Ologies with Alie Ward - Microbiology (GUT BIOME) with Elaine Hsiao

Episode Date: November 27, 2018

LOVE YOUR GUTS. 90% of your serotonin is made in your guts and you have hundreds of trillions of friends clinging to you at all times. Microbiologist Dr. Elaine Hsiao is a total badass who runs her own lab investigating the role of the gut biome in behaviors. She sat down to chat about anxiety, depression, elusive fecal transplants, autism, epilepsy, kombucha promises, autoimmune disorders, probiotics and more. Alie fanned out pretty hard and asked all of the questions about how your beloved, simmering insides affect your brain. It's gut-busting, mind-blowing info.Check out Dr. Elaine Hsiao's lab or follow her on Twitter @pipethero Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologiesOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter or InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter or InstagramMore links at www.alieward.comSound editing by Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

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Okay, microbiology. The workings of alive, tiny little things. You're about to get to know yourself in a way that will shatter how you think of yourself as a beast and as a human. I'm so excited for all of us. Okay, now I had emailed this oligist repeatedly, creepily, over and over for the better part of six months. I thought this would never happen, honestly.

I had pretty much given up hope until we finally found a time we could both sit down in her office on the UCLA campus where she runs her own microbiology lab, also in her office on a couch, a pillow in the shape of the poop emoji, but with hearts for eyes. True story. The oligies Instagram has proof. Seek it out. Okay, so this oligist has authored so many papers about the inner drama and triumphs of the critters that live in our guts and ostensibly make us us.

I am in very unsubtle, very obvious awe of her work. I was freaking out. I was also very sweaty and frazzled because even though I got to campus half an hour early, the parking was a hellscape and I walked into her lab 15 minutes late. Did you do the math on that? Because that means it took me 45 minutes to park. You're correct. So that was mortifying.

But as you will soon discover, she is chill as hell. She wasn't even mad at me. So please pat your belly and let the trillions of tiny invisible friends who control your mind get ready to listen to gut biome expert and microbiologist Dr. Elaine Schau. Once again, I'm sorry that I'm so sweaty. No, no problem. I like to arrive moist to my interview. Just do we.

And what is your title? It's assistant professor in integrative biology and physiology. Oh, a lot of oligies there. I know. I was going to say, do you think that you are molecular biologist, a microbiologist, physiologist? What would you call yourself? I am a crisis oligist.

I do many things. So our work touches on microbiology, but we also use molecular biology approaches. And it also touches on neurobiology. We'll go with microbiology. We're going with microbiology. Because you're like one of those D&D dice with all those different facets. You're like a 20-sided D&D dice, pretty much. Oh, man.

That was too nerdy too soon. When did you decide that biology was for you? Yeah, so I did choose a biology-related major, so I had to make the decision to high school. To be honest, at the time, it wasn't that informed. I wasn't one of those kids that just loved science forever. Nobody in my family does science. I was really into other things like performing arts and music. But I just thought that I had to choose something practical.

And I'd just taken biology in high school, and I thought it was neat. So that's my little choice at that moment. Thankfully, it turned out well, so I stuck with it. And now you have your own lab, which means that you're the boss, which is pretty dope. What was it like? Do they have a ribbon-cutting ceremony? What happens when you get your own lab? There was no ribbon-cutting, basically.

You get faced with an empty space, and then you have your pot of money, and then you just go. There's no instructions on how to set it up, so different labs will have different styles and different structures, so it's really up to you. I mean, that's so boss. It's fun. It's really fun. Did you think when you started out in biology that you would go this far with it, did you

think that you'd be kind of heading operations like this? No, no. Actually, I first decided to enter grad school because I thought that I really enjoyed teaching, and that's all I wanted to do. And in the first half of grad school, I seriously considered dropping out. It was like not doing well. Really? Yeah.

But afterward, things started rolling, and I kind of got the hang of doing research and just really got sucked in, and I really love it now. That's interesting, though, that you were that there was kind of a hump to get over, and then you were like, okay, oh, wow, I'm really good at this. You see people who are so successful in what they do, and you think, oh, it must have just been kind of a straight path. Yeah, not at all for me. But what really kept me in it is that science is a lot of fun.

There's a lot of room for creativity. You get to decide what you want to study, and you get to decide on what the important questions are, and then you get to decide on how you're going to try to answer those questions. So I find that it's really fun. Elaine studied microbiology during undergrad, and at that time, the program's focus was really on the so-called bad bugs that cause infectious disease, but then she became fascinated by the somewhat neglected study of, for drama's sake, we'll just say the good guys, the helpful bugs.

I was just watching this new field develop where more of the focus now is on good bugs rather than bad guys. The bad ones turn out to be super small proportion of all the bacteria that are out there. So yeah, that's how I became interested, is just watching the field develop and wanting to help explore. And so we focus on these bad bugs because they can take us down. But meanwhile, how many things do we have living on and in us? Because there's always that number you hear that's like 10 to 1.

For every cell of yours, there's maybe 10 microorganisms. Is that total bullshit? I mean, no pun intended. The actual numbers are a little bit fuzzy. It gets down to nitty-gritty. It depends on what you count as a cell. So there are some cells that don't have a nucleus. They don't have the DNA that you're thinking of.

If you had to give someone a dinner party estimate of how outnumbered you are, what would you say roughly? I would stick to the 10 to 1. I would actually also just reference the raw number, the actual number that people have found based on sequencing is like 100 trillion bacteria in your gut. Yeah. Just in your gut, what about your nose and your eyes and your hair and your mouth and stuff?

They're everywhere. They're everywhere. So quick aside, why do we call these bacteria bugs anyway? So the etymology of the word bug is ancient Welsh for ghost or goblin, which in this case kind of makes sense. We figure invisible, scary things that can exert mysterious forces on us. I mean, yeah, it tracks. So Elaine is essentially a ghost hunter who's just out looking for caspers.

And so what makes a good bacteria versus a bad bacteria? Yeah. That's a good question. I mean, a very superficial level normal is that they don't actually cause disease. Now people are finding that the bugs that are in and on us, that some of them play really important roles. There's some bugs that help us digest things that we wouldn't otherwise be able to digest. There's no way, like the complicated fibers in your granola bar, there's no way ourselves

could actually digest that ourselves. We rely on bugs to help us do it. So if there are certain foods you can't eat, do you think you just need better bugs? That's a good question. You know, some people are actually studying that and yeah, I think that's an active area of research. Interesting. Okay.

Going back to your research a little bit, was there anything at the intersection of biology and psychology that really intrigued you? How are you studying all these different ways that our stomachs and our guts, our intestines affect our brain? That's nuts. That's so cool. What was it that intrigued you about that? The same thing that you're mentioning is what really sucked me in.

