that that one way street
Speaker 1: sign that says electricity go this way, don't go back
Speaker 1: the other way. And so why is this relevant to that, Well,
Speaker 1: it actually has relevance to computing and to the potential
Speaker 1: termination of Moore's law, which we've talked about on on
Speaker 1: this show before, so brief refresher Moore's law. It's the
Speaker 1: perhaps self fulfilling prophecy of Gordon Moore that the number
Speaker 1: of transistors you can fit onto an integrated circuit doubles
Speaker 1: every two years or so, eighteen months, two years or
Speaker 1: whatever um. And the practical takeaway is that affordable computer
Speaker 1: processing power follows an equivalent rate of evolution. Right, So
Speaker 1: these days we wouldn't say that in two years time
Speaker 1: we're going to fit twice as many uh discreet elements
Speaker 1: on an integrated circuit. It doesn't follow that that pathway anymore.
Speaker 1: What instead we would tend to say is that the
Speaker 1: computers two years from now will be or eighteen months
Speaker 1: from now will be twice as as powerful, will be
Speaker 1: twice as fast as kind of Moore's law is one
Speaker 1: of those things where the definition of Moore's law changes
Speaker 1: every few years or so. But the just also, it's
Speaker 1: not a law, right, It's not a law it was
Speaker 1: it was originally an observation, like you said, it had
Speaker 1: more to do with economics than actual computing power. The
Speaker 1: idea was that the ability to to uh manufacture chips
Speaker 1: that would have more discrete elements on them was going
Speaker 1: to become economically feasible over time. So he was really
Speaker 1: saying that because of the scale of manufacturing involved in
Speaker 1: our ability to innovate, it will allow for what we
Speaker 1: didn't have, as you know, the doubling of processing power
Speaker 1: every every eighteen months. But we dumb it down a lot.
Speaker 1: Talk about our devices in our technoculture depend on this assumption.
Speaker 1: Things keep getting hard where it keeps getting faster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you Otherwise you wouldn't have smartphones. You could, they would
Speaker 1: do the device would not be large enough to compensate
Speaker 1: for the massive amount of processing power you need to
Speaker 1: do the stuff your smartphone can do. Right, But you
Speaker 1: might be thinking about this now, and you might be thinking,
Speaker 1: wait a second, wait a second. So things keep getting smaller? Uh,
Speaker 1: you can? You can fit more and more power into
Speaker 1: a dense area of of what the computer processing unit is. Eventually,
Speaker 1: aren't you going to run into physics problems? Well, yep,
Speaker 1: Eventually you are going to reach the limits of what
Speaker 1: you can do on a reasonably sized silicon semiconductor chip.
Speaker 1: You run into basic physics and chemistry issues. So is
Speaker 1: there any way to keep packing electronics and computer power
Speaker 1: into smaller and smaller spaces? Could we have electronic components,
Speaker 1: including computing components, packed into a single molecule Maybe? And
Speaker 1: DNA might be the answer according to this d SO anyway,
Speaker 1: the lead author of the study bing Quon Zoo has
Speaker 1: pointed to quote the predictability, diversity, and programmability of DNA
Speaker 1: as attributes that make it sort of an ideal building
Speaker 1: material for nanoscale electronics. You know, electronics that are on
Speaker 1: the molecule level. They're tiny. So in this experiment in
Speaker 1: the paper I mentioned earlier, Zoo and his colleagues built
Speaker 1: a single duplex DNA molecule out of eleven base pairs,
Speaker 1: and then they inserted it into a tiny circuit. And
Speaker 1: then the team placed a molecule called coraline in between
Speaker 1: specific layers of the DNA coil, and with this they
Speaker 1: were able to observe the DNA structure doing what a
Speaker 1: diode should do, meaning it allowed current to flow one
Speaker 1: way but not the other. It specifically, the kernel out
Speaker 1: in the circuit was fifteen times stronger one way than
Speaker 1: it was the other. So they had built a DNA diode,
Speaker 1: or as I like to think of it, bingo diode
Speaker 1: DNA MR DNA. Are you going to chase be done
Speaker 1: that hallway again? Anyway? So a quote every Night Jenn
Speaker 1: a quote Zoo gave to the press. He said, our
Speaker 1: discovery can lead to progress in the design and construction
Speaker 1: of nanoscale electronics elements that are at least one thousand
Speaker 1: times smaller than current components. So I think that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: What if one day we have uh, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: nanoscale electronics, tiny computing elements, computers that are built out
Speaker 1: of organic molecules and DNA, And I mean obviously, like
Speaker 1: if we're going to have armies of nano robots, this
Speaker 1: is going to be part of it. Yeah, very likely.
Speaker 1: I mean you have to get to a point if
Speaker 1: you have a robot that has its own ability to
Speaker 1: control its own motions as opposed to some sort of
Speaker 1: external force, because most of the nanobots that we have
Speaker 1: talked about in previous episodes rely on some sort of
Speaker 1: external system manipulating their motion, like a electromy metic frequencies
Speaker 1: or ultrasonic frequencies or some kind of chemical reaction to
Speaker 1: what's going on. Because because the way that we've been
Speaker 1: designing them, obviously the researchers say, we could never possibly
Speaker 1: have an energy source, right, So smaller energy control that's
Speaker 1: small to be within something like that, So fascinating, very
Speaker 1: cool stuff. And uh, I just love the idea that
Speaker 1: we could eventually have computers that could get a computer
Speaker 1: virus that could potentially be a real virus. Uh. One
Speaker 1: of the other things that we've talked about on this
Speaker 1: show before is the idea of programmable matter. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: idea of having having just just stuff that you would
Speaker 1: then send some sort of command to and it would
Speaker 1: take whatever shape or form are not just form factor
Speaker 1: but function that you need it to do. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's funny because one of the main inspirations for stuff
Speaker 1: like this is going to be organic matter like proteins.
Speaker 1: You know, proteins can fold and refold themselves to take
Speaker 1: on shapes that they need to do their function. And
Speaker 1: so if you have programma, will matter the matter should
Speaker 1: be able to maybe reshape itself or rearrange itself, either
Speaker 1: by moving different components around or by changing the shape
Speaker 1: of the components to make different overall forms. Right the
Speaker 1: way that the basic molecule collagen is the stuff that
Speaker 1: makes your bones and your skin and structures and your
Speaker 1: eyeballs and all kinds of different tissues in your body,
Speaker 1: And it's the same basic protein, but it folds itself
Speaker 1: up into all kinds of different shapes. So, uh, well,
Speaker 1: there's a group of researchers from Northwestern University who have
Speaker 1: been looking at using DNA along with gold nanoparticles to
Speaker 1: create different shapes, and it's kind of interesting how they're
Speaker 1: doing it. So what they're doing, they're essentially coding these
Speaker 1: gold nanoparticles with small strips of DNA. So you can
Speaker 1: think of it as but just one half of a
Speaker 1: DNA strands. So you imagine splitting that that ladder down
Speaker 1: the middle and you've got one half of the strand
Speaker 1: on these gold nano particles. By introducing them to the
Speaker 1: other half, the complementary half of that DNA strand, they
Speaker 1: can cause the gold nano particles to take all sorts
Speaker 1: of different crystalline shapes. So this is a very tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny version, this nano sized version of this pluripotent material
Speaker 1: that we've talked about in the past. So it's not
Speaker 1: something that you would use to make a giant armchair.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna have the golden throne for your Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones party. It's not gonna happen. But it's possible
Speaker 1: that this sort of approach could lead to uh advances
Speaker 1: in optics. So, for example, when you're designing something a lens,
Speaker 1: let's say, uh, you want to be able to control
Speaker 1: exactly what kind of light can pass through that lens.
