Endless Thread - Fun Guy

Episode Date: April 5, 2018

A lab at the University of Oklahoma wants your dirt -- really. A viral post on Reddit brought awareness to this fascinating program, which studies fungi from soil samples from around the country with the hopes of discovering new disease-curing medicines.

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the ILAP at WBUR, Boston. Emery and I are trying to help save humanity in a public park with some instructions for digging for fungi, a plan to do some light soil theft and an envelope of stuff. Oh, God. Oh, he's already dropping things. Oh, look at this little scooper. See, I told you.

She said that there would be a little shovel. Do you know that Salt and Peppa song? Scoop. Scoop. Scoop. Scoop. Scoop. Scoop.

You are a scam. Girls, what's my weakness? Soil! All right. A little less singing, a little more scooping. Okay. I think the more wood chips you have, the less fungi you have. Okay.

Tear the top off the collection bag along the perforation. Okay. Also, I want to be the one to get the air out of the bag because that's like a very amory task. I like that kind of stuff. You scoop? I'm getting into the loam, baby. The scoop is quite small, we should say. You know that Metallica song, wherever I'm at loam?

Oh, my God. You ever watch that show, The Loam Ranger? Hey, we have diseases to cure here. All right, scoop number one. All right, scoop number one. I'm going in the bag. I like the Lome Ranger, though. I'll give that to you.

You'll give me the Lome Ranger? Yeah. All right. All right. Amory, why are we hanging out outside making bad jokes and singing songs? You tell me. You're the one making Salt and Papa jokes then. All right.

Well, I make those jokes because I'm a child of the 1990s top 40, and I have great taste. But, I mean, what is the reason behind us going out with a tiny scoop and stealing dirt from the park down the street from our office. Oh, well, because we got an email in our Endless Thread inbox, that's Endless Thread at WBUR.org, wink, wink. We got an email from a Redditor. Now we're talking, and this Redditor had a story. It wasn't his story.

Well, it kind of was. This is Aiden. My Reddit handle was Trust Zero. Aidan works in administration at the University of Oklahoma, and he used to be based in the chemistry department, where he's. He heard about a special program that was using soil to make medicine. One of my friends who worked up on the second floor told me about the project, and I was, like, really amazed by the simple idea of it, but how effective it could be. Aidan wrote to us about this program, so we had to go digging.

We did. Thanks to Aidan, who, for reasons you'll understand later, is kind of like that mushroom who walks into a bar. Oh, no. No, you have reached your corny joke quota for the day, my friend. Have I? Well, in honor of the mushroom who walks into a bar and doesn't get served and says, why not, I'm a fun guy. Let's call this one, fun guy. I'm Ben Brock Johnson, and this is Endless Thread, a show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit. One does not walk into our show without saying how it's made.

We are coming to you from WBUR. NPR station. So this email we got from Aden was about this kind of amazing program he found out about that was happening at the University of Oklahoma. But nobody really knew about how amazing it was, except maybe the people working on it. So Aiden posted about the program on Reddit. Which made it into a much bigger story. It's safe to say it blew up a little bit.

And it changed the lives of some people who worked very far away from the park where Amory and I have been stealing dirt. One of them is Dr. Robert Cheevich. Professor at the University of Oklahoma. Is that what you're looking for? Actually, no. We wanted to talk to Robert about his other role, principal investigator for the university's Natural Products Discovery Group.

Oh, crap. You're already going to have to edit this. Oh, Robert. Yes, yes, we will. But don't worry, I'm about to make your slight naivete about how much we edit down tape pale in comparison to my naive description. of your job. You help to understand how to make medicine out of dirt?

Well, I guess that's one way of putting it. Part of a job is to conduct research and trying to do our best to bring new medicines to improve human health. So our take on this was to explore the world of natural products, particularly compounds made by fungi. Wait, fungi? Fungi? As far as fungi, fungi, fungi. I never stop anyone from pronouncing anything as long as we understand each other. Fair enough. I think they both fly. Okay. I'm going to keep saying fungi because otherwise my joke won't work, but that's not what is important. What is important is how you make medicines out of this stuff. Fungi are traditionally have been a great source of natural products that have translated into medicines.

