Science Friday - EPA Transparency Proposal, Tick Milking. Nov 15, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: November 15, 2019

This week, a House Committee held a hearing to review an Environmental Protection Agency proposal called ‘Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science.’ The proposal would require researchers to disclose underlying data—which could include private medical and health information—for any scientific studies that the agency would use in determining environmental regulations. Science reporter Lisa Friedman from the New York Times discusses how this proposal could be used to weaken regulations and discount certain scientific studies. Plus, epidemiologist Joshua Wallach talks about how the proposal could affect researchers who conduct long-term epidemiological studies.  We reached out to the EPA for comment and they provided a statement that says: “Science transparency does not weaken science, quite the contrary. By requiring transparency, scientists will be required to publish hypothesis and experimental data for other scientists to review and discuss, requiring the science to withstand skepticism and peer review.” Ticks are masters of breaking down the defenses of their host organism to get a blood meal. They use anesthetics to numb the skin, anticoagulants to keep the blood flowing, and keep the host’s immune system from recognizing them as invaders and kicking them out. And the key to understanding this is in the tick’s saliva. Biochemist and microbiologist Seemay Chou discusses how she milks the saliva from ticks to study what compounds play key parts in these chemical tricks. She also talks about how ticks are able to control the microbes in their saliva. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato, broadcasting from the studios of KQED in San Francisco. Later in the hour, the EPA put out a proposal that the agency says will strengthen transparency in the science studies they use to make policies and regulations. But researchers say it could take the science out of the process. We'll get to that later. But first, finally, the world has an Ebola vaccine. The vaccine developed by Merck has been used. on hundreds of thousands of people in the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And it's shown enough promise that European regulators say it's ready for market. Joining me now to talk about that and other selected short subjects in science is Ryan Mandelbaum, science writer at Gizmodo in New York.

Good to have you back. Yeah, it's great to be here. I'm sitting in your seat here in the New York office. Keep a warm for me. All right, let's talk about it. This is great news and approved Ebola vaccine. Yeah, so this is obviously something that's very exciting. The 100,000 people who were vaccinated in trials, only 3% developed Ebola

from back in results released by the WHO in April. So this is important. I mean, five years ago, the Ebola outbreak killed over 10,000 people. So it's quite bad. So it's great to actually see a vaccine coming to market. And so it's already been used on a trial basis, right? Yep, that's correct. It was back.

It was the trial, and then, sorry, I'm so, yeah, it's been very exciting. Yeah, so we'll wait for it to come out and get ready for everybody else. Right, so it's going to be available in mid-2020. But I think it's important to note that vaccines are only part of the problem. Then there's other subtypes of Ebola. The local communities might be resistant to the vaccine. So we're sort of, it's going to, we have to wait for this to play out to see really. how it's accepted in the communities.

Okay, let's move on to something I know you love, and I think we share that love, and that's weird physics stories. And this week, you have one about detecting dark matter using antimatter. That's right. Whoa. Poof, mind-blown. My headline for this story was, could antimatter be the portal into the dark universe? Oh. Tell us what you mean by that.

Yeah, so you might know dark matter, up most of the mass of the universe. It kind of builds the universe's scaffolding, but we've never seen it directly. And so right now, scientists at CERN have this experiment that's performing precision measurements on antiprotons, which is the antimatter partner of the proton. So it's the antimatter version of the proton. And what they're looking to see is whether the antiprotons are wobbling a little bit differently than they expect as well as differently from regular protons.

and that they hope might be the signature of axions, which is this dark matter candidate, this light dark matter particle. And so how can they prove this? Is there any way to test this out? Well, what they do is they actually, this is surprising to some people. There's an antimatter factory at CERN. It's called the antiproton decelerator, and they actually produce antimatter.

They slow it down, and then they trap it in these magnetic traps so that they could then sort of probe it and perform high precision measurements on it. Yeah, I saw the movie. They trapped something. I don't know if the movie was quite as good as CERN was at sort of explaining what was going on. So how hard is it to make antimatter? Isn't it hard enough to make it on its own?

Why use that to detect the dark matter? Well, you know I've spoken on the show before that right now, it's just really tough for the dark matter search because the most popular candidates for dark matter have not been seen yet despite lots of effort. And so they're kind of going into these a little more niche, a little stranger candidates for dark matter, the axon being one of them.

