Science Vs - Coronavirus: Labs Go Dark

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

Life is on pause for many of us right now. But scientists don’t want to stop! Researchers have had to figure out how to keep experiments going and keep lab animals alive — all while keeping themselves safe. To find out how they’re managing it, we talk to evolutionary biologist Dr. Ximena Bernal, plant biologist Professor Frank Telewski, marine conservation biologist Christine Figgener, and station manager Erin Heard. Here’s a link to our transcript: https://bit.ly/3dgBZ2i This episode was produced by Laura Morris with help from me Wendy Zukerman, Rose Rimler, Meryl Horn, Mathilde Urfalino, Michelle Dang and Sinduja Srinivasan. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell with help from Caitlin Kenney and Alex Blumberg. Fact checking by Diane Kelly. Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard. Music written by Peter Leonard, Marcus Bagala, Emma Munger, and Bobby Lord. A big thanks to everyone who left us messages and spoke to us - including Dr. Stella Capoccia, Dr. Alessandra Fidelis, Professor Marco Festa-Bianchet, Dr. Joanna Joiner, Anjana Parandhaman, and Mike Pendleton. And a special thanks to the Zukerman Family, Joseph Lavelle Wilson and Jack Weinstein. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet. Today, we wanted to do something a little different. So, a lot of us have been at home MacGyvering through our lives. For me, I'm recording from home, and I'm using pillows to muffle the sounds of my neighbors. It works okay. But for scientists, MacGyvering their work is a totally different ballgame. They have lab animals they have to keep alive, and experiments that can't be saved with bedding. So today, we're going to tell the stories of scientists from around the world

who have had to make some very weird choices in the middle of this pandemic. These are researchers who have spent years investigating pockets of the natural world, digging into the nuances of frog mating calls, the breeding habits of endangered turtles, and the superpowers of plants. And we're going to find out how this year, things had to change. We just didn't know how it was going to go. I was all gangbusters that, no, come hell or high water, we're going to do this experiment. By God.

I need to be there. I know I need to be there, but there is no way for me to actually be there. This will be a very strange year for everyone in research. Coming up, four dispatches from the world of science and how their research has recently gone topsy-turvy. to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick?

That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. What does the AI revolution mean for jobs, for getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology and what do they think? I'm Rana El-Khelyoubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI.

Think of it as your guide for all things AI with the most human issues at the center. Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in. It's season three of The Joy of Why, and I still have a lot of questions. Like, what is this thing we call time? Why does altruism exist?

And where is Jan 11? I'm here, astrophysicist and co-host, ready for anything. That's right. I'm bringing in the A-team. So brace yourselves. Get ready to learn. I'm Jan 11. I'm Steve Strogatz.

And this is... Quantum Magazine's podcast, The Joy of Why. New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 1st. Welcome back. Today, we're talking to researchers from around the world who are seeing this pandemic shake up their research. And our first scientist has had to MacGyver her way out of this using smashed bananas. So meet Dr. Ximena Bernal and her Tungara frogs. Yeah, so they're actually tiny frogs, like an inch long, and they look like a piece of mud. Ximena studies how frogs communicate in her lab at

Purdue University in Indiana, and she talked about them with producer Laura Morris. What's so special about these particular frogs? So these frogs have a really neat communication system. So the males call and they produce a whine that sounds like, thunk, thunk. And when the females show up, the males take it up a notch. They start adding chucks. And they sound, dungara, dungara. And that's why their common name is dungara frogs. Ximena has about 70 frogs.

And we just want to tell you one more cool thing about the frogs. It's about how they eat. So Ximena feeds them with fruit flies. You put the flies on the tank and they look at them. They follow them with their big eyes and then they stick their tongue out. But then the most fun part happens. They push the flies back into the back of their mouth with their eyes. What? Wait, so they blink their eyes and it pushes the food in?