Some wonderful examples of this include things like penicillin. Penicillin, probably, as a drug has had the greatest impact of any other medicine on humankind, and that comes from fungus. The statins, cholesterol-allurine medicines, those originate from fungi, cyclosporins, prevent organ rejection. So people who have had an organ transplant, they originate and still are produced from fungi. This is a thing I admit I didn't really understand, that penicillin, a drug that is as close to a global blockbuster medicine as you can imagine, came from the discovery of a fungus penicillium. It's also just an amazing concept, like fighting diseases with fungi. But the drug discovery process can be slow, and it's all just one big long shot.

It can be thought of as akin to a gambling enterprise. You are trying to put numbers in your favor. You're trying to win an unwinnable situation of taking all these molecules that exist out there in trying to find that right molecule for that right disease process. It is no small task. It takes an enormous amount of time, money, and effort to get there. But at its core, it's really about the numbers. And so increasing those odds means we have to put more fungi in. And more fungi, making more molecules, gives us a better chance of finding those right compounds for a whole variety of diseases. And how do you get more fungi? Well, you get more soil samples because different soil has different fungi in it. Part of what this particular lab at

the University of Oklahoma was doing was gathering different kinds of soil. If you're dealing with just a handful of samples, and by handful, I mean hundreds or thousands of samples, your chances of finding something that's going to be an actual drug are pretty minuscule. Most drug discovery programs at pharmaceutical companies today are talking about millions of molecules being screened to find one that they want to push forward. Having more samples, having more fungi and more compounds made by those fungi, we increase the odds that we will actually be successful. How does this work practically? So the basic process that we go through is that the soil samples that come in, we culture the fungi from them. On average, our data show that we'll get about 11 fungi per sample. We grow fungi

on Cheerios in our lab, so we put each fungus onto three Cheerios on a test tube. Today I learned fungi loves Cheerios, favorite cereal of fungi. Absolutely. Don't give them cocoa puffs. It's definitely a Cheerios kind of world for them. The fungi eat the Cheerios over a period of four weeks. And in this process of cheerio eating, the fungi produce molecules and new compounds, or natural products as they're called. An average fungus may have two, three dozen different classes of molecules that's capable of making, some of them many, many more than that. And so what we do after those four weeks is we extract those compounds that they make, the natural products that they've been making. And they go into plates and to freezers, and they become part of our natural products extract library.

And that collection is used to test molecules against specific diseases. which brings us to the problem of getting as much soil as you can, in order to get as many fungi as you can, to try to cure as many diseases as you can. The University Lab was hoping to help tackle this challenge by getting a bunch of people to send soil in. So they created the Citizen Science Soil Collection Program. It's literally as easy as scooping dirt from your backyard.

This is Candace Coker from the program. It's run by the University of Oklahoma's Natural Products Discovery Group. Which, let's be honest, sounds like a fake thing, like a front, the natural products discovery group. But it's real. Yep, it's real. And Candice is the person who manages all of the soil collection kits. And the key words here, as she said, are from your backyard. Your soil has to come from property you own or somewhere you have permission to sample in order to be included in the program.

Just a small amount of soil in that collection bag. And you return it to us with a few details about where you collected from. What are your suggestions of where to collect it from? We usually suggest that the lower traffic areas of your yard, maybe behind a shed, under a tree, somewhere that isn't necessarily walked over all the time, just because there tends to be a little more fungal diversity in that area. The keys to discovery are right below your feet.

Soil is teeming with microscopic life. While most soil fungi are in vividly. visible to the naked eye, they're adept at making new compounds called natural products. Okay, you just said that like a joke, but that's remarkable. It is remarkable. That there are molecules in the soil, in the fungi, or fungi. I call them little mollies. Little mollies.

They could potentially cure diseases. We're going to send them our little mollies. Yeah. Wait, shake it down to the bottom of the bag. It's gonna shake. Just relax. Okay, fine. Okay, yes, you have gone away from the point.