And the hope here is that maybe dark matter interacts differently with the antimatter than it does with regular matter. And what that would actually do is potentially provide an explanation as to why there's so much more matter than antimatter in the universe. That's because a lot of the explanations are just not holding up when they have to find new physics, new ideas. That's right.

There's just a lot of work that's yet to be done and so far, all the work that's been done has not revealed anything fruitful, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah. Your next story is about mysterious oxygen on Mars. So do you remember last year the mysterious methane on Mars? Ah, yes. The mysterious methane story, yeah. So it's almost like a sequel to that.

Curiosity is sitting in the Gale Crater right now on Mars, and it's been sampling the gas in the Martian atmosphere as the seasons change. And so today, or not today, this past week, they've released five years of Earth data, just three years of Mars data, collecting these gases changing over the seasons. And there's way too much oxygen in the Martian spring and summer and not enough oxygen in the winter. So what's going on? So is this as mysterious as the methane? Because they've had an explanation they thought might explain it. Do they have an explanation for the oxygen?

This is about as mysterious as the methane. So they've got a couple of, I mean, people have thrown out ideas. You know, maybe there is carbon dioxide that is, you know, breaking up into oxygen or water. H2O is breaking up into oxygen. But if it was water, it would require way more water than they know about on Mars. If it was carbon dioxide, then it would be carbon dioxide decays way too slowly to explain it. And so they're just kind of stuck and they don't know what's going on. So they're just hoping that other scientists join the hunt and figure out the mysterious source and sink.

for the oxygen on Mars. Of course, we'd all love to believe, I'm sure, as the scientists do, that these are signals of either present life or past life. You know, I'm not going to tell you that it's aliens, but I'm not telling you it's not aliens. Well, I'm not talking about, you know, intelligent aliens. I'm talking about rudimentary, you know, kind of stuff we might find at the bottom of our oceans living possibly on Mars. Sure, sure, sure, yeah, maybe. Who knows? Okay.

You reported moving on. On another story this week about the Nile River being a portal to the underworld. That's the headline that I came up with. But I do think this one is really cool. So there's this debate about the Nile River about how old it is. So some theories say that it's 5 to 6 million years old, that it originally flowed west and then tectonic action pushed it north. There's another theory that it is 30 million years old. So scientists have modeled this 30 million-year-old theory and basically came up with that it would perfectly match this strange mantle convection, the mantle being the layer beneath the crust, that the Nile River might be tracing the behavior of the mantle and have been doing so over the past 30 million years.

Wow. So is that the reason why it flows the way it does? Yeah. So what might be happening is that the mantle would be pushing up land sort of near the Ethiopian pletops. and pushing downland near the mouth of the Nile in the Mediterranean. And it would have started doing this perhaps 40 to 30 million years ago and then continued doing so. And the Nile would have just continued to trace it. And actually, this is mainly based on modeling, but there is some scientific evidence here.

For example, there seems to be rocks at the mouth of the Nile that are 30 million years old that sort of match these volcanic rocks at the Ethiopian plateau. So it is a theory. Yeah, well, you know, you have any idea why it has taken so long? We've known about the Nile, and we're pretty good geologists, has it taken so long to discover this, I guess, is what I'm asking. The paper says that it is simply difficult to figure out how rivers are formed in the face of, you know, all of the different factors, climate, things like that. I mean, of course, there's rivers that cut through canyons, and you can age them that way, but there's a lot of other things. factors that can sort of provide confounding elements. Yeah.

It's always fascinating, you know, just when we think we know stuff, something comes up. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Finally, we've talked on this show before about that snowman-shaped object in the Kuiper Belt known as MU69 or some call it ultimatuly, you know. And now it's got an official new name, right? It's been just tell us about that name. The name is Aracoff. It's awesome.

I need some music, I think, to make how dramatic. That's right. Spellette for us? Aracoth is spelled A-R-R-O-K-O-T-H. And so the story here is that it's not that it's gotten a new name. It's that it never got an official name. So Ultimatoulet was a result of a sort of a poll. It was one of many propositions when this object was first chosen to be the next mission.

peace for New Horizons. But then, so Ultimate Tool 1, Ultimate Tool A1, but people weren't so jazzed with its name because it, I think it's got Roman origins, meaning sort of a distant cold place, but it also has this unsavory connotation that was actually first mentioned by Megan Bartels, the science writer who was originally at Newsweek and now at Space.com. And so she found basically that, you know, neo-Nazis and Nazis were a fan of this name, Ultimate Tule and that it had some unsavory connotations. But Arakoth, now the official name that is recognized is a much better name.

It's actually a word meaning from the sky from the Pawatan Nation, the Powhatan Nation in Virginia, and it's actually quite a great name. I'm very happy with it. Was there a contest naming it, or did they just decide, you know, let's go look for a better name? So this one was actually done in, I believe it was suggested first by a professor who was a member of the Power Tan Nation and then in consultation with the nation's elders and representatives was selected as the name. And so that for the Power Tan Nation, it's actually they use the Chesapeake Bay traditionally. And so now Hubble as well as Johns Hopkins where New Horizons and a lot of this work has been done is also in Maryland. and so it's sort of a matchup there.

So they really did take into cultural concerns about Native Americans on this. That's right. I mean, it's representation, obviously, which is great. It doesn't negate all of the bad things that have been done to Native people in all of history, and hopefully this is a sign of more work that needs to be done. But, I mean, at least for now we've got, you know, something, and that something is a pretty awesome-sounding name. I mean, you've got to admit that Aracoth is really cool.

I'm waiting for the TV series to follow. about this one. Some new Star Trek episode, they'll be going to some planet they've renamed. They'll be going to this object and landing on it or something. Yeah, and I mean, just generally, this object is, it's really amazing, and it's cool that the object has such a great name because I don't know if you know much about the Kuiper Belt, I'm sure you do, is just that these are objects that are pristine in the words of astrophysicists.

They really preserve a history of the solar system from its most ancient times. They've been unaltered by the forces of nature that sort of made Earth look the way it does. It's very cool. Thank you, Ryan. Ryan, a metal bomb science writery gizmodo in New York. Thanks for joining us. We're going to take a break, and we're going to look at the EPA's new proposal that critics say could take the science out of the decision-making process there. Stay with us.

We'll be right back after this break. You're listening to Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. This week, a House committee held a hearing to review an environmental protection agency proposal. The proposal is called strengthening transparency in regulatory science. Researchers would be required to disclose underlying data, which could include private medical and health information for any scientific studies that the agency would use

in determining environmental regulations. Scientists fear that the proposal could be used to weaken EPA regulations and discount scientific studies. Plus, they fear the proposal could, affect researchers who conduct long-term epidemiological studies. To talk about this further, let me introduce my guests. Lisa Friedman is a reporter for the New York Times Climate Desk. She wrote a recent article about the proposal.

Thank you for joining us, Lisa. Thanks for having me. Joshua Wallach is an assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and a member of the Collaboration for Research Integrity and Transparency. Dr. Wallach, thank you for being with us. Hi, I. Earth, thanks for having me on the show. Just to try to get some reaction, we did reach out to the EPA for comment, and they provided a statement that, in part, says, science transparency does not weaken science, quite the contrary.

By requiring transparency, scientists will be required to publish hypothesis and experimental data for other scientists to review and discuss, requiring the science to withstand skepticism and peer review. and that's just a part of a longer statement that you can read the full statement at Science Friday.com. Lisa, let's talk about that this is not a new proposal, right? This is an update to one that came out in 2018. Right. I mean, there's a lot to unpack there in, you know, in how EPA is putting forward, you know, how it views this. But just to set the stage of what this is, under.

This is an effort that really initially took off under former administrator of the EPA, Scott Pruitt. But it has its roots in Congress. Lamar Smith, the former Republican head of the science committee in the House, introduced legislation that would do just this, that would only allow the EPA to consider studies where the underlying data is made available publicly. It wasn't able to pass Congress, and EPA has since taken it up as a regulation. It met with overwhelming opposition, about 600,000 comments heavily tilted toward deep concern from almost the entire scientific community. EPA said they were delaying the measure, and now we see from this, and it's

It might come out again in 2020, and then we see from this leaked version that we obtained this week, that EPA has been moving full steam ahead to move forward with and even expand this proposal. And speaking of expanding it, then, what is in this new updated version? Lisa? Oh, yeah, of course. So, sorry. You know, there's a couple important things, but it, you know, the first thing does is it says, you know, EPA proposes broadening this provision to include all data in models rather than just restricting the coverage of the provision to dose response, you know, and that being specific kinds of studies in which, for example, levels of toxicity. are studied in humans or animals.

So they are both broadening the types of studies and models, data and models that would be covered by this. They are making it much more possible and likely to use this information retroactively. And by that I mean that, you know, one could use this rule to not just allow future studies that don't show all of the data and models and, you know, in some cases, confidential health information, but to no longer use studies that have been used in the past to uphold regulations when these regulations.

when these regulations come up again. One small example, every five years, the EPA reviews National Ambient Air Quality Standards. It is based on those levels are based on a wealth of data that EPA has. This new version really calls into question, well, will the EPA be able to justify, you know, if need be strengthening some of the air quality standards by using, as evidence, some of these studies that have been used in the past, it seems unlikely from this new proposal. Dr. Wallach, what is your feelings about this? Yeah, this is, and I was very glad to read the article in the New York Times that this was getting additional coverage.

I spend my time studying open science and promoting reproducibility, And I've also been tracking this initiative since 2015, and it was part of a kind of strengthening of science proposal. But the concern really was about this so-called secret science that was happening at the EPA. And, you know, I think the initiatives to ensure research is transparent is important, and I'm supportive of it. But I think responsible data sharing is necessary. and, you know, we shouldn't judge research alone by one factor, which is whether or not the data alone is openly available, but we should make sure that we understand some of the limitations for certain studies when it comes to data sharing, in particular when it comes to long-term studies that deal with human health.

I know, as I mentioned before, and you just talked about it, the proposal is called the Strengthening Transparency and Regulatory Science. You're part of a group that works on transparency in scientific research. What is your take then on what transparency means in this proposal? So based on my reading of this proposal and the previous ones, it is well aligned with key definitions of research transparency when it comes to open access to the information so that an external researcher or someone in the public can understand,

assess, reanalyze, or replicate certain files. findings. And so essentially they're talking about data transparency. So having essentially clean data available so that people can analyze it the same or different ways. So this aligns well with how I think about transparency. So making all of the information publicly available so that you can repeat the study designs, the methods. This includes the code and models. But the important thing that I think and that is such a concern to me is that, um, This can't be the only factor that's used to judge science. And there are many studies, just like the one that was mentioned,

the six cities study, where we have to wonder whether or not we can actually make data openly available. And if we make data openly available for something like that, who will have access? Do you think that the EPA is trying to come up with a different definition of transparency, trying to co-opt it? No, I think that's the co-opting is a key concern and also potentially using this as a method to exclude certain studies. I was listening to the hearing on Wednesday and some questions that were raised were related to, well, how can we get access to the information from old studies to reanalyze and see whether or not something is true, whether or not a finding was true? and could that end up altering a regulation? How could we change a regulation? So I do think there has been pressure with these previous proposals in 2015 and 2018

thinking about, all right, if we have access to this data, what can we potentially change? So I worry that it could be used to pick and choose to choose data. And I think that's concerning because it's about accumulating evidence, not about picking and choosing or excluding research findings. Lisa, there are patient protections, right? Like HIPAA, to keep information private, would HIPAA be able to override something like this proposal? Well, it's not clear.

I mean, you know, what EPA says in the sort of options they lay out is, you know, they offer one option, for example, in which, okay, let's say, we give confidential information just to researchers and not to the general public. Well, you know, in addition to HIPAA, a lot of studies like Harvard Six Cities have signed agreements with participants of their studies that their personal information won't be disclosed. So, you know, it really leaves an open question. Would EPA have the authority to grant researchers the ability to, to view the raw data with personally identifiable information.

You know, the EPA doesn't really have a legal ability to do. I think a lot of these questions are, you know, are really still left open. Josh, do you agree? Is there a worry that private patient data could be exposed under this kind of proposal? Yes, I think that's, I think it is a worry and it is a concern. And this is why there are so many questions and why there were 600,000 comments that were submitted when the 2018 proposal was released. A lot of concerns about there are certain studies with vulnerable populations where you have personal identifiable information, zip codes, you have birth dates, death information about timings for deaths. And in order to reconstruct studies, some of this information would need to be available.

And there are concerns about re-identification. And I'd like to note that, you know, in the, they claim that this isn't the final version, and it may not be the final version, but they do outline that there are considering different methods for data sharing. And I do think that some of these might be more viable. So like a tiered system is something that they note. And, you know, when you're not dealing with human subject research, I believe that there is, there's a clear need to make, you know, data as transparent as possible. But in order to make human subject research completely publicly available, that's where I think there should be some additional threshold for who can access the information and who's accessing the information for what reason. Yeah.

Lisa, the EPA has made no secret about rolling back regulations and policies. Is this proposal just along those lines, or is it anything different? Well, look, I mean, I think there's a couple answers ways to answer that. And first, I would just point out that I think part of what a lot of this comes down to, and I'd be interested in, you know, hearing, you know, Dr. Wallach's view on this is, you know, is it in large part a matter of trust? I mean, because we are, because this administration has been so intent on rolling back regulations, there is, you know, in part, there is a fundamental mistrust that this regulation, this proposed regulation, which is, you know, as the EPA contends about transparency

and openness and about scientific integrity, is really a straw man, you know, and a way to undo regulations. You know, secondly, you know, I'll say what this does is it is taking things another layer down. You know, the EPA has rolled back dozens and dozens of environmental regulations. Measures like this go one step further. It cuts at the ability to create new regulations in the future, and, you know, not just rolling things back, but curbing sort of the fundamental basis for creating regulations in the first place. I'm Ira Flater. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. If you're listening to us online and you'd like to tweet us so you can send us at SciFRI, S-C-I-FRI a question,

and we'd be very happy to ask our guests. So where does all this go from here? I mean, if this is a proposal now, is it still in flux? Is it open to the amendment? What happens to it now, Lisa? Sure. So the next step is that the EPA, you know, they say in 2020, maybe, you know, maybe sooner. This rule is at the White House office of management and budget right now. It's getting White House review. You know, the EPA contends that what is going to come out is going to look even different than what we've reported here. So we'll have to wait and see just how different it is. EPA will formally propose a regulation. When that happens, they intend to give the public 30 days to comment, pardon me, they're going to formally propose the supplement to the regulation.

They'll give the public another 30 days to comment on it, and they hope to finalize it in 2020. You know, this is a regulatory process. There isn't really an, much of an amendment ability per se, but, you know, the agency will have to respond to the public's comments,

and it remains to be seen if that will prompt further changes or not. And Josh, are you going to keep an eye out for this proposal as it moves along? This is something that I've been kind of tracking for a while, and we're going to continue to track, and we submitted

We were one of the 600,000 comments, and a lot of the concerns that Lisa wrote about, and a lot of the concerns that were voiced by other research groups and other individuals, we voiced those same concerns. The EPA has a long and successful history of protecting the health of individuals and the environment. So we're, of course, concerned about the manipulation of this. You know, it's impossible to argue with the importance of transparency, but when you're jumping upon this movement in science, this transparency movement, but potentially using it to exclude or discredit some science or to go after or to question findings.

I think this is something that I'm quite concerned about and I'm continue to monitor. And you think other scientists will be watching it along with you? Oh, I think that's definitely the case, considering, and, you know, thanks to reporting about this issue, I hope that scientists continue to look out for this, and they do submit comments and they do voice their concerns. and I hope that these concerns are answered in future versions of the supplement because it's still kind of vague whether or not it's fully prospective or retrospective, et cetera. Joshua Wallach, assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale and Lisa Friedman, the reporter for the New York Times Climate Deaths.

Thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Thanks for having. You're welcome. We're going to take a break, and we're going to come back and talk about something you think about all the time. milking ticks, right? Some people who are milking ticks to find out all about how they behave and what's in there. We'll talk about it after the break. Stay with us.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. Ticks are full of tricks, chemical tricks. They use anesthetics to numb your skin, inject anticoagulans to keep the blood flowing. They've also figured out a way to get around not only your immune system, but different types of host organisms. And did you know that they harbor microbes and somehow control these bacteria so that they don't get infected by the microbes?

That's all kind of interesting stuff. And the key to understanding how these tiny creatures accomplish this is in their saliva. And this could be used for treatments for tick-related illnesses. My next guest is what you might call a tick wrangler. And she studies ticks in the lab by milking them. Yeah, and you can see photos of her tick-filled lab at ScienceFriety.com slash ticks. Welcome to Science Friday. CMA Chow, assistant professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California in San Francisco.

She's here at the studios of KQED. Thanks for having me. I'm trying to figure out what a tick lab looks like. Describe your laboratory for it. It actually looks a lot like any other lab. The only difference is that we have a room that's closed. off that has what looks basically like a refrigerator of ticks inside, and we wear white coats in there to make sure we can see them if they're on us.

You know, I'd be afraid of them getting out. If they get out and you, you know, feel something biting you? No, we've never had any get out, and I think the UCSF's safety administration would also share that concern with you. But I have had a tick on me from elsewhere. Have you ever had one on you? Yes, I have. You know, I live in Connecticut, so we're, you know, capital of Lyme disease.

We're always careful about these. And the Lyme ticks really tiny, right? They're not like the bigger ticks. Well, there's a couple of different life stages, so you probably saw one of the more juvenile stages on you. And how did you get interested in studying ticks? Yeah, I came about it through kind of a roundabout path. We were actually studying how bacteria compete with each other, completely independent of ticks, and we found that some of the toxins that they used to kill each other were basically

stolen over the course of evolution by ticks and are now found in the genome of ticks, so we started probing how the ticks were using these antibacterials to try and kill off some of their own microbes, and then I got hooked. Wow. So you're milking them, yeah. Yes, we're milking them as well. One of the things we found is that the antibacterial we are studying is really enriched in the saliva of ticks.

And so we think that they're using this agent basically to kill off bacteria that they might encounter naturally when they're feeding. And so we just got deeper and deeper into the world of spit. I love it. So if you figure out how they use, they can fight the bacteria off, then the logical extension is how we might be able to use our knowledge about that. Yeah, and I really think that's just the tip of the iceberg. in terms of what we can learn from saliva, as you alluded to at the beginning, they do a lot of different things with their saliva because they're feeding on us for days to sometimes over a week, so they really have to figure out how to make a home and go undetected.

I once interviewed a biologist who studied spiders, and her job was to milk spiders with a venom, and she had a little YouTube video. You're familiar what I'm talking about? Yes, I do. I think it was Binford was her name. I remember so long ago. And she applied a small voltage to the spider and got it to eject its, you know. That's pretty awesome.

And how do you do it? How do you milk the ticks? So it actually wasn't figured out by us. It was figured out by some researchers long ago, but we found this old paper, and you basically take the ticks and you feed them partially on an animal, a mouse in our case. And then you can pull them off the mouse, and then we use very glamorous scotch tape to tape them down and then put a chemical called pylacarpine, which is used to enable both us and ticks to salivate.

And then you put what looks like a little glass straw on the feeding organ of the tick, and eventually you pull out quite a bit of saliva through capillary action. Wow. Okay. Let's talk about ticks in general. Is there a mythology that people have? They think ticks do this, but they don't actually. Oh, I mean, I think the number one thing I run into is that people think ticks jump in

lie and they don't. They don't. They don't. No, they don't have the muscles in their legs to do that. So how do they get on you? Yeah, so they do something called questing where when they're in feeding season, they basically climb to the tops of shrubs or grass, places where they may run into animals walking by, and then they are really adept at sensing our carbon dioxide, our body heat, other things that

would indicate that in animals nearby, and they raise their little legs up and latch on when you walk by, and it kind of looks like in the lab like they're reaching out, looking for a hug. Do they live in your grass, if you have a lawn? Are they living in the grass, or are they living in the shrubbery next to it? Yeah, I think it's context-dependent. In some parts of the U.S., they really like the grass, and in some parts of the U.S., they are more in the shrubs. I think it really is an indicator of whatever ecology they're surrounded by.

Let's talk about you're interested in the saliva. Tell me what is so fast. about the saliva. Yeah, I mean, I think studying the saliva actually gets at one of the kind of creepiest things about ticks, because the fact that you can have a tick on you and not even know it, I mean, I think that's why a lot of people are kind of both fascinated and creeped out by ticks. But that is an indication that they've used their saliva to completely block your ability to sense it, block a lot of the alarm systems that are normally in place to help you detect them.

So as you mentioned, your immune system, normally if you have some sort of mechanical wound, you would expect that there would be a raised bump or something or itch and pain. These are all really annoying but useful things we have to help us know that something's there. And so we're really interested in mining what's in the saliva to try and understand these processes because ticks have basically hacked our system. and if we can kind of use them as a muse to kind of follow what they figured out, we can have these clues to understand our own bodies more too. And then the second reason is that the microbes have really exploited this as well.

We're sort of late to the game. The microbes use the ticks as vectors, meaning that they reside in the ticks and are able to be transmitted to their next host through the tick bite. And in fact, there's a phenomenon known as saliva activated transmission, which means that the microbe is enabled by the saliva, and without it, it would not actually be able to survive or spread in our body as effectively.

So they've done these old experiments where they injected the Lyme pathogen, Borreliaberg-Dorferi, and without tick saliva, co-injected with it, your body's quite effective at clearing it. So somewhere along the line in evolutionary history of the tick, it picked up this method of disguise, so to speak? Yeah, presumably long ago. I think these are mechanisms that ticks didn't evolve on their own, but they've been, yeah, acquired and expanded upon. Wow. So mosquito bites are not the same thing. Oh, ticks are way superior to mosquitoes, for sure. Do they know that?

Yeah, mosquitoes, you know, they don't make a home in us the way ticks do. As you know, they just need to be there long enough to bite and then fly off, whereas ticks have to make this blood meal happen without it, they can't transition to the next life stage. Okay, so when I was a Boy Scout many, many years ago, there was always a chapter on, you know, hiking and whatever, and what to do to prevent a tick getting bitten by a tick, and once you get bitten, how to remove the tick. You know, we were taught either take a match, blow it out, the heat. If you put it on the head of the tick, it'll back itself out.

There was somebody who said you use Vaseline or oil to cope. Take it. It'll come back out. Any of that stuff? Legitimate? I mean, honestly, the easiest way to do it is just take a pair of forceups and pull vertically. You've got to pull perpendicular to your skin. Straight up.

You've got to pull hard enough that you kind of feel this like pop of it really releasing from your skin. Because its feeding organ is kind of has these spikes on it that dig into it. your skin, so you really got to break past that. So if you do it the wrong way, you can make things worse. You could squeeze it and you get more saliva injected in there? You know, I think mostly you just don't want the leftover residue of the tick debris in your skin. You want to make sure that we were told you got to get the head out. Exactly.

Going to get the whole head out there or else you just really. Yeah. And as far as the small ticks, like the, the, you. the ticks that are tiny to see that we were trying to get out. You know, how do you look for them? Because they look like tiny little freckles on you. Yeah, those are really, really hard. The Lyme disease ticks, they're really.

Yeah, well, so there's actually three life stages. The ones that look like freckles are the youngest ones. They're the larvae. And those cannot transmit the Lyme pathogen to you because they have to acquire it from their first blood meal. And if they are feeding on you, you are their first blood meal. And so the ones you need to worry. about are the next level up, which are more the size of like a large crack pepper, or the adults, which you can clearly see.

But those, you know, really just paying attention after you go hiking or even for a few days after because sometimes pets can track them in. A hot shower after you go hiking can help. Having some lab mates look you up and down, fiddle through your hair. Our number at 1-800-844-724-8255, if you're listening, 844-8255. You can also reach us at Science Friday at a CIFRI. How did you decide? I asked you before you, I used to wake up one day and say, you know, I'm going to study ticks,

or did you come from a different insect? No, I had never worked with, and by the way, they're not insured. insects. Okay. You got me on there. They're arachnans. But no, I had never worked with an arthropod in my life. I had never even seen a tick when we first found these genes and bacteria. So it was meant to be a very short foray into this area that I was just going to figure out what they were doing in ticks and move on. In my mind, it was like a six-month fray. Right. Turned into a couple years of really learning about the biology of ticks and just the deeper you go, the more you want to learn. So that's basically how I, Started. And what thing mostly would you like to learn? What don't you know that you would like to know about ticks, how they spread disease, maybe there's saliva? Yeah.

I mean, I think, you know, one of the things that my lab is really interested in that extends beyond just the people that are working on ticks is we're interested in understanding why bacteria have such specific associations with different hosts. And so ticks are a great system to study that because the pathogens that they carry are. restricted to only a few species per pathogen. And so there's this phenomenon called vector competence where we have these really unique and limited relationships between one pathogen and one or two or a few different tick species, even though there's a lot of other tick species that can encounter it. And this is true. Beyond ticks, it's also true for mosquitoes and fly vectors.

But, I mean, even beyond that, just animals. Animals. How they associate with microbes. So this is one way that we can study this problem by looking at, why it is this bacterium is really, you know, preferring this tick host and is able to thrive in this environment. I'm Ira Flater. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios.

Talking ticks with CMA Chow, assistant professor, biochemistry, and biophysics at UC San Francisco. For the ticks that have the bacteria that cause a, let's say, Lyme disease, why doesn't the tick itself get infected with Lyme disease. Yeah, so this is hitting on an important aspect of the biology, which is that these microbes are pathogens to us as humans, but they're not pathogens necessarily to the ticks. In fact, the reason they can coexist so well is because they're living in harmony. So they're more of what we would refer to as a symbion or commensal, which has a more neutral or potentially beneficial relationship with the host.

and conversely could be true. Some microbes that are commensal to your skin could end up being pathogenic to the ticks. So is it that the lime doesn't recognize the tick as something to attack, or is there something about the tick that defends against? Or is it sort of a symbiotic thing going on? That's a million-dollar question. I mean, we think it's probably a combination of the two. That's certainly what studies in other systems would suggest.

So we're really just at the beginning of figuring all of this. out I think it's probably a combination. Yeah. And there is a bit of a West Coast, East Coast split that happens with ticks, right? West Coast, Best Coast. I'll ignore that. No, I'm in California. I have to be very nice.

Ticks in California prefer to bite lizards, is that right? And eastern ticks like rats? Correct. So on the West Coast, there's a tick called the Exotees Pacificus tick, which can intrinsically carry and transmit the pathogen for a lime. But the reason we're kept safer on the West Coast from this is that these ticks prefer to feed on lizards, which do not carry Borrelia burgdor fry. So because their blood meal host partner doesn't have it, most of the time they don't have it. There are situations if the lizard's not available that they can feed on other animals like squirrels

that may be carriers of it. And then that's where we run into some problems. So I was going to follow up on that. So if a East Coast tick makes it to the West Coast, and, you know, well, you'll travel on airplanes or whatever, right? Does that mean it's not going to survive out here? Like whether it could proliferate in the population? Yeah. Unless it came along a female and a male and they magically found an animal to feed and mate on together, it's pretty unlikely that it would proliferate. I know there are ticks that may have a meat allergy, right?

How does that happen? Yeah, so that is a, I'm from Texas, so I get a lot of questions about this for my friends from Texas. So this, we don't know what's causing this in terms of whether there's a microbe responsible. This actually ends up being an allergy against this sugar modification that somehow is now associated with red meat. And so there are a lot of different groups trying to look into this, whether there could be something we just don't know of a microbe maybe in there that's causing this allergic reaction or if it could be something related to the tick, but it's restricted to a different type of tick from the genus amblyoma. So it's the lone star tick. Are you going to make a career out of studying? I mean, do you go on to a different arachnoid?

You know, who knows? I mean, that's the beauty of science research is that you never know where you're headed. Thank you very much for taking time to view this. Thank you so much. C. Mae Chow is assistant professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California and San Francisco. And you can see a photo of Dr. Chowell's lab and all the ticks up there on our website at ScienceFriiday.com slash ticks. Charles Berkowitz is our director, senior producer Christopher Taliatta, and our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, and Katie Feather. And we had technical engineering help today from Kevin Wolfe, Lisa Goslin, and Rich Kim, B.J. Leibman, and composed.

our theme music, and our thanks to audio engineer, Jim Bennett, Tiffany Mitchell, and all the great folks here at KQED for welcoming us into their studios today. And also on Science Friday Vox Pop app, we're asking you to talk about astronaut Catherine Sullivan. We're going to be talking with her next week. What have you always wanted to know about living and working in space? Tell us, you know, on the Vox Pop app, and then we'll play it, and Catherine Sullivan might answer your question. You know, we play them every week, and next week. We're asking you, what have you always wanted to know about living and working in space? Science Friday Vox Pop app wherever you get your apps.

I'm Ira Flato in San Francisco.