Speaker 1: By shaping these crystalline structures at the right distance from
Speaker 1: one another. You can control for that you can allow
Speaker 1: it to or you can you can design such way
Speaker 1: that allows certain types of light, like certain colors of
Speaker 1: light to pass through, but not others, because you can
Speaker 1: you can be fine tune those spaces so well that
Speaker 1: certain wavelengths of light are the only ones allowed through,
Speaker 1: which is really kind of fascinating when you think about it,
Speaker 1: and it creates all sorts of different possibilities, including stuff
Speaker 1: like a um advanced laser optics. So really an interesting idea,
Speaker 1: not necessarily something that we're going to see as a
Speaker 1: practical application in our daily lives, but when you talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of this high end tech approach, it's
Speaker 1: really an interesting possibility. Okay, does does anyone have anything
Speaker 1: that is a little bit more like ground level practical
Speaker 1: something that could potentially change the way that we that
Speaker 1: we do live our lives. Well, all right, we've we've
Speaker 1: talked in the past about how antibiotics are pretty amazing,
Speaker 1: but they're also something that we've depended upon, so heavily
Speaker 1: that we may have shot ourselves in the foot a
Speaker 1: little bit. And by shot ourselves in the foot a
Speaker 1: little bit, I mean given rise to potential really dangerous
Speaker 1: bacteria that we cannot defend ourselves against because they are
Speaker 1: resistant to antibiotics. So we're creating the bacterial equivalent of Doomsday,
Speaker 1: where you just continue destroying them over and over again
Speaker 1: until they become invincible. Yeah, by foot we mean face,
Speaker 1: and by face we mean immune system. Right, So in
Speaker 1: our batman versus superman versus bacterial infection, the bacterial infection
Speaker 1: has got a big leg up on everybody else right now, because,
Speaker 1: like we said, it leads to this this kind of
Speaker 1: superbug situation where you have bacteria that can infect a
Speaker 1: person and antibiotics will have no effect against them because
Speaker 1: the bacterial the bacteria have already developed an immunity to
Speaker 1: that antibiotic. Uh So, one other approach we could use
Speaker 1: is using DNA to create viruses that target bacteria. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, we make a bug to kill a bug.
Speaker 1: So I have to remind you that viruses and bacteria
Speaker 1: are not the same thing, and they're not really They're
Speaker 1: very dissimilar organically speaking. So the virus would insert viral
Speaker 1: DNA into the bacterial cell, and that viral DNA might
Speaker 1: do one of a couple of different things. It might
Speaker 1: shut down the bacteria's ability to resist antibiotics. So in
Speaker 1: other words, this could be like uh Obi Wan sneaking
Speaker 1: in and turning off that that that tractor beams so
Speaker 1: the millennium falcon can escape, except in this case we're
Speaker 1: talking like more like a force field. So maybe it's
Speaker 1: more like Return of the Jedi where they have to
Speaker 1: go to the force moon of Indoor and destroy the
Speaker 1: ground based force field that's protecting the death Star that
Speaker 1: is fully operational up over in orbit at any rate
Speaker 1: I know I could go, So then you could do that,
Speaker 1: or it could even just kill the bacterial cell, like
Speaker 1: just just let's just bypass all that, or just render
Speaker 1: it harmless. Um So, these are all the basic things
Speaker 1: that this viral genome could do if it were designed properly. Um.
Speaker 1: As a bonus, that approach can be tailored so that
Speaker 1: it targets specific types of bacteria. The virus have protein
Speaker 1: markers on them that search for other specific protein markers,
Speaker 1: and they will ignore anything that doesn't fit that description. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's almost like a cell seeking missile in a way. Well,
Speaker 1: if you design in such a way where it's it's
Speaker 1: looking for this harmful bacteria, it will leave all the
Speaker 1: helpful bacteria alone. Oh that's really great because these days,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that that all y'all have experienced it. When
Speaker 1: you take an antibiotic, uh, you wind up with kind
Speaker 1: of an upset stomach for a few days because in
Speaker 1: addition to clearing out whatever infection you're trying to get
Speaker 1: rid of, that antibiotic is probably also destroying your microbiome,
Speaker 1: which is good for like digesting food, exactly right. So
Speaker 1: this would be potentially a gentler approach and it would
Speaker 1: affect more dangerous bacterial strains. So it's a double win
Speaker 1: if we can make it work. But one of the
Speaker 1: other things I wanted to talk about. In fact, this
Speaker 1: was the basis of a video episode of Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: and Lauren, you wrote the script and it was phenomenal.
Speaker 1: It's just a really cool idea is using DNA. I
Speaker 1: mean DNA it's all about holding information, right, it's information
Speaker 1: that makes us who we are. But we can use
Speaker 1: DNA to hold other types of information too, and not
Speaker 1: just a little a whole lot of information. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the train of thought here is that, Okay, we've got
Speaker 1: really amazing storage materials and technologies for data these days,
Speaker 1: but they have some downsides. And Okay, so you know,
Speaker 1: like like we've got we've got hard disk drives, which
Speaker 1: is you know, probably what's in your laptop or or
Speaker 1: your desktop computer, which work by magnetizing a faro magnetic
Speaker 1: film on a disc. And uh and the data is
Speaker 1: encoded in the changes in the direction of magnetism. Okay. Um,
Speaker 1: if you remember floppy disks or like like you know,
Speaker 1: five and a quarter inch floppies anything like that, they
Speaker 1: used similar technology. This is why it was so much
Speaker 1: fun to drag a magnet over somebody's floppy disk. Oh uh, man,
Speaker 1: you or you were a mean middle schooler. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: I'm sure. No, No, Joe, you are truly the best
Speaker 1: of all of us. I didn't think that you would,
Speaker 1: although now I wonder. I'll wonder every day anyway. That's
Speaker 1: also basically what makes a magnetic tape work, like like
Speaker 1: in cassette tapes or in not cassette tapes, because as
Speaker 1: it turns out, magnetic tape is not only used by
Speaker 1: kitchy hipster bands to uh to sell their albums these days.
Speaker 1: It's actually the highest capacity type of memory available on
Speaker 1: the market because you can encode so much information into it. Um.
Speaker 1: Then there's also there's flash memory, uh, iterations of which
Speaker 1: are what's in your phone and your USB stick and
Speaker 1: like maybe your fancy, silent running computer. Um. And they
Speaker 1: work by the grace of wizards. Uh No, I mean
Speaker 1: probably not, but honestly I understand them really poorly. Jonathan
Speaker 1: fact check me on this. Basically, like a flash memory
Speaker 1: creates minute changes in voltage through transistors and then reads
Speaker 1: those minute changes in order to tell you stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one form of flash memory. But yes, you are correct,
Speaker 1: which they there are different types where some require constant power.
Speaker 1: As soon as they lose power than everything gets white.
Speaker 1: And then there are some that are persistent. Obviously, this
Speaker 1: would be more in the persistent realm, because you're talking
Speaker 1: about things like like thumb drives and stuff where you
Speaker 1: don't have a constant amount of battery attached. Yeah. Sure, um.
Speaker 1: And then of course we have optical discs, CDs and
Speaker 1: DVDs in Blu ray which encode data and in tiny
Speaker 1: pits and ridges and then they scan those with a
Speaker 1: laser and that's how you figure stuff out. UM. So yes,
Speaker 1: all rad but downsides. First of all, they're they're pretty delicate.
Speaker 1: You don't want to jostle them around too much, or
Speaker 1: in the case of your your optical discs, you don't
Speaker 1: want to you know, scratch a huge key across them
Speaker 1: or something like that, because that will ruin them real fast.
Speaker 1: You don't want to get them too hot or too cold,
Speaker 1: and the data in them will corrupt over time. UM.
Speaker 1: Your your hard drives, your flash drives, your your burn
Speaker 1: CDs can all corrupt in as little as five years,
Speaker 1: and magnetic tape can corrupt in as little as fifteen
Speaker 1: to thirty years. UM. Also, even though they can carry
Speaker 1: an impressive amount of information, especially if you remember those
Speaker 1: five and a quarter inch floppies and look at that
Speaker 1: in comparison to your cell phone and think about how
Speaker 1: old you are. Um, the technical limits of those materials
Speaker 1: aren't all that high when you start to consider how
Speaker 1: much data we're creating every day, right, which is an unbelievable, massive, huge,
Speaker 1: enormous other adjectives amount of data. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: so big that it is impossible for me to get
Speaker 1: a handle on it. It is an amount so vast
Speaker 1: as to dwarf my sense of perspective every day. It's
Speaker 1: a massive amount of spying they're doing on you. We'll see.
Speaker 1: That's the other problem, right, It's not just that we're
Speaker 1: creating a huge amount of data. We also need to
Speaker 1: make use of that data. And meanwhile, you have to
Speaker 1: put the data somewhere. And storage is a big thing.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a big issue. You want a storage
Speaker 1: medium that's going to be UH safe and secure. You
Speaker 1: want it to be uh to last a nice long time.
Speaker 1: You wanted to be really efficient at storing a massive
Speaker 1: amount of data in a small amount of space. And
Speaker 1: like you you're saying, Lauren, the options we have are limited,
Speaker 1: sometimes in multiple uh features all at once, you know.
Speaker 1: So what's the solution. Well, strangely enough, this episode is
Speaker 1: about DNA. So baby, Hey, it's DNA, that's right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: DNA can be used for for data storage. It's hardy,
Speaker 1: it's half life, it's like five dred years, so it
Speaker 1: can it can potentially store data for like centuries, and
Speaker 1: it can encode so much data. You guys, um in
Speaker 1: the video episode that I wrote about it, I did
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of wacky math and uh okay. So
Speaker 1: so d na's theoretical limit is more than an exhibite
Speaker 1: of data per cubic millimeter. An exhibite is a billion gigabytes.
Speaker 1: A cubic millimeter is a fraction of a drop, like
Speaker 1: to ten thousands of a teaspoon. So for a an
Speaker 1: incredibly small physical volume, you can hold an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of digital information. Yeah. Um. In order to get that
Speaker 1: much information into magnetic tape, which is the densest storage
Speaker 1: medium available for purchase today, you'd need a hundred million
Speaker 1: cubic millimeters of space, which is like fifty two liter
Speaker 1: soda bottles as opposed to the fraction of a drop. Right,
Speaker 1: Even optical disk storage at its theoretical limit would still
Speaker 1: require five two leader soda bottles worth of space. And again,
Speaker 1: since we're talking about creating this massive amount of information
Speaker 1: every single day, if you want to be able to
Speaker 1: store the information, particularly if you plan on doing something
Speaker 1: useful with it, like parsing through all that data because
Speaker 1: you're a nosy spy, uh, you want to have the
Speaker 1: most compact efficient means of data storage possible, because you're
Speaker 1: going to run out of space otherwise, or you're going
Speaker 1: to have to figure out how long do I hold
Speaker 1: onto this data before I wipe it so I can
Speaker 1: hold onto the next match of data because another enormous
Speaker 1: amount is coming tomorrow. Yeah, um so so okay. So
Speaker 1: here's how the process works of encoding data into DNA.
Speaker 1: You get some computer scientists and some bioengineers. Uh, you
Speaker 1: get them in the same room together, and you get
Speaker 1: them to design a system for encoding data in the
Speaker 1: nuclear basis the nucleotides of DNA and and these building
Speaker 1: blocks can basically be used like ones in zeros or
Speaker 1: you know, since there's four block box, you can use
Speaker 1: base four instead of binary, which is the approach that
Speaker 1: a team out of the University of Washington in collaboration
Speaker 1: with Microsoft Research chose recently. The bioengineers can synthesize DNA, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, sticking the nucleotides together in a sequence into
Speaker 1: in order to encode your data. Um that this recent
Speaker 1: team even included little I D tags in the DNA
Speaker 1: sequences in order to make the data random access, like
Speaker 1: your hard drive is random access, which means that you
Speaker 1: have like a whole soup of information kind of like
Speaker 1: stuck on there, but you can pull out whatever bit
Speaker 1: of information you want at any time. And uh, and
Speaker 1: so here you can have a whole vial of DNA
Speaker 1: and and you can still find whatever you need quickly. Right,
Speaker 1: Instead of having to read through the entire amount of
Speaker 1: data that has been encoded in that string, you can
Speaker 1: zone in on the specific string that's relevant to whatever
Speaker 1: it is you need, which is incredibly important. Right. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like anyone who's who's played uh, just just
Speaker 1: a video game where you're playing something where it's it's
Speaker 1: reading from memory that that stuff is very responsive, and
Speaker 1: then you move into a new area where it has
Speaker 1: to consult the read off of the disk. Right, then
Speaker 1: it slows everything down. Well, it's very important that we
Speaker 1: have this random access memory approach because otherwise, if you
Speaker 1: had this massive amount of data stored, it would still
Speaker 1: be very frustrating if it took you, you know, two
Speaker 1: days to find the specific part of the information you
Speaker 1: needed because it was buried so far deep in that
Speaker 1: DNA strand right that that is less useful scientifically speaking, um, Right,
Speaker 1: because in order to read the data that's written in
Speaker 1: your DNA. You just sequence the DNA and then decode
Speaker 1: the data. And and in the downsides here are that
Speaker 1: it's currently so expensive to synthesize and sequence d N
Speaker 1: A and also it takes time, um like at least
Speaker 1: ten hours to to sequence your DNA so that you
Speaker 1: can get your data out of it. Um. But this
Speaker 1: recent team thinks that it could so easily be made
Speaker 1: cheaper and faster, especially you know, if there's a financial
Speaker 1: incentive to do so. Um you know which there is,
Speaker 1: and not only for data storage, as we discussed in
Speaker 1: the previous episode. All Right, so we've talked about DNA
Speaker 1: being used as diodes, We've talked about DNA being used
Speaker 1: to target bacterial infections, DNA being used for data storage,
Speaker 1: DNA being used as a beverage, DNA chasing me down
Speaker 1: an endless hallway. What other uses, uh, could we see
Speaker 1: DNA applied toward in the future. Well, here's one that
Speaker 1: I think is pretty interesting. So we've talked before about
Speaker 1: building organs in the lab, and they're they're multiple ways
Speaker 1: you can look at this. You can look at like
Speaker 1: the organ on the chip concept, or you can just
Speaker 1: talk about building organs actually as in like three D
Speaker 1: printing organs that would be uh, that would eventually be
Speaker 1: used as donor organs were not quite fully there yet. Um.
Speaker 1: But but we're making headway with a lot of this technology,
Speaker 1: and it's useful for lots of reasons, Like one of
Speaker 1: the big ones is harm free research. You can test
Speaker 1: the effects of a drug or study the progression of
Speaker 1: a disease on a living organ without actually damaging a
Speaker 1: living person. So assembling these lab organs it it shouldn't
Speaker 1: be impossible, right, because it happens in nature. The cells
Speaker 1: in your body can do it. They can divide and
Speaker 1: self as symbol into a kidney or a liver, So
Speaker 1: why shouldn't they be able to do the same thing
Speaker 1: in a controlled laboratory environment. They should. It's just not
Speaker 1: very easy at all and uh and so one of
Speaker 1: the things that we try to do is what we
Speaker 1: just mentioned, three D printing in organ like three D
Speaker 1: printing in a lab environment, depositing cells upon one another
Speaker 1: to eventually spit out a whole organ. But that's not
Speaker 1: as easy as it sounds. You encounter multiple problems. One
Speaker 1: of them is it's hard to get the cells to
Speaker 1: stick in the right place. Number two is it's hard
Speaker 1: to print with enough precision. Ideally, what we'd want is
Speaker 1: single cell resolution, you know, upping the resolution on your printer.
Speaker 1: In this case, it would be upping the resolution until
Speaker 1: you print one cell at a time, and that's not
Speaker 1: easy to do, right. And then on top of that,
Speaker 1: it's hard to keep cells from being damaged or killed
Speaker 1: in the printing process, right because if you just end
Speaker 1: up with a bunch of dead cells in your brand
Speaker 1: new organ you don't have a very useful organ want
Speaker 1: it for right, Well, we are not shooting the next
Speaker 1: episode of Game of Thrones, so we don't have a
Speaker 1: need for visceron just to throw around everywhere. But interestingly,
Speaker 1: d NA plays a role other than encoding the building
Speaker 1: blocks to make cells in a solution that was proposed
Speaker 1: in a paper called program Synthesis of Three Dimensional Tissues
Speaker 1: in Nature Methods. And in this paper, the authors describe
Speaker 1: a method of constructing three D quote organoid like structures
Speaker 1: using the help of a kind of d N a
Speaker 1: vel crow that allows DNA coded cell structures to stick
Speaker 1: to gel coded surfaces and to each other. And the
Speaker 1: method they have is is called d N A programmed
Speaker 1: assembly of cells or d pack uh, And it goes
Speaker 1: like this. The cells for creating the organoid structure get
Speaker 1: pieces of single stranded DNA inserted into their outer membrane,
Speaker 1: so you've gotta sell and you stick these little d
Speaker 1: NA hairs all over the outside of it. So this
Speaker 1: means the cells are coded in DNA molecules that act
Speaker 1: sort of like code locked velcro h. They'll stick to
Speaker 1: DNA strands on the outside of other cells, but only
Speaker 1: the ones that have the right code sequences and lock
Speaker 1: up with the complementary. So what you can make with
Speaker 1: this is cells that are coded to stick to exactly
Speaker 1: the other cells you want them to and not stick
Speaker 1: where you don't want them to. That's very clever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very interesting, and so hopefully what they're saying is
Speaker 1: that this will help us build these organoid structures in
Speaker 1: the lab that will eventually aid in things like tissue
Speaker 1: specific cancer research. I just like the word organoid makes
Speaker 1: me think of like it's like some sort of he
Speaker 1: Man villain. But I have one last, one last future
Speaker 1: use of of d n A. That's pretty hot. You
Speaker 1: guys are gonna like it. How hot? Is it? Like
Speaker 1: more than a hundred degrees celsius hot so hot, hot
Speaker 1: enough to boil water. Yeah, I'm talking about using DNA
Speaker 1: and a method that would allow engineers to build better
Speaker 1: facilities to harvest uh geothermal energy and converted into electricity.
Speaker 1: And you think, hell, what, how could DNA do that.
Speaker 1: I was really confused when I started reading the article
Speaker 1: because as I was reading the article, I was thinking,
Speaker 1: I don't see where DNA comes into hear at all. Connection. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so here's the connection. Here's here's what the scientists we're
Speaker 1: working with. Um uh So a scientist or a grad student.
Speaker 1: You're in jong uh energy researcher. Stanford grad student was
Speaker 1: talking about using nanotracers. Grad students can be scientists, but nanotracers, well, well,
Speaker 1: grad student because not not fully outside a graduate school yet,
Speaker 1: but still has this idea about nano tracers used for
Speaker 1: geo thermal surveying. So what what he did was they
Speaker 1: took nano tracers and naro tracers. You can just think
Speaker 1: of as it's a substance that you're pumping into a
Speaker 1: geo thermal reservoir to kind of see where it's connected
Speaker 1: to other wells, geo thermal wells in the area. If
Speaker 1: you have nano tracers popping out of one well, you're
Speaker 1: pumping them into another well, you say, oh, these two
Speaker 1: are connected. But the problem is that if you have
Speaker 1: a pretty complex geo thermal reservoir system, you can't really
Speaker 1: be sure if you're if you're injecting nanotracers and mall locations,
Speaker 1: which nanotracers belong to which pump sites. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you're injecting the men that like five different sites and
Speaker 1: you're getting nanotracers out of a well, unless there's some
Speaker 1: way to identify those nanotracers, you cannot be certain that
Speaker 1: they came from a specific injection site. Thus, you can't
Speaker 1: really say we've mapped this out and we know that
Speaker 1: these two points are connected. I might be one of
Speaker 1: the other points that are connected. But DNA could help
Speaker 1: solve that problem. So what the researchers are suggesting is
Speaker 1: that you should encode the nanotracers with DNA and give
Speaker 1: them like a little name tag and identifier, so you
Speaker 1: know these nanotracers specifically are belonged to this injection site
Speaker 1: because it has this specific DNA sequence encoded in the nanotracer.
Speaker 1: That would allow the researchers to create a more accurate
Speaker 1: geothermal map and help engineers decide the appropriate place to
Speaker 1: set up a facility or to inject water into the
Speaker 1: reservoir to break up rocks to get better access to
Speaker 1: geothermal energy. And in some of their experiments, you know,
Speaker 1: they haven't put this to practical use. They've done it
Speaker 1: in the lab to make sure that this would actually work. Um,
Speaker 1: they use some some sand and they heated the sand
Speaker 1: to see if they used uh strands of DNA, if
Speaker 1: the strands could hold up under the conditions that they
Speaker 1: would encounter out in the field. They saw that the
Speaker 1: DNA could remain intact after encountering temperatures as high as
Speaker 1: three d two degrees fahrenheit or a hundred fifty degrees celsius,
Speaker 1: which would be similar to what they would encounter if
Speaker 1: you were actually pumping them into these geo thermal reservoirs.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of interesting they wouldn't They don't directly
Speaker 1: allow you to convert geo thermal energy into electricity, but
Speaker 1: they give more tools to the people who are who
Speaker 1: want to tap into that power and convert it into electricity.
Speaker 1: And according to the researchers, they anticipate that with a
Speaker 1: conservative estimate, they said that in the future, we will
Speaker 1: rely on geo thermal energy to provide five percent of
Speaker 1: of the world's electricity, which sounds like a small amount
Speaker 1: until you start to actually look at numbers and see
Speaker 1: how much five percent accounts for, and it's enormous. So
Speaker 1: and of course every bit you can take away from
Speaker 1: fossil fuels is a big help in other areas. Oh, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: And and that's oh, that's it's so fascinating. I love
Speaker 1: these these approaches that people are using to take DNA
Speaker 1: and and and use it as an actual tool. I mean,
Speaker 1: we are a man the toolmaker, but but this is
Speaker 1: it's so it's so great that we're taking this this
Speaker 1: tiny thing that makes up ourselves that we only really
Speaker 1: started to get a handle on within the past century,
Speaker 1: and and we're we're bending it to our own power. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean we uh. It's sort of the most fundamental
Speaker 1: level you can go to when you're talking about bio mimetics, right,
Speaker 1: well maybe not actually you can probably go to proteins maybe,
Speaker 1: which would be even simpler. But I mean, when you're
Speaker 1: talking about making technology or machines based off of principles
Speaker 1: that we see employed nature. These are the most fundamental
Speaker 1: machines out there. There's machines that make all the other machines, right.
Speaker 1: I don't think when Friedrich Mesher was looking at all
Speaker 1: that PUS he was thinking, you know, I bet someday
Speaker 1: we're gonna store information in the stuff that's in this
Speaker 1: stuff that I don't even know the name for yet.
Speaker 1: I bet he wasn't thinking that. And I bet if
Speaker 1: we took the way back machine, we prove ourselves right.
Speaker 1: But we've run out of time. I wanted to go
Speaker 1: back to the PUS party so badly. Even the way
Speaker 1: back machine it's got, it's still recharging from our last jaunt,
Speaker 1: so we're not going to be jumping in there anytime soon. Well,
Speaker 1: this has been a fun journey to go on with
Speaker 1: you guys, with the DNA molecule and with PUS. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's been. It's been educational, I will say now it's been.
Speaker 1: It's been really fascinating. And who knows what other potential
Speaker 1: applications we will find for DNA in the future. And
Speaker 1: of course there are all the other ones that we've
Speaker 1: talked about in previous episod Those things like uh, you know,
Speaker 1: genetic medicine, that sort of stuff. The really looking at
Speaker 1: how we can use tools like Crisper in order to
Speaker 1: manipulate UH genes so that we can improve our health
Speaker 1: or perhaps even enhance ourselves in some ways, which of
Speaker 1: course is as a totally separate subject that has its
Speaker 1: own massive ball of ethical concerns attached to it, But
Speaker 1: all of it is is coming back to this, this
Speaker 1: long chain molecule and uh really fascinating stuff. So guys,
Speaker 1: if you have any questions about Dinah, that's how I'm
Speaker 1: going to say it from now on, Thank you, Joe H.
Speaker 1: Then you should write us and send those questions, or
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for future episodes. You've got
Speaker 1: an idea, you want to know how X will work
Speaker 1: in the future, or maybe there's some emerging technology you
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