But I wanted to make sure it was like fully packed. I feel like that's close enough. No, you got to dump a little more out. Come on. Just a little bit. I want this to be a winning sample, Ben. I don't think there's any, it's not a contest. I am out to cure a disease.

You think your little Molly's got something in there? Yeah. Okay. That's good. That's good. That's perfect. A perfect soil sample? Maybe not. We try, though, and the story of this citizen soil collection project is about to get bigger. More in a minute.

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Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions, the creative studio from WBUR's Business Partnerships Team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. reach new audiences, whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Okay, so the citizen science soil collection program we have been talking about gets started back in 2010.

And for the first five years, things are going, okay. They get a couple hundred samples. People are sending stuff in, but it's like a trickle. So says our program manager, Candice. We got up to about 250 samples in our soil collection. And then once that Reddit post hit, everything changed. Remember Aden, the Reddeter who worked at the university and heard about the stuff the lab was doing from a coworker buddy? Well, this is where Aiden comes in.

What made you want to post about it on Reddit? That was just on a lark. I was like trying to think of an idea that would give me some major karma because I used to be really into, you know, up votes, even though they don't matter. So just really quickly, karma is what again? Well, you know, Amory, it's the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence viewed

as deciding their fate in future existences. No, what is it on Reddit? Okay, well, in a way, it's kind of the same thing. It's a score you get that's related to your previous Reddit behavior. Make a post that gets a lot of upboats, which means it's popular. And you too can get some of that

sweet, sweet karma. This was Aidan's plan. I just like post it and crossed my fingers, hoping for nothing more than just like, you know, a karma windfall. And then it ended up taking off far more than I imagine it would. I was literally sitting at my desk one Friday morning. March 13, 2015. Candice will never forget this day. And about 9 o'clock, every time somebody requests the kit, I see that request come through.

And my emails just started blowing up. And in a couple hours, we'd had a couple hundred requests. which was more than we had collected in the previous five years. A couple of hundred emails on a Friday is a big deal, but it was just the beginning of a deluge. In the next few days, it just spiraled and spiraled and spiraled. And within about three and a half days, we were up to about 3,500 requests. And by the end of the week, we were closing in on 5,000 requests.

Wow. And at first we didn't even know what the source was. So it took us some time to even find that it was a Reddit post. Did you know at the time who made the post on Reddit? We didn't. We had no idea for quite a long time who or where this came from. The lab just kind of went nuts. Aiden again.

And I was down there in the front office on the first floor. And my friend came down and she's telling everybody else, something happened. We're all of a sudden getting inundated with these calls. and people talking about Reddit and hearing about it on there. And I immediately was like, oh, my gosh, what have I done? I'm just going to go back to my account and delete every single questionable post or humiliating thing I've ever said on there.

And then I'll let them know. A couple weeks later, Candice and the other folks at the lab found out Aiden was their secret soil fairy godfather. This was by far the biggest thing that had happened for our program. We're up to now over 18,000 kit requests overall. I am doubtful that that would be the case if we hadn't had gotten that surge, just because it rolled in a lot of other directions after that. This whole thing also attracted the attention of a larger scientific community to the Citizen Science Soil Collection Program. It raised awareness. They got press.

A scientific American Discover magazine, a whole host of different publications. did articles within weeks after that Reddit post. So I just kept getting shared and shared and reshared. Which led to more and more soil samples coming into the lab. I think we're up to our, what, 15th freezer now? I don't even know. Yeah, I mean, it's just... We have so many freezers.

More freezers means a lot more Cheerios. Robert and Candice say that when they go to Sam's Club to buy boxes upon boxes of Cheerios now, people make jokes and ask questions. Did you forget the milk? Or your kids really like Cheerios? Jokes aside, the lab's work is making an impact. The Oklahoma City Science Museum has put up an exhibit about the program with big, beautiful photos of fungi, and yep, rotting lunches that they swap out every few weeks.