I started grad school not really intending to study bacteria at all. We were studying in my lab. My mentor's name was Paul Patterson at Caltech and he kind of pioneered these animal models for studying autism and also animal models for studying schizophrenia. So we were just studying these really difficult neurological diseases and it was really just noticing that at the time, if I change the microbiome somehow, that these mice started behaving differently. Oh my God.

And it was just like, oh, this is really weird. I can't stop. I'm getting sucked into this. I need to know why. I mean, so we're puppets to a bunch of strangers, friendly strangers that are living like in our colons, essentially. You could put it that way, but the lines are getting blurred. It's like, do you count them as strangers or do you also count them as self?

You know? There's no animals that exist without microbes. So some people prefer to count them as part of yourself. I mean, they're definitely close collaborators. Yeah, definitely. You have to say, well, it's a team effort over here. Definitely. Yeah, I think that's the idea now is that there's this, maybe what people like to say,

like, oh, a co-evolution that we grew together and they do some things and we do some things and it's this symbiosis. Yeah, so it's so bizarre and it also makes you feel never lonely. 100 trillion friends, at least. It's a big party. You're a party bus is what I like to think of it as. Can you explain to me a little bit how the things that are living in your guts, how they affect your brain?

Yeah, that's a great question. At this point, the field is really excited just by, you know, acknowledging that they do affect behaviors. So most of it, this work comes from animal studies. Like if you study mice or rats or flies or fish, if you get rid of the microbiome, then they start behaving differently. Or if you change the microbiome, then they'll behave another way. And now labs are just trying to figure out how that happens.

What are the signals that microbes are sending to us? Are they sending these signals to neurons? Or are they sending these signals that just float around and enter your brain? Or are they sending signals to immune cells? So all of these different possibilities. So they might be putting out some kind of chemical, some kind of signal and your brain's like, Oh, got it. 10-4, I'll do that.

Or they might just be like, pooping out things and our brain is receiving them being like, Oh, I think I'm going to go in this direction. Just from having them pass like a blood brain barrier? Is that how that works? Yeah, exactly. So that's a really good and that's a really good reference that some molecules that bacteria make can cross over, it can get absorbed into the intestine, can get into the bloodstream. And some of them can enter the brain across this blood brain barrier.

I don't even know what a blood brain barrier is. But I just said it because I sounded like I knew what I was talking about. Oh, really? It sounded like I said it was perfect. It was perfect. It's basically that not everything, you know, that's in the bloodstream enters the brain. And so there's this barrier like sandwiches of many cells that are there that kind of, you know, are the gatekeepers of what can enter real quick.

So I looked into this. And so the blood brain barrier is a semi permeable situation that happily lets in water, some gases, glucose, which is delicious, sugary think fuel. And in some cases, like with neurological disease or trauma or inflammation, this blood brain barrier can become more lax, kind of like a bouncer who gets distracted by their phone and starts admitting douchebags like toxoplasmosis, Lyme causing bacteria, syphilis and other party runners. So you want the blood brain barrier alert and only letting in those folks on your guest list.

Oof. Okay. So when you're looking at human beings, are you like we are all maybe a little bit off of our rockers just gently because our diets are maybe so different than they would be in the wild? Is there a really big correlation? Like the fact that we're eating honey crisps for breakfast and like a venti-frap for lunch, like is that really screwing us over a lot?

So that's also a huge area of study in microbiome work. And other scientists have done these huge, amazing studies. So for example, there's one Maria Domingos Bellows and Rob Knight and a bunch of their colleagues where they sampled microbiomes from indigenous tribes of, you know, people that have not had any exposure to any, you know, modern medicine or our normal, you know, what we consider Western lifestyles. And they basically find that they have these extremely diverse, super rich microbiomes with bugs that are there that are not seen in any people here in the US, at least that they sample.

And so there's this idea that maybe we've lost the diversity of microbes over time through things like our lifestyle and practices, our hygiene practices here. And that maybe it's a bad thing that could contribute to more like chronic diseases. Is there any truth that our serotonin is made largely in our intestines? Yeah, absolutely. So that work was from Michael Gershaw and he first published this finding that about 90% of the body's serotonin is made from gut cells. 90%?

Yes. That's so many numbers. That's so much. It's made in our guts. It's just simmering in these big hoses full of poop down there. Yeah. Well, the gut is so cool. It's not just a container.

It's really important that they hold poop. But they're really cool. There's actually a lot of neurons that are in there maybe like five times more than in the spinal cord. Whoa. Yeah. There's a lot of neurons that, you know, are there. It's one of the few organs that if you take it, if you sever it from the brain,

it can work by itself. Yeah. Oh my God. Okay. So if 90% of your serotonin is made in your gut, what cells are pumping it out? Or is it the bacteria that are pumping it out? So there are these endocrine cells that are basically cells that are in the gut lining. And their role is to make lots of serotonin and some hormones.

So they do things like control your appetite when you get full, when you feel nauseous, things like that. And yeah, what we found a couple years ago is that bacteria are really important for communicating with these cells to control how much serotonin is being made and released. Oh my God. My colon is blowing my mind right now. Do you ever look at the way that we treat depression and anxiety? And are you ever on the sidelines being like, you're doing it wrong?

We wonder how much the gut plays a role, even in side effects. So it's known that anti-depressants have a lot of GI-related side effects. It's important to study how the systems interact. That being said, there are dedicated neurons in the brain that make the remaining 10% of serotonin of the body. And those are really important for depression too. But gosh, that sounds like when you think someone's the boss and then you find out that like their assistant does all the work.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. If you could just go ahead and make sure you do that from now on, that would be great. Because you think the brain thinks for the serotonin, you're doing your job. But downstairs is just a serotonin factory. Yeah. Yay.

How does serotonin even make us happy? Yeah. Okay. That's a really good question. So in the brain, serotonin is a really important neurotransmitter. And it's only made from certain neurons. So very select few of neurons make it. And so it's thought that the serotonin will activate these circuits that are really important

for things like reward and happiness. And yeah, that's how people think that works. And so with antidepressants, there's this way that when serotonin gets secreted, it'll get recycled and it'll get taken up by the cell that secreted it. And so antidepressants will block that reuptake. So basically, you've got more outside that will just keep activating the circuit. And it's thought that's how antidepressants help boost activity of these reward and things, circuits that make you happy ultimately.

And are animals or people who are depressed, do they have less serotonin than people who maybe aren't depressed? I think that's one thing that could happen. I feel like there's probably many different pathways that contribute to depression. But yeah, decreases in serotonin are associated. Man, I feel like you're going to look back. We're all going to look back and be like, oh my gosh, it was so obvious. Like what caused certain things?

You know, when you look back at medical practices of yore and you're like, that's horrifying. How did we do that? Yeah, that might be that might apply with the vehicle transplants right now. Maybe like, remember the days you couldn't go to like a Jiffy loo type of a situation where you just pop in, I'm just going to pop in for a quick feak trans. You're like, okay. When you describe your job to someone who's never met you,

how do you talk about it? Like, what do you say that you do? Yeah, that's a good question. I would probably give a boring answer about, you know, how I'm a professor. I run a research lab and I teach. But to lab members, I often tell them that I'm the hype person of their work. They make really cool findings. I communicate the findings.

I pitch the findings to try to get more funding for their work. And so I'm kind of the hype person for what they discover. Your job is just so fascinating. I mean, you know that I have been kind of mildly stalking you on e-mail for a long time. I'm like, hi, can we record? Hi, can we record? I'm just like so fascinated by this field. But how do you kind of describe the importance of what you do to people?

That is a really good question because I'm still not good at it. Usually, you know, when you're on an airplane and you have like the couple minutes to talk, I'll give an explanation that I'll just shut down the conversation. Okay, but let me think of a cooler way, maybe taking recommendations. Maybe one way I should explain it is that we study how gut bugs control brains. So allow me to be the hype man for the hype man. But holy actual shit, Elaine's studies have involved some truly wonderful and very important things like the microbiomes affect on neurotransmitters, how it relates to autism,

and even how the microbiome can affect seizure occurrence in epilepsy. It's big stuff. The most recent stuff we are studying is really whether we could use microbes to replace dietary effects on the nervous system. So we chose this diet, you may know the ketogenic diet. It's kind of a fad diet right now, but it's been used for almost 100 years to treat epilepsy. So side note, this ketogenic diet is high fat and very, very low carb, like max 30 grams a day or lower, depending on how you do it.

And your frame of reference may be Joe Rogan proselytizing like a shredded pastor, or maybe you have a coworker who just like drops a dollop of coconut oil in her coffee and only eats the toppings off of a pizza. But research shows that keto can reduce seizure occurrences by half, in half of the patients, and a third of patients report up to a 90% reduction in seizure frequency, which is huge. But it can be hard to stick to, especially for kids who are already struggling with epilepsy and just want a freaking apple or a piece of birthday cake. So Elaine explains.

So in kids that don't respond to normal medications that are out there as a last resort treatment, they'll often get enrolled in the hospital and put through this really severe diet. And so we wondered if we could study whether the microbiome changes and whether the microbiome is important for how the diet decreases seizures. And so, yeah, our most recent findings were basically, yes, the microbiome changes. And we could pick out the very specific bacteria that basically replace the diet in terms of protecting against seizures. Yeah.

So instead of doing the diet, would you maybe be able to increase that proportion of microbes to affect seizures? That's the idea. The caveat is we've done that all in mouse first to start. Who knows if it'll work in people, but that's the pie in the sky. Is that we'll either be able to have, say, a very specific probiotic or a companion treatment to help the diet work better, or even the extreme version of this if we can have this type of treatment replace the diet entirely so that people can cheat or be on normal diets,

but still get the same kind of effect. And then what about microbes and gut flora and autism? Yeah, that was actually my grad work. So now we're going to kind of my first works in the microbiome field. The reason I got into the microbiome is I became really intrigued by this finding that some cases of autism are correlated with lots of GI abnormalities. So some kids with autism have severe GI abnormalities, not all of them, but some of them. And in the models that I was studying in the lab, I was seeing the same thing, that there are also

GI abnormalities that are seen with the behavioral changes too. And so I wondered whether we can use microbes to correct these GI problems. And if so, what happens to the behaviors? Okay, this news is exciting as heck. Just buckle up your guts. We ultimately found that if we change the microbiome, we could correct some of the behavioral problems. Where do you go from there in maybe mouse studies to humans? I mean, that's huge news.

It's really exciting for the fundamental biology. I always like to keep it temper my enthusiasm, where a lot of things that are found in animals don't translate well to humans. So there's a big gap there, but I think it inspires more work to be done. So if we do a good job on studying mechanisms in animals, then we can justify studying kind of similar pathways in humans and maybe doing some safety trials to see whether the microbiome related treatments we tested in animals are also safe and effective in humans. And what was the mechanism in terms of the autism or the epilepsy that

told the brain to work a little bit differently? Yeah, so we don't have all the answers. But what is really cool is that a lot of gut bacteria have this unique chemistry that they can make biochemicals that our body doesn't normally have. And so we became really interested in what, for the diet story, what are the microbes doing with these components from the diet and what do they make that's unique? And similarly, in the autism story, we also were looking at in this context, what do microbes make, what do their molecules do to neurons, things like that.

So they may have been making certain chemicals that made neurons fire differently? Absolutely. Yeah. So in the epilepsy work, we think that they were metabolizing molecules that ultimately restricted GABA, which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. So GABA is this molecule in the brain that neurons use usually to silence activity. So we were seeing that these microbes were controlling brain levels of this molecule that is like telling neurons to quiet down. And we think that's what's helping with seizures. So the dietary change upped the GABA in the brain and reduced seizures. Okay, now what about autism? Elaine says that they found at least one molecule produced by

a certain bacteria that, at least in the mousey models in their experiments, was abnormally high and which they suspect can affect neurons in a way that influences behavior. Details are still fuzzy, but where the work is leading is really promising. So potentially very life changing, all because someone had the sense to think, I wonder if these trillions of tiny animals living in my intestines are sending messages to my brain loathe. When you have people who are looking at your work and they're like, boy, howdy, hot damn, that's a big deal. And then we go to the store and we're like, it whole foods in the probiotic aisle being like, which one of these will make me less depressed?

Is there any advice or any correlation or is it a kind of a bunch of flim flam? Oh man, those are the hardest questions to answer because on the one hand, I believe in the promise of probiotics and what bacteria can do. But on the other hand, the stuff that's on the shelves in the supermarket, they weren't rigorously tested to treat disease or to be anything more than nutritional supplements, I think. And also some of those probiotics have bugs that are not native to the body. So there are things that came from dairy or fermented foods, which are really different from bugs that are normally in the body. So yeah, those are so hard. I can't even advise on which ones work or not. I did take one before just to see if I felt

any differently and I didn't. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't work. There are some people that respond really well to them, especially some people that experience GI problems or have intestinal disease. Probiotics could help. So the bad news is that despite the 32 billion dollars we citizens of earth spend yearly on probiotics, they may not be effective. I read one report in the Annals, the Annals of Internal Medicine, that certain shelved brands of probiotics can be harmful to folks who already have shaky flora to begin with. And there was a recent New York Times article that noted that the studies are almost all low quality, small in size and are usually funded by companies with significant conflicts of interest. So in terms of shelved probiotics,

see what works for you. Some do work for some people. And more importantly, maybe eat a lot of fruits and veggies because that is feeding the good bugs. So maybe your mouth is like, cabbage. We are not friends. But your gut flora is just losing its mind with excitement. Like you just walked in with a tray of fireball shots and clever nutters. Cabbage, salad, it's party o'clock for those little motherfuckers. I feel like this is just a new field that's just cracked open and we're all peering in being like, what's going to happen? This is amazing because we just never we never even looked at any kind of psychological or mental health issues. We never really looked at those like a holistic, like a full body situation. Yeah, exactly. It's so cool to think that we're

all here when this field was born, you know, like it was only maybe 10 years ago that people even were able to name the bacteria that were in the body and the majority of them, no one knows anything about what they do. And so now, now is the time it was just born and people got to get in that people have to get in on this to study it. I feel like you're kind of like a cosmologist of butts, like there's so many stars in the universe. And then there's so many things we don't know happening every day. I mean, not a butt specifically, but it's like this unknown that's so important to us. But when it comes to anxiety and depression, because we've talked about autism and epilepsy, when it comes to anxiety and depression, how does gut flora affect

those? People are really interested in that a lot of anxiety and depression is also comorbid with GI problems. And so some people are really curious about whether we could use microbes to correct GI problems and influence, you know, these disorders right now in animals. Again, they always like to like distinguish like in animals, we can clearly see that behaviors that are related to anxiety and depression seem to be changed when we change the microbiome. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm trying to contain myself. But again, I can't, it's not always a one to one from a mouse is not a human. Yeah. So what kind of things are these mice doing? Are they just like scrolling on social media too long and like, like talking about their

ex-boyfriends too much? I mean, everyone is at this party and probably my ex is like with a new girlfriend who probably has a way longer tail than me. Mine is so short and stumpy. No one will ever mate with me. I'll never have a litter of 40 babies, some of which I might eat. Okay, for reals though, what do anxious mice really do? There's a lot of really cool behavior tasks that you could put them through. They're pretty benign is just, you know, for one common anxiety task is just to put them in a box. Usually they'll just, you know, kind of be scared and be around the edges of the box and after a while go and venture into the center. So that's kind of what people measure as an anxiety related behavior. And when you treat them with SSRIs or anxiety

drugs, you can see that they change the duration of time that they spend along the edge versus the center. Yeah, they're actual wall flowers. Who knew that was a thing? Yeah, let's get down to the nitty gritty of your work. So you have a stuffed poop emoji sitting next to me. How much of what you do is cultured matter from our bodies or other people's bodies? Where are you getting them? How do you keep track of them? Yeah, so we do usually start with poop itself. So we'll often take either even like human poop or we usually start with animal models and we'll sequence. You will, you know, for example, in the diet study, we take mice, we put them on the ketogenic diet, and then we sequence off of their poop to see how the microbiome changed. And once we get some

interesting hits from that sequencing, then we might get like very specific species and culture them in the lab. And those you can usually buy from a culture collection, like there are companies like nationwide or country specific culture collections for bacteria. Really? Yeah. I didn't like a catalog of bugs you could just flip through? Yes. Like that. You're like, I'll take a lactobacillicus or whatever. Exactly, exactly. And you just buy them and we can grow them in the lab. And so when it comes to sequencing, what happens when you're sequencing things but you they're unknown species? Yeah, so sometimes that happens. And what you can do is keep tabs on those what those sequences are. And then you just kind of consider them as unknown or like new

species when you analyze them. Okay. But that's a big problem too, is that not everything has been identified. How many different species do we have in our guts? People say that across humans that over 1000 different species have been identified from the from the microbiomes. Yeah. Do you get tripped out by microbiology at all? Like, are you when you touch a keypad at CVS or something? Are you like, what am I touching? Are you like, you know what, the more the merrier. When you study microbiology, you realize that there are a lot of bugs that are just normal and that it won't it won't kill you to be exposed. That maybe some of them are really important for educating your immune system. So exposing yourself is not that bad. Of course, you don't want to take it to

an extreme. There are things that I would not do. Like, don't lick the door. Yeah. What do you think of the hygiene hypothesis? Just a side note. So this is a theory proposed by British epidemiologist David Straken in 1989. P.S. he might pronounce that strachan and I'm sorry. But essentially, this theory says that the rates of autoimmune conditions and allergies have gone up in Western cultures because of sanitation and antibiotics and smaller family size means exposure to less diverse microflora. Also, Western cultures have something called low orophical burden. And I Google that with one eye closed for safety. And yeah, it means what you think it means less poo in our mouth. So the hygiene hypothesis has also been called a few different things. It's

been called the biome depletion theory and the lost friends theory, which just produced a melange of feelings in me. Like you're sick with autoimmune disease possibly because you've lost a bunch of your friends because you grew up with less poo in your mouth, which is sad and disgusting and also adorable all at once. I think it's really interesting. Yeah, this idea that you should encourage your kids to go play in the dirt so that exposure to microbes helps educate your immune system and protect from chronic diseases. I think, yeah, I think that's really interesting. I haven't seen anything that is outright refuted that idea, only things that have kind of supported it. So we're maybe a little too clean for our own good. When you look at big population wide studies,

definitely you could see that we're really good at treating infectious diseases. So historically that rates of infectious disease have gone down, but rates of chronic diseases like, you know, metabolic diseases, diabetes and obesity and multiple sclerosis, things like that, have gone up. There's a different problem now that's not infection. So people wonder whether it's this or too clean for our own good. Wow, like it feels like whack-a-mole with diseases. I could get one and then another pops up. Yeah. What is the correlation between multiple sclerosis and gut biome? I did want to ask that because my mom has MS. Super quick. If you're not sure what MS is, I'm going to do a PSA right now because my mom has it and I want people to

know more about it. So it stands for multiple sclerosis and it's a neurological condition in which your immune system wants to be so helpful by attacking things, but it goes for the myelin sheaths around your nerves and myelin is kind of like the rubber around an electrical cord. So imagine if your roommate in trying to clean house was like, great news. I stripped all of the electrical cords. So we got a bunch of raw spots now. I cleaned them and you're like, well, no, actually, that was unnecessary. And now the lights keep flickering and there's a fire in the kitchen. Please calm down. So for my family, treatments and possible cures for MS would be aces. Thank you to anyone out there who's working on that. Now, if you're not affected by MS, this info is important

too because chances are that you or someone you know is affected by an autoimmune disease and has an immune system that somehow got jolted up and is cleaning attacking things that you don't want it to. So if you know someone with an autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis or hair loss or psoriasis or lupus, type one diabetes, celiac, this inflammation and autoimmune disease is of interest. First, people were studying how the microbiome interacts with immune system because there's a situation where, you know, if you've got 100 trillion bacteria in the gut, how do we keep them in check? And the way that we do that, it's that, you know, about 80% of your body's immune cells are right there. And it's this boundary where there's like microbes talking to

the immune cells and immune cells always surveying what's going on. And so, yeah, out of these really pioneering microbiome immune studies, people found that that you could use certain microbes to control basically inflammatory responses. So there are these cells called T cells that in MS, they infiltrate the brain and people think that it causes some of the damage. T cells that are super reactive that are hyper reactive enter the brain and start attacking myelin on neurons. And so, yeah, in these early microbiome studies, people found that if you temper, if you use microbes to quiet down those T cells, then you can kind of ameliorate the MS symptoms. Is that used in any kind of therapy at this point? Or are we still so far off?

I think people are developing that. So I know people are taking that to human studies. And so, I'm not sure how far along it is right now in what, you know, phase of trials, but it is being developed. So if we very, very highly suspect that the microbiome is involved, what kinds of illnesses are being treated through restoring a healthier one like to a doctor? Not as much as you'd hope yet. The only thing right now that can be treated with microbiome is C difficile infection. So an intestinal infection. That's the only thing that currently is being treated with these fecal transplant. Yes. We wanted to get there. That was on my list. I mean, I had so many patrons that asked about it. And it was like, I'm going to be on my list. Because I feel like

there's just like, oh, like a golden cure that's a poop transplant, but it's not legal yet. And it seems like it's a bit frowned upon. But yeah, can you run me through? What is a fecal transplant? Yeah. So it is, it is legal for C diff infection. So in this infection, basically there are some people, they'll get this basically opportunistic pathogen. So this bug that's normally in a lot of us, but can turn bad in certain situations and then cause intestinal disease. And usually the first line of treatment is antibiotics. But what ends up happening is you clear out all these good bugs with antibiotics, and then you just make space for C diff to grow more if you didn't clear it out completely. And so the disease can often people will get recurrences. So in that case, what ends up

being one of the most effective treatments is this fecal transplants is basically will clear everything out and then repopulate with a whole new community. How is that actually done? Yes. So it's much better now. So before I think that you would actually have to find a donor, usually someone in your household, and you'd go in and the donor would poop, and then you would get an enema of what they gave. That was the treatment. Nailed it. Now there are more controlled, you know, materials to transplant with. So you can buy from a company that really rigorously screens what was in there and what's being transplanted and make they make sure that it's safe. And so the doctor can either buy

the liquid material or they could have capsule versions. So I started looking into this and I think I think this is a prescription formula with a very romantic name called VSL number three, which has nothing to do with PSLs, pumpkin spice lattes, or going number three, if you know what I mean, though it does help with it. And in one newspaper of India, it was reported that this could help the condition of Lucy's, which is a word I will never forget, no matter how hard I try. Anyway, VSL number three has shown some potential as a clinical remedy for maladies such as ulcerative colitis and irritable bowel. So it's legally called medical probiotic food, which is perhaps a more palatable administration than say some other methods. So you could either take a series of like

several capsules in a row, or what works better is if you get that enema basically. Do they have to make sure that you're pretty much clear of the bad ones? So do you have to take a ton of antibiotics first? Yeah, I think so. You take antibiotics first to clear out, and then you immediately transfer it. What do you think about people who are doing it just Pinterest DIY style? I've seen that. I mean, it's really dangerous. Who knows what, you know, if I, if I wouldn't, you wouldn't know what's in it until you sequence it and really test it. And now that people are studying the microbiome so deeply and finding like neurological things that are related or metabolic or chronic diseases that are related, you don't want to be in the

situation where you cured your C. diff, but then you predisposed yourself for other diseases in the long run. You know, yeah. So I would recommend not doing it at home. But I can see that, you know, people are eager to try since, since currently you can only use that treatment for this one intestinal disease. Yeah, I wonder if that's going to change in the future. He'll be like, okay, we let, we let IBS in, okay, we let arthritis in or, you know, just different, different ailments will get the pass for it, you know. Yeah, I wonder too, or, you know, alternatively, people are trying to, you know, parse out the transplant material into just the select bugs that are important. And maybe you'll just have cleaner capsule versions for each of these diseases or yeah.

Is that slurry of fecal transplant that doctors obtain? Is that from a donor base? It's from donors. Yeah, heavily screened professional poopers. Who are they? Good question. I'm, I'm not sure, but I think you can make a good living off of it. I bet you can. Because I mean, you'd have to be even better than a sperm donor, I feel like, like you'd have to make sure that you had the best BMS ever. Right. Look up their salary. I bet it's pretty good, maybe more than the doctors, you know. Okay, Citizens of Planet Earth, you're welcome. I Google this for you. So a Boston area non-profit stool bank called Open Biome does collect fecal donations to help treat patients of severe

microbiome imbalance like a C. diff intestinal infection. And they pay 40 bucks a stool, which in terms of extra income is more than just a drop in the bucket. And you can donate as many times a day as you are productive. So each contribution can potentially help up to five patients in case you're looking for not just some income from your outcome, but also some good ass karma and some good ass karma. But don't get your hopes too up there. One spokesperson quoted in the New York Times, dropped the knowledge that only 3% of screened applicants are accepted as being perfect poopers. So that means statistically it is twice as easy to get into Harvard than to get money for your waste. Now, I had to lob one question at her regarding a very

serious situation that happened to me recently. I have a personal question that the something that happened to me last week, and I'm glad I'm sitting down with you because there's probably no one who could better educate me. I dropped my wallet in a Starbucks toilet. It was flushed. But I was like, I, there was a moment where I was like, I don't know what to do. Do I just, do I just cut and run? So I grabbed it out of the toilet with a bunch of tissue and then I washed my hands forever. And then I like sprayed bleach on it. And then I bleached everything in there. But like, am I going to die? No, that's exactly what I would have done. I probably would I would have fished it out and just, you know, washed it with soap. The bleach will do it for

sure. That's what we use to decontaminate things in the lab. Okay, I did. I sprayed everything with like a bleach solution afterward and that wallet is now in the garbage. But I was like, what do you do? And then I thought, well, you know what, maybe this will be good for me. Yeah, no, no, no, not good for me. Oh my God, what a horror. And so is there anything that's kind of on your list that you want to study next, like any particular angle that you really want to go for? Yeah, we have a lot of things going on in the lab. I mean, at the end of it, what we really want to study is how is the microbiome doing so many things to behavior? What are the molecules? What is the pathway? You know, what's the cascade of events that's happening

to allow them to do things like that. And we study these mechanisms in lots of contexts. So one context is I mentioned epilepsy. Another context that we're really interested in is neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. We are interested in depression too. And then otherwise, some other people in the lab study more the nitty gritty of like, we don't care what disease it is, but I'm just going to study how do microbes communicate or signal to neurons and what, how many different messages can be sent in this manner. So right now you have tiny critters just gabbing over your influx of morning coffee, like doughy old men gossiping in a park over a chess set. Now, who funds this microbiome research? Do pharmaceuticals fear the day when

we can get good poo for free to fix all of our problems? So funding, Elaine says, comes from some federal sources. And the National Institute of Health, even the Department of Defense, want to study the mental and physical health of deployed personnel. The EPA is even getting it on the action, figuring out how environmental toxins can make our microbiomes take a hit. So there are, of course, more intentional bacterial wipeouts out there. Now, what about all the antibiotics that we take just for everyday things? Like, you know, you have a sinus infection, whatever. We take those and they save a lot of lives. But what are they doing to our microbiome? Yeah. So antibiotics are not specific. They're broad spectrum. So they'll kill, you know, the bad bugs, but they'll also

kill off your microbiome too. And so after you're on antibiotics, then you basically need to repopulate your microbes will grow back and repopulate your body basically. So this is like the cops coming in and shutting down your party because there are a few obnoxious guests, like even your trusted pals tossed out the door. Cops are like, I don't care if she was your maid of honor and is cleaning up empty cups. That guy over there is wrapping along the sublime and getting the dog high. Everyone is out. And so people are really interested in how do you control this? How do you get them to repopulate correctly back to healthy state rather than into some alternate, like poor microbiome state? Yeah. How do you do that? Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, nobody really considers that. One question

is whether, you know, maybe after a course of antibiotics, should we be considering taking, you know, probiotic to replenish or transplants to replenish the microbiome correctly? People are considering the same idea for C-sections, for example. If you have C-section babies, they end up not being exposed the same types of microbes. And does that mean we should inoculate them immediately so they do grow a normal microbiome? Yeah, what happens? Because if you're squeezing out of the V, I imagine you probably get a little something from the back door on you and you're like, thanks, mom. And she's like, I couldn't help it, but enjoy. But if you, C-section, you skip all that. So do they swab babies with a little bit of poo or what happens?

Yeah, right now I don't think it's normal practice in the U.S. But in some other countries, I think it is normal to kind of, you know, swat the baby in mom's stuff. Stuff? Stuff. Miscellaneous items, things with possessive personal effects. Pesticrations, yeah. Just like a little dabbledoo, yeah. And yeah, how do you interact with kind of pop or spa science when you see articles on like Goop or Instagram products that are like, this tea will restore your whole microflora. Yeah. Are you like, that's a little true? Or are you like, oh my god, how dare you? I mean, what grad school and science trained you to do is be skeptical of anything and everything. So that's my default. If you could give one tip to people about how to build a good microbiome,

would it be just like, don't wash your vegetables as much if they're organic? Like, how do we do it without running through Whole Foods and spending a bunch of money? I think what is safe to say, hopefully, this is not just more of what we already knew is that you could eat a diversity of different fibers to feed all of the different types of microbes in your gut. So gut bacteria have food preferences too. So if you just keep eating that same thing, then you might only be feeding some bugs and not others. And so many diverse things. Wow. I never thought about that. I read that Martha Stewart eats the same bagel, same bagel sandwich every morning. She's got a diverse of her gut bacteria.

Do a sequencing study. I know. They're just like, it's the bacteria that like a bagel with a slice of onion or whatever it is. I swear to gut that I read this somewhere. And I just want you to know, I spent over an hour while on semi vacation in Hawaii, sitting on a porch with slow as fuck Wi-Fi, trying to fact check this. And now I think I just hallucinated it because I can't find it anywhere. But I did learn that every morning, Ina Garten eats the same coffee and an oatmeal and Mariah Carey's diet consists of just two items, Norwegian salmon and capers. Now Martha Stewart apparently has the same cappuccino with whole milk and a green smoothie every morning. And it involves spinach,

celery, parsley, mint and a piece of fruit, either a pear, a mango or a papaya. She said, it's very good juice. Everybody loves the juice. Okay, we get it Martha. You like juice. But honestly, the woman has been in prison. Let her eat as many bagels as she wants. So really a diversity of foods and probably maybe that's a little bit why we feel better if we're eating a lot of fruits and vegetables. Yeah, diversity of fibers mainly is what they, carbs basically is what they eat. I want complex carbs.

Do you ever notice that if you eat terrible food that you feel kind of grouchy for a couple days? I do. It's so good in the moment. And then afterward it's just I'm worse. Can we do a rapid fire round? Yeah, let's do it. All right. These are questions from listeners. They were so pumped. They're so excited. Okay. But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners, we're going to take a quick

break for sponsors of the show. Sponsors, why sponsors? You know what they do? They help us give money to different charities every week. So if you want to know where oligies gives our money, you can go to alleyword.com and look for the tab, oligies gives back. There's like 150 different charities that we've given to already with more every single week. So if you need a place to go donate a little bit of money, but you're not sure where to go, those are all picked biologists who work in those fields. And this ad break allows us to give a ton of money to them. So thanks for listening and thanks sponsors. Okay. Your questions. One of the most frequent questions I got, which really surprised me by how many times I got this

question, I got it by probably 20 people and I will read their names very quickly in an aside. Lydia McGinnis, Tyler, Beth Frosto, Lisa Tang, Mark Larson, McKenna Hopwood, Serene Carraga, Jamie Katananch, Kennedy and Tony Thompson. Is kombucha really worth all the hype? What's the deal with kombucha? Can kombucha actually be helpful? So many kombucha questions. Oh man. Okay. These are hard. I mean, in general, I think that I've only seen positive things, if not neutral things about fermented foods. So kombucha included fermented drink. So I think it's definitely doesn't seem harmful. And if anything, it could only help.

Yeah. Okay. It's yeast. It's a fungus antibacteria, right? Yeah. That being said, a lot of people make their own kombucha at home. So you've got to be careful that you keep the culture clean. Because sometimes there are these rare cases of growing, you know what, the scoby, what it stands for. Okay. So a scoby stands for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. And it looks like a beige, flabby, slimy disc that feels and texture what I imagine preserved dolphin skin might feel like. And after finding a feathery brown thing in my store bought kombucha, I thought I'd do a science. And now I have grown it and it is sloshing around in a large jar in one of my kitchen cabinets. It's just growing larger and larger and probably

more sentient by the hour. Now, if you smell them, I would say a scoby has kind of an acrid musk, which I imagine is similar to the groin of an ox. But they brew some great fizzy yummy stuff. It's kind of tastes like a mix between a Snapple and a PBR. And I mean that in a good way. Looks kind of gross. Oh no. I trust me. I have grown them and they're like a big slimy pancake in a jar. It's more frightening than the things we grow in the lab is a scoby. But yeah, there's certain cases, I think rare cases where they got contaminated with maybe pathogen and it was like really made people sick. Be careful with your scoby. Okay. Good to know. So probably couldn't help unless you got, unless you get a bad apple. Yeah. And so many people asked Al Martinez of Forest,

Craig Curry, also Henry Strong, Christopher and Brewer, Ryan Moore, Athena Bellastrari, Caitlin Donald and Sarah Wells. Everyone was like, do store-bought probiotics do anything? Yeah. I think that it's another case like for certain people, they seem to really help, especially people that have GI problems or intestinal diseases that it seems like they can help. Actually, there's one case that of a medical grade probiotic for intestinal diseases that truly seems to help and your doctor prescribes it. The aforementioned spy name sounding. Okay. Another Patreon question. Pia Foxall asked, what is the weirdest thing you've learned about how the gut microbiome influences us so far? Oh, weirdest thing. Let me think.

None of it seems weird now because we study it so deeply. I mean, I think one thing, it's not super weird, but we're really interested in this idea that that gut bacteria can control these neurons that connect. Basically, they touch your gut and they extend directly in the brain. And so that's weird idea that there's like this long telephone where gut bacteria can send these molecules and control messages that are being sent up to the brain. So that's one thing that I think is really cool, maybe kind of weird. Cool. Is that the vagus nerve? The vagus nerve, yes. I mean, so from what I understand, this is how I envision it, which is probably wrong. There's like a nerve, like a cordy thread

fiber that just hangs out from your brain to your stomach. And it's just like a, remember those mnemonic tubes where they would send like bank tellers would send checks through. And it's just like that, but with feelings. And I know that that's not right. But what exactly is that vagus nerve? No, I mean, that's pretty close. It's a bundle of neurons. On one end, it touches your brain stem. On the other end, it touches a bunch of different organs. And so there are the fibers that extend to the intestine too. And they are bidirectional. So you can send messages up, some of them relay messages up into the brain and other neurons relay in the other direction from brain back to the gut. And so yeah, that's how they work. Oh my God,

that's so weird. What happens if they sever that? Yeah, a lot of things. It's so, so animals, one of having behavioral problems. This has actually been done, I think, historically in people too, is vagotomies. Yeah. I don't know what the original indication was, but there are other outcomes from it. Yeah. So vagotomies. All right, I look this up. And animals with damaged vagus nerves can gain weight even with super restricted diets because the signaling that turns off energy storage and turns on burned energy gets whack. So yes, and in humans, this can lead to increased insulin and increased fat storage. So vagus nerve, important. Vegas, baby. Vegas. I'm guessing they don't do those anymore? I don't think so. I mean,

that's another thing where, you know, they used to be like, someone acting up, give them a lobotomy. Yeah. You know, I think we'll look back on the way that we treat mental illness as like, oh man, we really did that wrong. Yeah. So anonymous Bob wants to know, which by the way, anonymous, you said your name was Bob. So anonymous Bob. Hi, Bob. Okay. But difference between pro and prebiotics. Yeah. What's the difference? Probiotics is where you have the actual cultured bacteria, the bacteria. And then prebiotics is related to what I was mentioning before, where different bacteria have different food preferences. So prebiotics often have very specific types of fibers basically that will feed a certain type of bacteria. So prebiotics is giving food that

will enrich a particular bacterium. And then probiotics is where you give the bacterium itself. It's so cute to think of our little bacteria as like little fish that we have to feed. You know what I mean? Like I'm going to sprinkle you some prebiotics. I hope you like it. Yeah. And we do that with our diet all the time. And I guess it's so interesting too that we're like, oh, it's good to eat a lot of fiber. And part of that might be just to feed all of our little dudes and ladies. And I mean, they're asexual. Let's see. Todd McLaren wants to know, do various microbes have a form of brain? Oh, that's an interesting question. So they don't have a brain, of course. They don't have any organs or the single cells. But they can still

do really cool things. They have behaviors. They don't have an official brain though. But they can still do stuff. Yeah. And have preferences. Yeah. Evidently. They're like, I love a rutabaga. Tom Meyer says, to what extent is a septic system an extension of our digestive system? A septic repair person told me some things that sort of blew my mind. Really? And I was like, oh my God. Oh my gosh, I want to know because I have no clue how to answer this. Look this up. And again, you're welcome. Yes. True stuff. So in a 2015 paper entitled, Sewage Reflects the Microbiomes of Human Populations, researchers reported that, quote, the distribution patterns reflected human population variation and predicted whether

samples represented lean or obese populations with, get this, an 81 to 89% accuracy. Scientists can analyze sewers and figure out whether or not the population is lean or obese. That is how involved with your body, your microflora is. So just think behind your walls, under your feet, every murky pipeline tells your story. Julie Noble, Heather Wills, and ironically someone with the last name Brewer, wants to know how alcohol affects gut bacteria. Oh, okay. That's also a really interesting one. I mean, in general, in the lab, we'll use certain alcohols to basically decontaminate things. So we think that, you know, particular alcohols will probably kill bacteria. But I'm not sure. I feel like these

studies must be underway now is what people are looking at is how like sequencing studies or something in response to drinking. Yeah, I don't know the outcome. So right, I imagine if you're drinking a lot of Everclear on Friday night, that maybe your gut bacteria is like, oh, no. Yeah. Why are you doing this to me? That's interesting. Ariel asks, have you investigated these gut brain interactions in species with different types of digestive systems? I'm thinking specifically of ruminants who have such a rich gut microbiome. And if that plays a role similar to what you've seen in humans and mice. Oh, yeah. So as a field, my lab doesn't study ruminants. We mainly study animals and or mice. And sometimes we'll get human microbiomes to study.

But there are definitely labs that do study ruminant microbiomes. And it's really cool. As a grad student, I did one rotation through a termite lab studying termite microbiomes. And basically what allows termites to digest wood is the microbes that are that they have. So yeah, I think studying microbiomes across species is really cool and will be important. That is interesting because ruminants, I got a whole other, they have so much work to do, they're like, we got so much cellulose. Gotta break this stuff down. Kathy Arnell says, okay, gross one for me. What is the culprit of the intensely grotesque smell that emanates from my hubby's time in the bathroom? And she says, I'm not talking about the average smelly poo,

but the kind that drives you from the room. No discernible pattern happens five to six times a month. I believe that his biome is whack. Oh, wow. I have no clue. I mean, normally, this would be like methane gas or something. But if it's unusual, there are other, actually, there are microbiomes that are being studied that make this molecule that underlies the like fishy, foul fishy odor. So maybe there's microbes that could be related there. And in general, people are really interested in how microbes can make molecules with different odors and like where the microbes make chemicals that are basically like olfactory cues. Oh, wow. So they might be telling other microbes by stinking a certain way inside us. They might be

telling other microbes to do certain things. Yeah, that they actually, yeah, kind of are determinants of different sense. And so there are some labs that are also studying microbiomes on the skin and maybe that they can make olfactory chemicals that influence how likely you get bitten by a mosquito. Yeah. Oh, that's nuts. Let's see. Tyler Q wants to know, was it true that your gut influences what you want to eat more than your brain does? I'm not, I think that's a really cool question, but nobody has really shown it definitively. I'm really interested in that too, since if microbes have food preferences, I'm really interested in micro food preferences influence my food preferences. Yes, I haven't seen anyone show

that yet. Okay, so quick aside, I watched this documentary on Vimeo. It's a short documentary called Gut Hack, and it's about noted bio hacker Josiah Zaners, quote, grueling and grotesque DIY fecal transplant. And apart from the fact that he appeared to do a lot of the dirty work in his kitchen, I was struck by how after he finds that the donation from a healthy friend was successful, he's looking at the gene sequencing of his new microbiome, and he starts breaking down. That is pretty insane. The experiment actually worked. I don't know why I'm like, like crying. This is crazy. Which was very moving. It's one of those things where you're just so moved and impressed by how science works or just how.

Yeah. Side note, he also developed the same sweet tooth as his buddy. So your sweet tooth is really, really deep in your bowels metaphorically. I have heard that if you eat, you start eating a healthier diet, you start to crave that more. So I don't know. Elenia Zach, Eliana Zach, and Kayla Jane both had questions kind of about Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, and IBS, like if someone has depilitating symptoms like that, are there any suggestions you have for good gut health that might also help with that? Yeah. So I think with the ulcerative colitis that might be a situation where you could talk to your gastroenterologist about this like medical grade probiotic. I'm not sure if it is actually indicated for UC or if it's some other

variant of IBD. But all of those disorders that you just listed off, I think maybe kind of next in line for microbiome-based treatments that get to humans. After C. difficile infection, I think maybe the most likely candidates would be these types of disorders. Yeah. So we're kind of going to start using them on the guts and then work our way up to using them for the brain, probably. Maybe. Maybe. I wonder if it'll ever get up to the brain. I think if we can really do a good job on the science side, then yeah, that it would maybe that would be a possibility in the future. Well, you're like doing that. It's amazing. I mean, that's I'm like, huh. I'm sorry. That was a sound of me fangirling. Also, if we live in close proximity with others, do you think that our

gut biomes are kind of contagious? Oh, that's a good one. So it is known that people that live together have more similar microbiomes to each other and that your pet has a more similar microbiome to you than to some stranger. Whoa. So I think there is some degree of sharing and transfer. Yeah. So I wonder if your partner has a certain like, let's say, depression or anxiety or a serotonin deficit. If you can kind of influence each other's microbiome, then you're like, oh, we both got to get ours on track. Oh, that would be crazy. Yeah. I'm not sure. But I mean, if we if we end up finding, if science tells us in the future that the microbiome is root, the root of, you know, certain diseases, then I think this type of transfer or sharing would become a big issue.

Yeah. And what's the part in this, but the shittiest thing about your job? Like, what's the hardest, the most annoying, the most tedious, just what is the one thing that you hate about your job? Yeah. Oh, man. There's just a lot of, I mean, we I was not trained to be a good manager, but there's a lot to manage. There's a lot of little nitty gritty things to manage all at once, you know, like safety related things, coordinating purchasing. And so I personally do not enjoy getting stuck in emails and administrative duties, but it's not I can't complain. You know, that's the price you pay for having an awesome job. Yeah. For having your own lab. Yeah. Being the captain of the ship. What do you love the most about your job?

Oh, I love the discovery part. It's so fun. I mean, everything, there's always new things going on. So I love working with the students and seeing data that they're producing and all the cool discoveries going on. I also really love conceiving like new projects, things that we should work on in the near future. Do you have like a list that you keep like in a moleskin notepad of like things I'd like to discover? Almost. I have a really plain Excel document that's called projects or experiments or something and a list of everything that I would love to work on sometime. Yeah. Oh, what's on there? All sorts of things like what you mentioned, this food preference idea, whether microbes influence our food choices. There's just so many things. Usually when people

come to the lab, I like to, you know, let them study what they enjoy. But if they can't think of something, I'll pull up this document and say, Hey, what about this one? It's like 10 foot scroll. Produces out of a cloak. I have some ideas. Yeah. And it seems like you could do this for decades and decades and still have so many questions to answer. It never ends. It never ends. Actually, the more that you discover, there's just like more questions. It's just exponential. Like, yeah, curiosity, basically. Well, you're doing such a great job. I'm a literal fan of your work. Thank you so much for doing this. So gather your guts and ask smart people stupid questions because chances are the questions are not crappy. So to learn more about Dr.

Schau's work, check out schau.science or you can find her on Twitter at pipethero pipethero pipethero I will link both of those things in the show notes. Ologies is on Twitter and Instagram at Ologies. I'm on both at Ali Ward with 1L. I also host CWs Did I Mention Invention every weekend on CW. I'm on CBS Innovation Nation with Mo Raqqa every Saturday morning and also on Brainchild on Netflix. You can watch all three of those with your children. No swear words. You can support the making of the show via patreon.com slash ologies. Even a dollar a month gets you in the club and you can ask ologists questions before I record. Ologiesmerch.com is where to go for t-shirts and now there are wintery items like science socks and long sleeve shirts and knit

caps. Thank you Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltas for helping out with all of that. The Ologies podcast Facebook group is so great. It's full of really smart, chill, funny people sharing links and stories and science facts. Thank you Aaron Talbert and Hannah LeBeau for being such great admins. The theme song was written by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands and I appreciate the editing so much of Stephen Ray Morris. He also hosts the Percast and the Dino podcast See Jurassic Right and now if you listen to the very, very end of the episode through the credits I tell you a secret and today's secret is I'm in a hotel room in Hawaii. I'm on a business trip for Innovation Nation and I'm crouched behind a bed recording this to try to get like the least

echoey sound and I started to see that the sun was going down and so I paused record to go see it but one of my legs was so asleep it was just like lumber attached to my body so I just crawled across the carpet to stick my head out the window to see the sunset and then I just crawled back with one leg that was like no I'm not into this and now that I'm done recording the sides and the outro I think I might have a drink with ramenit. I'm in Hawaii right? Okay my microbes are going to hate it. They're going to hate it. I'm going to have a side salad too. Please calm down. Okay, bye-bye. A dirty filthy slob.

Dirty boy.