Yeah, they close their eyes and you see they're pushing their eyes back into their mouth and with that they swallow. Ximena is mad about these frogs. But when she heard the coronavirus was on its way to Indiana, she had this really tough choice to make. Keeping the frogs alive would mean that her team would have to leave their homes and come into the lab to feed them, maybe putting themselves at risk. And of course, if they decided they couldn't do that,

then the frogs, they'd croak. Oh, that would be so sad. And it would make me really sad because I love these frogs. It would also be really tough if Ximena needed to replace the frogs. She'd have to have them shipped all the way from Panama, and some might not survive the trip. And in the meantime, she couldn't do her work, understanding these quirky critters.

So she brought her team together. I had an honest conversation with my lab and we talk about it openly, like how do we feel about it? Being clear that this main priority is that we all are okay. Humans go above frogs. As much as I love frogs,

the priority is to have the humans okay. They all felt like, no, we can't let them die. Like, they were all so sad. And we came out with a plan, a safety plan, and, like, who will be in charge? What is the backup person? How will we go about it? Ximena's plan?

Three researchers took turns going into the lab. And they'd go in separately. They'd count the frogs, change their water, and feed them with fruit flies. Now, the flies were actually their own problem. Usually, Ximena's team got the flies' food from a place which was now in lockdown. So the team had to make the food from scratch. They got this recipe, smashed bananas, apple cider vinegar, potato flakes, yeast, and then had to carefully mix it so it wasn't too dry or too soggy. Turns out flies are quite the

Goldilockses. Now at this point in the outbreak, back in March, Ximena had no idea if her team could keep this up. Her researchers might get sick, the plant could fall apart, and the frogs could starve. Other labs around the US have been forced to euthanise their animals. So Ximena, she prepared for the worst. And I wrote a protocol about how would be the way to euthanise all the frogs, or even if we have to reduce it, maybe euthanizing the old ones first. Yeah, it wasn't fun. But I think we had to be prepared. We just didn't know how it was going to

go. So how's it going? I think the frogs are doing okay. The tadpoles are growing, which are adorable, cute, like so cute when they're tiny. So I think it's fine. And none of us has gotten sick so far. So that's been really good. It's been quite some work to keep the flies going. But that's okay. I think we're doing okay.

I'm optimistic and the frogs are doing fine. Our next story comes from a scientist who had to choose between breaking the rules and putting a 140-year-old experiment in jeopardy. His name is Frank Taluski. He's a professor who studies plants at Michigan State University. And he told us that he's been excited about seeds from when he was little. You know, literally since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. And I can remember in first grade that we would get excited as kids about pumpkins. Let's go to

the store or the pumpkin patch and get a pumpkin. And I was like, I can grow my own pumpkins, smarty pants. You know, it's like, you know, I have a seed. This is a pumpkin seed. I don't have to go to a store. I can grow my own pumpkin. And this little pumpkin grew up to head one of the longest running experiments out there. It started back in 1879 in Michigan. Scientists and farmers were seeing that seeds could lay dormant in the ground and then pop back up again. And one researcher was fascinated by this. He wanted to know, how long can seeds do this for? How long does a seed remain viable in the soil became a very interesting question. Like, if you put seeds in a bottle for 100 years

and then put them in soil, would they actually grow? So he tested it. He literally put different kinds of seeds into 20 little bottles. The bottles were kind of like old cough medicine bottles or maybe old whiskey flasks. And so they're buried on the campus grounds.

Is there like a sign that's like, do not let your dogs here? Yeah. We keep it fairly well, you know, disclosed. You know, we don't want anybody, you know, going around and, you know, doing anything to it. Oh my God. So it really is like buried treasure on campus. Right. Sort of. Yeah. So who knows? Oh, I know where the bottles are. And here's what happens to those bottles.

The original plan in 1879 was to dig up one every five years. They later extended it. And now they're excavating them every 20 years. They'll put the seeds in soil, water them, and see what grows. And this means that since the late 1800s, scientists have been faithfully digging up these bottles. Through the turn of the century, World War I, the Spanish flu. That was between bottle excavations, so it worked out just right. