Science Friday - New NASA Science Head, Climate and Fungus, Whiskey Fungus, Animal Testing Alternatives. March 24, 2023, Part 2

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

Can Medicine Move To Animal-Free Testing? Before a new drug can begin clinical trials in humans, it gets tested on animals. But things are changing. Late last year, Congress passed the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, which cleared the way for new drugs to skip animal testing. Can we expect to phase out animal testing altogether? Is it safe? And what technologies might make that possible? Guest host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Thomas Hartung, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, to get a broader picture of alternatives to animal testing.   Capturing Carbon With Tasty Fungus This week, a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change brought dire warnings about our planet’s climate future and an alert that drastic action is needed—now—to avoid catastrophe. One action the report recommends involves an overhaul of our food production systems to decrease their carbon impact.   Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers suggest one possible way of sequestering some carbon dioxide might be cultivating certain kinds of edible mushrooms on land that has already been cultivated for agroforestry. The researchers are working with Lactarius deliciosus, commonly known as the saffron milk cap or red pine mushroom, but other species are possible as well. These mycorrhizal fungi live in a symbiotic relationship with the roots of the trees, increasing biomass and storing more carbon, while producing food on land that might have otherwise been used only for trees. In certain climates and with certain trees, these fungi can actually be a carbon-negative source of protein. However, to produce a pound of protein currently requires a lot of land and effort. The researchers are working to make forest fungal farming easier, and to expand the approach to a wider range of trees. SciFri’s Charles Bergquist talks with Dr. Paul Thomas, author of that report and research director at the company Mycorrhizal Systems, a company that helps farmers grow truffles. He’s also an honorary professor in the University of Stirling’s Faculty of Natural Sciences in the UK.   Whiskey Distillery On The Rocks After Fungus Spreads Lincoln County, Tennessee has been overcome by an unwelcome guest: whiskey fungus. It covers everything from houses and cars to stop signs and trees, and no amount of power washing seems to make it go away. Why has whiskey fungus attached to this small town? It feeds on ethanol from the famed Jack Daniel’s distillery, which is in a neighboring county. Lincoln County isn’t the first place to encounter this problem. Whiskey fungus was first documented in 1872 by a French pharmacist named Antonin Baudoin. Baudoin noted how mold caused distillery walls in Cognac to blacken, a phenomenon that has since been seen near distilleries across the world. The fungus was not given a name until 2007, when it was dubbed Baudoinia compniacensis, named for Antonin Baudoin. Joining guest host Flora Lichtman is James A. Scott, PhD, professor of public health at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario. Scott has studied whiskey fungus for over two decades, and gave it its scientific name.   NASA’s New Science Head Sees A Bright Future Last month, NASA announced Dr. Nicola Fox as the agency’s new scientific leader. Fox is taking on a critical role at NASA, shaping the agency’s science priorities and overseeing roughly 100 missions, with a budget of $7.8 billion. The portfolio includes space science from astrophysics and Earth science, covering the planets in our solar system to exoplanets far beyond. Previously, she was the director of the heliophysics division at NASA, which studies the Sun and its role in the solar system. SciFri senior producer Charles Bergquist talks with Dr. Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate for NASA, about her new position, career path, and plans for science at NASA.     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 Charles Berkwist. And I'm Flora Lickman. Last week on the show, we talked about how pharma companies are using artificial intelligence to speed up the drug research and development pipeline. And this week, we're zeroing in on another part of that process. Animal testing. Before a new drug can begin clinical trials in humans, it gets tested on animals. But things are changing.

Late last year, Congress passed the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, which cleared the way for new drugs to skip animal testing. But can we expect to phase out animal testing altogether? And what technologies might make that possible? To help us answer those questions and more is my guest, Dr. Thomas Hartung, Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing based in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Hartung, welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. Okay, so what is driving this push to phase out animal testing for drugs? Is this about ethical concern, or for scientific or for safety reasons? It is for all of these and also for economical reasons.

You have to imagine we are not 70 kilogram rats. A lot of wrong decisions have been based on this wrong assumption. Pharma companies fail in 95% of the cases they get something into humans. They fail in 95% of the cases. Yeah, that's the failure rate of clinical trials. Wow. And if we have anything which is more relevant to humans, which makes them spend their money on better drugs, they want to go for it.

Even though we have learned the hard way for drugs like Alzheimer, that very often our animal models have been so misleading. We could cure tons of animals, but we cannot cure patients. So we need something that approximates humans better than animals. Is that the idea? That's exactly the point. And this was theory until most recently, when stem cell technology has really allowed us to

produce human-relevant models. So let's talk about some of these alternative approaches to animals. I know you work on organoids. What is an organoid? An organoid is a structure which has organ-like properties, and it is self-developing out of stem cells. A human stem cells. A human stem cell, yes. It is only since 2006, so by scientific measures, it is really very recent, that we do have ethically not problematic stem cells from humans. Because Yamanaka developed a technology to take some skin cells and reprogram them and make them like an embryonic stem cell. And so you can use these to make tiny organs?

Exactly. So in our case, for example, we are producing brain organoids. So we're able to produce thousands of tiny, tiny little bolts. They're just as big as the pin of a, a needle. And then we can use these and run our experiments as if it was a piece of human brain. Do they look like tiny brains? Like if I were to look at it under the microscope, would it be like a microscopic version of a brain? No, not at all. They look like a basketball, I would say. They're just perfectly round, a bit of a rough surface. Do they match the architecture of the brain in any way?

To some extent, we find first of all, all of the cells of the brain, which is already a big one, because cultures in the past had typically just the neurons, but 50% of the brain is actually helper cells, which is very important. They form circuits, so the cells are talking to each other, like the brain cells do, but also these helper cells are starting to wrap themselves around the long tubes which are coming out of these neurons, which are connecting them. We call this myelin, and this is a very, very important feature of the brain makes it 100 times faster. Wow, that is amazing. I've also heard about organs on a chip. Is it similar? Are they different? Yeah, and the chip is not a chip to snack on.

This refers to systems where you can perfuse, which means to get liquid, like blood flowing through the organ. We can pump liquids through these systems, and by doing so, we can get them larger, they are much better maintained. They get their oxygen, they get their sugar and whatever they need. So these systems are highly engineered, very small like a computer chip. And this allows us to really assemble even combinations of different organs. We are talking now for human-on-ship systems or multi-organ on-on-ship systems. Oh, wow. So you can link the chips together. Like you could link the brain to the lungs to the heart kind of thing? Exactly. There's some people who have develop pluck and play type of systems where you can really say, what for this experiment,

I need a liver and a heart. Yeah, perhaps a brain would not bet. So it's a, it is fantastic how this disruptive technology has been developing over the last decade. What part of the drug testing process do you think that these organoids are organs on a chip? Where do you think they could be most effective in the drug testing process? Where do you think they would outperform animals? I think they are outperforming them instantly because they're human. You have to understand that half of the drugs which come to the market nowadays are actually human proteins or antibodies against human proteins. Testing them in animals is mostly useless.

Sometimes they work in some monkeys. This holds both for safety. This is one of the important things. We want to know that a drug is safe before we go into humans. But also for efficacy, is it really helping? Is it curing a disease? Are they cheaper than animals to make? On the long term, absolutely.

So let's say our brain organoids, for example, they are less than a dollar apiece compared to a red which is $30 plus. But this is not really relevant. If you develop a drug, this is $2.4 billion before you get to the market. And this does not matter whether you have an additional animal experiment or not. It's important that you put your money on the right thing. So you're saying it's peanuts, the difference between. the cost. It's whether you can avoid failing. That's exactly it. It is all an economical thing and timing. Animal tests can take enormously long. So for example, if you would like to know whether

something is producing cancer, it takes you five years to have the result. Because you're treating the animals for two years, and then it takes you about two years to cut them into sin slices to find any possible tumor. And with organizing and reporting that's easily four to five years. Is it faster with these organs on a chip or organites? In general, yes. The systems are typically done in the month range. You don't need to wait until it has grown to something you can find with the microscope. Our modern technologies allow us to use the gene expression, for example. What has changed in the cells in order to say, yep, this is going to be cancer. On the show, we've talked about how researchers are using,

how researchers are using artificial intelligence to find new drugs. Are people using AI for drug safety and efficacy testing? Yeah, the AI for safety is actually exactly my own background. For efficacy, it is really about generating ideas, finding things which we might not have thought about. That's where artificial intelligence is helpful at the moment. About 40% of the drugs, which are under development at the moment, have been designed with some AI. For safety, it is fascinating that AI can help us to mine all of the existing information, which means very often it can find nothing on the substance itself. That's a new chemical often. But it finds something on things which look pretty similar. By looking at all of the chemicals which are similar and all of the properties we know, they are astonishingly good in predicting also the safety of the substance.

So basically, if you have a drug that looks like another drug, you can, and you know that other drug has safety issues, you can then deduce that this drug might have safety issues, and AI can do that analysis faster than anything else? Exactly. We have a database now which has information on 900,000 chemicals, and it includes about 100 million structures. So you imagine all of this information, AI can mine and learn from humans can't. And whenever we have big data, then AI is shining. Yeah, I mean, we know that there are problems with big data, too. I mean, a big part of the conversation around AI is that it replicates human bias. And we know drug testing has had this issue in particular.

Like, I know there's been studies showing that because drug dosage trials are tested on men, women have been overmedicated. How do we develop a tool that is more useful than what we already have if we're pulling on data that has bias? in it? I mean, we have always to look, is it plausible? Is it, can the answer be in the data? And we certainly must not hand over to AI, make it autonomous. It is at the moment a fantastic tool to get information on a silver platter to take better decisions. It is definitely not yet, and probably will never be a tool which just you press a button and it says go to the market. So animal testing started as a safety check.

Test a new drug in animals, make sure it's not toxic before it goes to humans. If we skip the animal testing, do you feel like we could be missing a key safety measure? I'm actually more optimistic that we are actually doing something good here. I mean, the first thing, science is incredibly fast and changing. One, two years, our knowledge in the life science is doubling. And completely in contrast to this, these animal tests have been introduced between the 20s of the last century and the 70s. I was not yet born or in kindergarten when these animal tests were introduced. So there must be something in the box which is reflecting as humans better.

And this is why I believe it is time for change and it's a matter of change management more. The alternative methods, whether it's these organoid's organ and ship systems, whereas it's AI, they are actually outperform. most of these animal tests. How far along are we with these alternatives to animal testing? I mean, are we at proof of concept phase? Are pharmaceutical companies already using these techniques? Yes. Pharmaceutical companies use everything which gives them relevant information and making them move faster.

I'm very much in safety. Toxicology is the field. The pharma industry is already spending four times more on cell cultures and computational methods for safety than they spend on animals. It is only that for the final step of registering their drugs, they also have to deliver a package with animals. What is your long-term vision? Do you imagine that we're going to eliminate animal testing altogether? I would say we will need some animal testing. For example, we have to develop veterinary drugs. So human drugs have to be tested in human trials. You need animal trials. I can also not really imagine how we would measure effects on behavior.

in animals in a non-sentient system. So it's probably some animal testing will stay, but this black-bock testing puts something in the animal and wait whether something is happening and then fighting for the next two years, but this is human relevant. That's not a healthy process. That's all the time we have.

I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Thomas Hartung, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, based in Baltimore, Maryland. Thanks for having you. After the break, a way to grow food and sequester carbon emissions through fungi. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Charles Burgquist.

This week, another report from the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, brought dire warnings about our planet's climate future and warnings that drastic action is needed now to avoid catastrophe. One action the report recommends is an overhaul of our food production systems. Writing in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers suggest one way of sequestering CO2 is cultivating certain kinds of edible mushrooms. Dr. Paul Thomas is one of the authors of that report. He's research director at the company Michael Riesel Systems. They help farmers grow truffles and an honorary professor in the University of Sterling's Faculty of Natural Sciences in the UK. Welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you, Charles. Thank you for having me. So I've seen commercial mushroom farms, especially for things like the standard white button mushrooms that you find in supermarkets, but that's not what we're talking about here. Yeah, absolutely. So those mushrooms that you see in the supermarket, they're what we call sapatrophic mushrooms. So they grow off a degrading plant matter. So they're quite often grown indoors on plant matter. And actually, they use a lot of peat as well in the production of those mushrooms. So they grow in a very different way to the ones that we're proposing.

So the ones that we're talking about now, are these kinds of fungi that people might have encountered before if they're not a forest forager of some kind? Yeah, so these kind of mushrooms actually, there are some species which they may have encountered in restaurants or on supermarket shelves. They include things like chanterelles or Piccini or King Belites. Those are all in the same category of fungi. But normally they're not ones that you often find, you know, on supermarket shelves or often in the restaurant or most specialist places. As you mentioned, there are types of fungi that live on rotting wood, and you can even buy those kit logs inoculated with spores if you want to do that at home. But the ones we're talking about, these are somehow living with the trees in a symbiotic relationship.

Yeah, absolutely. So they're what we're called microisal mushrooms. And what that means is they grow in symbiosis, in partnership with a plant host. And for this group of fungi, we're focusing on here, they grow with woody plants. And what? they do is they cover the root system of the tree and they form an association with that tree called the Micrizer. And it's basically to facilitate the transfer of nutrients and resources and it creates a big surface area to do that. So like our lungs have a very big surface area for gas exchange. For the fungi, they create a very big surface area interaction with the tree so they can provide the tree with nutrients. And in return, the tree sends the fungus sugars

because the fungus can't access sugars on its own. So there's this trade of resources and they help the tree to grow. The tree helps the fungus to grow. And yeah, it's a completely symbiotic association. You have a company that helps people to set up their own truffle farm. So you have a vested interest in this idea of trees and fungus. Are there places that are already doing this beyond truffles, other types of fungus? So I absolutely started with truffles because I became obsessed with the research and the science.

I just thought it's mind-boggling. And we're looking at applying that technology now elsewhere to use it for other challenges. This kind of technology is being used by a number of researchers. There are a few groups working on this. It's very small that there's a handful of people worldwide who are really focusing on it. And most of the progress has been made with a group called Lactarius, so the genus Lactarius. And they produce a mushroom called the Delicious Milk Cap, Lactarius Deliciosa, which has got a great name. And obviously, hints towards that it's quite a palatable species.

But it's one that we can produce so we can get the microizer growing on the root system. and it will produce freezing bodies. Sometimes it's quick as just 18 months. But what we're looking at doing to follow on with this project, we want to screen a large number of species and get many species which will grow in different bioclimatic conditions. What are the mechanics here? How do you plant the fungus, so to speak?

Yeah, so it's different for different species. So some of these microisyl fungi, it's very hard for us to get them to associate with a tree. And there's a role for different bacteria and probably also different fungi in some cases, which all need to be there to form that association. For some of the others, we can use spores, so you can use the cap of the mushroom,

grind it up, introduce it to the root system. And then for others, like this lactarius species, I mentioned, spores don't work for some reason we don't fully understand. So we have to take a piece of the fruiting body and grow it on agar in the lab, so we're growing in petri dishes. And then when that fungus is growing healthily and happily, we put it in close proximity to the root system of the tree,

under sterile conditions, and then it forms this microizer. And in the case of that species, actually, it's this beautiful orange micrizer, and then we can plant that into the field to produce these mushrooms. I'm trying to get a sense of scale here. How much edible fungus can one tree produce? There's been very few trials done on this.

And the trials that have been done, the production figures roundabout on a hectare basis, which is 100 meters by 100 meters, or 2.47 acres, if you work in acres, produces about 1,000 kilos to 3,000 kilos, seems to be about the productive range. But that's very small data set. And I'm sure with different species and different techniques,

we can produce more than that. But we did our analysis based on the lower end of that spectrum, based on producing 1,000 kilos per year per hectare. So it's a very small volume for the land use area. But even so, if we combined it with current forestry activity, that's occurred over the past 10 years globally, that would be enough to produce enough food outputs to support 18.9 million people annually, which is huge. And for China alone, that would be 4.6 million people annually. So the idea is

to use current forestry activities, inoculate the trees with this mushroom, so we're not taking up more land area for food production. And it also opens up more land area that we can reaforest with trees while still getting a food output from that land. Because there's this conflict in land use globally. I see. The current paper addresses the sort of climate advantages of doing this. Tell me a little bit about that. In this system, because we're growing it with living trees, we're planting young trees, so we're planting new trees, which have got the root system covered in this fungus. So as those trees grow, they sequester carbon. They're pulling it out the atmosphere. And as they're doing it, they're producing this food crop. So it's one of the few

food crops in the world where in production of the food, we're sequestering carbon, we're pulling it out the atmosphere and providing some mitigation towards anthropogenically driven climate change. We compared it to nine other major food groups and even our most efficient food group, which is the production of pulses and grains, they still emit carbon in their production, whereas this fungus would do the opposite. When you inoculate the trees with these fungi, they can also sequester more carbon anyway in the ground and the tree growing on its own because you end up with a much larger area of biomass below ground which is locking that carbon in so it's a way that we can pull carbon out the atmosphere of course through tree planting do it on a bigger scale but in doing so

also still got food crop from that land so we don't have to sacrifice forest for a food production right but i mean even even given that this does not seem like a very efficient means of producing food i I mean, inoculating individual trees that need a lot of time and space to grow. Yeah, absolutely. What we really need to do is make this a really extensive, quick, cheap, easy system. So we can't rely on sterile techniques where we need to involve laboratories. Our idea is to slot into current forestry activity. So we can unoculate trees very cheaply, very quickly, and cheap is the key word really.

It needs to be very cheap per unit basis. so we can do this on a large scale over a large, large area. And then in terms of land use, it is relatively inefficient. It's more efficient than extensive beef production, but that's quite an inefficient use of land anyway. So it is relatively land inefficient, but it has all these associated benefits, all the conservation, biodiversity benefits we get with tree planting.

You can have a timber crop at the end of the day, and of course the carbon sequestration. So we should view it in terms of this plethora of benefits, It's not just how much food is produced per meter square. How much carbon dioxide are we talking about when we're talking about the climate benefits here? So what we did is we looked at all forested areas in the world, really. So all different areas from the subtropics of the tropics, the boreal areas. And we looked at different land uses, so whether it's primary forest, secondary forest or planted forest.

And the greatest potential is probably in boreal regions where you can lock up maybe 12 tons of carbon per hectarell. per year, which is relatively high. And then actually in the tropics, we showed that in some tropical regions, it could lead to an emission. So it might not have the same benefit. And the caveat to that is the data we use from it was from 637,000 satellite and light form data points. And what they do is they look at aerial images and they work out the carbon flux of these

systems. And in the tropical regions, we were showing an net emission of carbon, but probably because there was so much deforestation in those regions. that it was showing an emission overall. So it's slightly complicated by the data set, but for sure different environments of different carbon sequestration potential from 12 tons of hectare downwards.

So we've been talking about this is one way of reducing a carbon impact. But how is climate change affecting fungi overall? Like all biological systems, it's a mixed story. So we see in Europe, for example, if we look at truffles, because I've done a lot of work on climate change and truffles. This year, Hungary, so Hungary produces a lot of truffles,

typically produces about 80 tonnes a year. Their production this year was almost nothing because of the extreme heat events in Europe. And we're seeing this trend towards declining production because of increasing heat and increasing drought in Europe. A number of years ago, we published the paper predicting this was going to happen and the extent to which it would happen and it's happening now. So a number of species are very vulnerable.

Of course, it also means that other species can grow in areas they couldn't previously, you know, because the climate's got slightly milder so they can exist in that climate now. And that's been the case in the UK where we can grow Mediterranean species now, which we couldn't have done before the Industrial Revolution. So there's this change in boundaries and there's this vulnerability, but we're in for some big challenges, I think some big challenges. You call the specific species that you're looking at the delicioso. Are they particularly delicious? Yeah, they're great. I really like him. And there's a related species actually that grows in the US, which is bright blue, which is even cooler, lactarius indigo. And we did a paper on that a couple of years ago. But they're really good, tasty mushrooms. Yeah, they're delicious. Everyone should be eating them. Hopefully we'll get there. Yeah. Dr. Paul Thomas is research director at the company Michael Riesel Systems and an honorary professor in the University of Sterling's Faculty of Natural Sciences in the UK. Thanks so much for talking with me today.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. You're listening to Science Friday from WNYC Studios. So, Flora, we've talked about how fungi could help with planetary problems, but this next story is about what happens when a fungus itself becomes the problem, not in the last of us sense, but in a way that could actually destroy a town? Yes, this one doesn't go down as easy. A Tennessee town near the Jack Daniels whiskey distillery is awash, in a fungus that coats trees, houses, stop signs, you name it.

It is appropriately called whiskey fungus. So I'm pro-whisky, but a town-destroying fungus fueled by whiskey, it's a little hard to swallow. I spoke to Dr. James A. Scott, a professor at the University of Toronto, who solved the mystery of where this fungus sits on the fungal family tree. And he slung me all the neat details on whiskey fungus and its booze-fueled superpower. Well, tell me about this. fungus. First of all, what is it feeding on? So the fungus can feed on ethanol, as you'd expect, from the habitat that it lives in. But equally, you can grow it in the laboratory in the absence of ethanol. And probably in nature, it also grows in the absence of ethanol. The process of

distillation is intended to concentrate the alcohol. And then certain kinds of alcohol, like whiskey, tequila, rum, it's a long list, after the distillation process, are placed in barrels and then aged for a period of time. And that period of time that they spend, that the alcohol spends in the barrel, imparts it with certain flavors and certain characteristics that are desirable. And it's during the aging process where in these porous wooden barrels, the ethanol escapes. So it's actually just feeding on the whiskey. It feeds on the whiskey that essentially leaks out as vapor from the barrels and into the surrounding environment. And can it bubble up near any kind of distillery, or is this fungus just like a straight up whiskey gal?

So whiskey and aged spirits are where I've found most of this, but then I have to admit that that's largely where I've spent time studying it. There are certainly other processes that are industrial processes that emit alcohol vapor into the air. For example, baking is one, you know, when you use bread yeast to rise flour, it produces ethanol. And during the baking process of bread, that ethanol is off gas through the vent and into the environment. So we find around large commercial bakeries that sometimes there's an accumulation of this fungus, at least around the exhaust vents from ovens, and sometimes it disperses a little bit further than that as well. What does it look like? It's hard to describe. It's a sort of streaky black fungus that gets on

all kinds of surfaces. So it's not limited to the kinds of surfaces where you'd normally see fungus, like organic surfaces. This fungus can grow on unusual things like fences and road signs and cars. It can grow on window glass, you know, a range of different things that you wouldn't expect fungus to grow on. And it produces a sort of streaky black growth. When there's a lot of alcohol emission, that growth can actually get quite thickened into a thickened cross. It's not at that point a single fungus that's involved. It's probably a kind of evolving biofilm that includes many different fungi. But species of bodwinia, which is this group of fungi that we call whiskey fungi,

are likely the primary colonists that are sort of the founding members of that biofilm. Oh, wow. So there's a whole ecosystem. In this Tennessee town near the Jack Daniels distillery, residents have complained for years that this fungus is causing property damage. There's even a lawsuit from property owners. How destructive is it? Or can it be? Well, once the fungus gets onto surfaces, it tends to anchor on and hold on fairly well. So it can be removed, but it's only removed through mechanical action like pressure washing or scrubbing or a combination of both. So those processes

alone can cause accelerated aging of materials and the fungus attaching on does some damage as well. So it causes the materials to break down. But I should say that there are other jurisdictions where there's a lot more tolerance and even a kind of celebration of this fungus. I remember one situation where I was in France near Bordeaux working on this fungus and I was taking a break from touring distilleries. First of all, this sounds like a good job. Sitting at a little cafe, it is a great job, sitting at a little cafe.

And as I was sitting at the cafe, I looked down at the bistro table and the pattern of the formica on the surface of the bistro table was modeled after the pattern of this fungus growing on the walls in the town. So I thought, you know, here's a culture that, you know, is actually in a way celebrating this patina of fungal growth. on surfaces in a way that, you know, we don't necessarily hear. Can it make people sick? That's not really clear. As far as I know, have been no studies looking specifically at what this, what this fungus

does or doesn't do. I suspect that like any fungus, that if there's enough exposure to it, then it could probably have some deleterious effects. But that's not a unique property of this fungus. It's just something that would be, you know, characteristics. of any fungus. But any specific effects related to this fungus, as far as I know, just haven't been studied. That's about all we have time for. Thank you, Dr. Scott. My pleasure. Thanks very much for having me, Flora. Dr. James A. Scott is a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of

Toronto, based in Toronto, Canada. We have to take a break. And when we come back, a conversation with NASA's new scientific leader, Dr. Nicola Fox, stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Flora Lichten. And I'm Charles Berkwist. Last month, NASA announced a new scientific leader, Dr. Nicola Fox. She's taking on a critical role at NASA, shaping the agency's science priorities and overseeing roughly 100 missions with a budget of over $7 billion. Her portfolio includes space science from astrophysics and earth science to the planets in our own solar system to exoplanets far beyond. Previously, she was director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA, which studies the sun and its role in the solar system. Joining me now to talk more about

her new position, career path, and plans for science at NASA, is my guest, Dr. Nicola Fox. Her official title is Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, based at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. Welcome to Science Friday, Dr. Fox. Thanks so much. So this is a big job. Are you having a kind of kid in a candy store moment or, oh my, what have I done moment here? A little bit of both, I think. Definitely kid in the candy store because, you know, when you, I think the first time I gave a talk and instead of just having the heliophysics fleet, I had the entire science mission directorate fleet, you know, all of those missions that you were just talking about around all of the different areas. And that was, that was a, oh, golly, look at all the things that I have to worry about, to manage. to enjoy. And then there's also the good grief. What have I done? Moments, too, when I described it as, you know, when Wiley Coyote's running along and Roadrunner holds up a sign that says, turn back. And then he keeps going and she's turned back. And then

he's off the cliff and falling. There was a moment where I kind of felt like, I'm off the cliff. But I quickly scrambled back on. But it is, as you say, it's a very big job. And there's so many different aspects to it. And, you know, and I really do feel that I am responsible for the success of NASA's science program. And so, you know, there is that kind of, oh, this is a huge, huge job. And, you know, we all have confidence crises every now and again and think, golly, can I really do it? But, you know, I'm sort of taking it one week at a time. And so I'm now in week four. And we've had three successful weeks. So, you know, I think that's great. And there's always new challenges and new things to do every single day. Right. But you're not new to NASA. But before this, you ran the heliophysics

unit, as I mentioned. You oversaw the Parker Solar Probe mission, which touched the outer surface of the sun for the first time. What was the big thing you took away from that experience? So being with the Parker Solar Probe team, which I did before I came to the agency, I was at the Applied Physics Lab, John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. And I was the project scientist for Parker Solar Probe. And that was an amazing, amazing experience. It's an incredible mission. You know, 60 years from initial sort of, oh, that would be good to us actually launching. For me, the thing I learned from that one was just the power of working in a really high performing team. and just learning to rely on people and learning that, you know, it's okay to ask for help. And, you know, there's always someone that's got your back, you know, that kind of feeling.

And so when I came to the agency to the Heli Physics Division in 2018, I jumped into the middle of a really high-performing team, you know, and it was just a pleasure to work alongside them and to lead them and to, you know, really lead the Heliophysics Division to do great things. Tell me a little bit about your own science interests. So what questions are you really interested in from a scientific perspective? Oh, golly. I mean, so many, actually. I mean, if I stick with my sort of training, then, you know, I'm interested in the sun, how the sun works.

But more importantly, to my own research, was really how that continually streaming solar atmosphere, the solar wind, how that impacts the Earth and what sort of space weather phenomena it causes. You know, my PhD was studying the aurora. And we don't kind of when the aurora may be formed under conditions that you might not think it would fall under. And so, you know, there's always part of me that's still in the, oh, we're talking about the aurora. That's great. But, you know, we have aurora on other planets. We have solar activity on other stars in other stellar systems.

And so I think that, you know, for stepping into this role, it's really the excitement of how the questions that maybe we are, in Heliophysics, how they transfer into the other divisions and the sort of synergies of the type of science we do. Certainly, you know, you can't not look at a James Webb Space Telescope image and not go, wow. You know, and just thinking about the fact that we can study our own sun because it's kind of a star in our backyard. And not that it was easy to get to. It took 60 years to develop that technology to get the mission to do that. but we are able to study that star kind of close up. And, you know, what we learn about that star, it's we say it's an average star,

which makes it sound like it's nothing to get excited about, but it's a star that, you know, that actually supports life on Earth. And so actually learning about that average star and then, you know, looking for other average stars in other systems, you know, that could also have planets around them that could sustain life. And so, you know, they're the things that are really exciting. You know, how do we building blocks of the solar system? We have Osiris Rex coming back in September, bringing samples with it from an asteroid Banu,

which is a very old asteroid that has, you know, those precursors of our solar system embedded in it. So what are we going to find out from that asteroid that enabled our planet to form that enabled it to sustain water to sustain life? So, you know, it's those kind of links that we have from almost any area of the science at NASA that just organically link to other areas of science. So they're the things that get me the most excited. So there are so many of these links and so many questions out there. No project is ever going to say, oh, we need less money. We need less telescope time.

How do you even start trying to balance them all? Well, so we have obviously agency priorities. You know, we have things that we want to do as an agency. We also have a lot of community input through our national academies. And so, you know, every 10 years, we have a decadal survey that is done. And members are, you know, really diverse sort of group of scientists and engineers and people that know how to do missions get together. And they give us our decadal survey. And there's, you know, one for each. of the different divisions here in the Science Mission Directorate that really tells us what our priorities for science are going to be or should be. You know, and so we get a lot of really great input about what the exciting science, what our priorities should be. And then, you know, obviously, as you say, nobody ever says, oh, no, no, we only need half that budget.

We'll do half the science. I mean, we're always trying to do more, more science, more technology, more everything else. But you just have to balance it. I mean, there is a finite amount of resources that we have. And that's not just budget. That's also the number of people that we have available to work on missions. So there's lots of things we have to balance. So, you know, there's a lot of constraints.

But golly, still the best job on the planet. Speaking of limited budgets, limited time, there was a planned mission to Venus, Veritas. The recent budget request doesn't have any funding. for it in the coming year. What happened there? Again, it's actually just balancing priorities. So we have a mission that is going to be launching at the end of this year called Psyche. They had some issues. They missed their launch window. And you know, you don't want to stop a mission that's about to launch. You know, you've put a lot of effort, a lot of in it. And so, you know,

that mission is going to go ahead and launch in October. I know, unfortunately, because of the finite budget, Veritas had to be done. delayed, not canceled, delayed. And so, you know, they will get their shot. But unfortunately, it's not as early as they would have liked it. But Veritas is still very much in our plan moving forward. There's research at NASA that is sort of focused on where we came from, the star origin, planet origin. There's research that looks at where we are now with all of the Earth-observing programs. And then there's research that looks at where we're going with exoplanets, and planetary habitability and things like that.

Where do your interests lie? Literally across all that you just said. I mean, that's what I said about the linkages between the science. And honestly, heliophysics is kind of, I mean, obviously I'm biased. I'm a heliophysicist. I'm going to like heliophysics. But it actually touches every one of the other. There's a big overlap between heliophysics and each of the other divisions, you know.

And so that's what I was saying about the science is just so, exciting. And just as you start learning about it, you know, you just find, oh, the questions that you were asking in your sort of your little little field of research are applicable in all of the others. And so, you know, where the Assyrus Rex telling us about where we came from, you know, looking at a web, looking further back than anything possibly can, you know, to the, to the beginnings of our universe. I mean, there's so much exciting stuff. I literally could not pick a favorite. You mentioned Osiris Rex and Psyche. Are there other upcoming missions that you're especially excited about? I'm excited about just about everything that we have in the portfolio.

As we start to do the Earth System Observatory, really putting all different ways that we're going to be looking at our planets of how we protect planet Earth. We have tempo coming up that are looking at how pollution sort of evolves over the day and night looking 24-7, looking down at, I think it's got a field of view from like the Gulf of Mesa. Mexico up to the oil flats of Canada, and it goes from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I mean, I'm just going to shamelessly plug a little mission for heliophysics called All, the atmospheric wave experiment, and it's a little instrument, and it's going to go on the International Space Station, and that's launching at the end of this year, too. You know, we also have a mission going to Mars called Escapade that is going to look sort of at the solar wind and how it impacted Mars. And And actually, you know, we also are kicking off the heliophysics big year, which is we've got

eclipses that you're going to be able to see from the US. Later this year, they will have an annular eclipse. So that's when, you know, the moon isn't quite in the right place to block out all of the sun, but you'll see a sort of ring of fire around the sun. If you're going to look at that, you must wear your glasses, must, must, must, must wear your glasses. So that one, eclipse glasses. But then next year in April, we'll have a total solar eclipse, which, if any,

Anyone saw that in 2017 is just the most amazing experience. So much exciting going on. That's just in the next year. The plaque on the door says you're in charge of science, but obviously in any government role, there are political considerations here too, right? Yes. I mean, some of the really exciting things actually are, you know, working with our government friends in the White House and planning out how just science is going to grow overall.

with the Office of Science Technology and Policy about their priorities and how, you know, how we can help, how we can actually literally lift science up for everybody. I think it's just a great experience to be able to do all this. You're listening to Science Friday from WNYC Studios. In case you're just joining us, I'm speaking with Dr. Nicola Fox, Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA. You've said in the past that it was sort of a dream to work for NASA. Tell me a little bit about your career path and how you got here. I'd always loved science. Definitely, science was 100% my favorite subject. I went to college, studied physics. I didn't really love it when I was at college, not going to lie,

had some definite sort of imposter syndrome and some issues with physics at first. I went and did a master's in satellite communications and telecommunications. And when I was there doing my master's, I mean, literally every one of my professors said to me, you don't think like an engineer. You think like a scientist. You're worried about, you're not worried about the how. You always want to know why. And you ask, you know, in quotes the wrong questions. And so I went back to Imperial College in London as where I did my PhD. I also did my first degree there. I went back there. And I did space plasma physics PhD and loved it. And, you know, was obviously very excited about my work as one is when you're doing a PhD.

You think it's the best thing ever. And I was at a meeting in Alaska. And I was presenting my work. And a scientist came over and said, you know, would you be interested in applying for a postdoc at Nessa? And, you know, I didn't even know that was a possibility. You know, coming from the UK, it never occurred to me that I, I, actually could go work for NASA. And so I jumped at the chance, applied for the postdoc,

was lucky enough to be awarded it, and moved to Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. I was there for about three years. And then I went up to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab and worked on a number of different NASA missions, the last one being Parker Solar Prove. After that, I came here per heliophysics. Do you have any advice for any young scientists

who might want to follow in your footsteps and get that? Great NASA job? You know, I think the most important thing is to do what you love. Do whatever's in your heart. That's really the most important thing. If you do what you love, you may find that that opportunity opens up for you. And honestly, if you want to work for NASA, there's so many different careers and so many different types of jobs that are necessary to get missions off the ground or to get people

to different destinations. And so really, whatever you want to do, there's probably a career path for you at NASA. Aside from the sun, do you have a favorite space object, some planet or galaxy that really speaks to you? I have to say, I've always been a sucker for Saturn. I have. It's always been my favorite planet. I think it's because it has the rings. But it's just always been the one that I love looking at it through the telescopes and all the amazing. work that's been done with Cassini and just studying

sap and that's that's probably my favorite one if I had to pick one. I love them all, of course. Do you have a favorite space fact? The thing that makes you just say, wow, that's so cool. So this is going to sound really pathetic if I give you what I, the thing that honestly I think is so cool. But the fact that, you know, when we send missions, we look at the sun, We're studying it in all different ways.

And then the fact that the sun is a star and there are, you know, so many other stars that are like our sun, you know. And so for me, it's just that feeling that we're in this solar system and, you know, it's great and we think that's the be all and end all. But we're a little tiny piece in this huge universe, you know. And so we can study everything and then how we apply it to other places. But just that feeling that we have this opportunity to study a star up close. We have an opportunity to study planets. And then we have the ability to sort of look into the depths of the universe and apply all the knowledge that we have from here to all those far-reaching places.

So it's kind of cheesy, but it's just that feeling of what we do here has so much, so many bigger impacts on everything else. That's all the time we have. I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Nicola Fox, Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA. She's based in Washington, D.C. Thank you so much for taking time to chat with me today. Thank you so much. If you missed any part of this program or would like to hear it again, you can subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. You know, every day now is Science Friday. Say hi to us on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or email us. The address is SciFri at ScienceFriday.com. Send feedback and tell us what you'd like us to cover, too. I'm Charles Bergquist. And I'm Flora Lichten. Have a great weekend.