It's all part of an effort to educate the public about the work the lab is doing with fungi and medicine. And that work could pay off big time. One of these molecules is being developed right now by our lab and our collaborators' laboratories for ewing sarcoma. Ewing sarcoma is a solid tumor affecting the bone of children. There's about 2,500 cases a year, and there's no cure for it. So this molecule that we've been able to pull out from a fungus, it was a soil sample from the Citizen Science Collection from New Jersey. And it turned out this molecule is showing excellent selectivity. for ewing sarcoma, and so it's things like that that we're very excited about.

Yep, a single scoop of soil from New Jersey is leading the way on drug development for ewing sarcoma. And now the potential impact for these soil samples is even greater. All of the fungi from the citizen soil collection are making their way to the National Cancer Institute so that they can incorporate them into their program. But more importantly, this collection is now going to be an open access resource for any disease researcher in the United States. So it's not just our group dealing with them, a sample that comes to us that fungus may end up being studied by dozens of researchers over the next many decades. So we really are thrilled that this is going to be getting to so many hands and just

so many people are going to get value out of it. What does Aden think about all of this? I'll tell you, all advancement in science and technology, you know, medicine, anything you can think of has been done through communication. And here we have this tool. that permits, you know, instantaneous communication through the internet. I completely feel that even if you don't have the intention of creating an effect throughout the world, it can happen and it will go beyond whatever, you know, small goals or whatever you have once other people get a hold of it and attach their own dreams and aspirations to it or desires. It's almost like a church in a way.

For her part, Candace is really glad. she figured out how to use email filters. I have learned filters so good, Ben, after that day. Speaking of email, Robert wrote us an email after our interview. Emery, do you want to read some of it? Yeah, I'm just going to read the end to you. He says this. Part of the reason I think people have participated in the program is that it brings them hope.

Every sample of soil holds the promise of making a difference in people's lives. Those cures might be hiding literally in the soil in your yard and all you need to do is just scoop it up. I think it's pretty good. I think you're pretty good. All right. Oh, now we're going to put it in the storage bag. Okay.

Here, you pull that side. I'll pull this side. All right. We've got to send our lumb in. Our lums got to roam. All the way to Oklahoma. Oh, snap. Storage bag. Stowed.

Okay. And with that, we have completed our soil sample to send to the Citizen Science Soil Collection Program. Say that 10 times fast. Get on, little Mollies. Bye, soil. See you later, soil. Go cure something, will you? Yeah, go cure something.

Okay, we did it. I'm getting cold. Let's get out of here. Yeah, let's go. We are still waiting on the results of our little patch of fungi. rich earth from the park down the street. Yeah, and we'll probably be waiting forever because it didn't actually come from a backyard. But if we do find out anything about it, we'll let you know in a later episode.

And in the meantime, if you want to find out if you have some potentially heroic soil in your backyard, go to our website, wb u.r.org slash endless thread. We've got a link there to request your own soil collection kit from the natural products discovery group. And the best part is you get a little scoop. Just kidding. Best part is they include a return envelope with the postage paid. Oh, yeah, that is good. So just don't fill it up above the line and be sure to get all the air out of the little bag.

Give me a break. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR station, in partnership with Reddit. Our show is a dream realized by Jessica Alpert, who, when we ask if she likes the episode we've put together, she says, W-T-F. Iris Adler is our executive producer, and she makes sure. our stories meet the bar of Mildly interesting.

Mix and sound design by John Parati and Paul Vikas, who whenever we go to record in the field with them, they remind us... Nature is Fli. Our web producer is Megan Kelly, who looks at our attempts at writing web copy and goes... Our intern is Chris Eulian,

who when we put him on a task, he politely says... Hold my beer. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit, and whenever we tell him an idea for an episode, he says... Simpsons did it. Our theme music is by Squelcher. This week's episode art is by Reddit user and artist Sarah Jane McRith.

You can find her work on Instagram at Yo underscore Barra. That's B-E-A-R-A. Or you can find it at barra. Space. Like Sarah, we are also on Reddit. Endless underscore Thread is our username. If you want to contribute art for an upcoming episode or give us a juicy story tip so we can tell that story like we did today, hit us up.

This show was produced by Josh Swartz, Endless Threads, Amory Severson, and me, Senior. producer and host. I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'll let myself out.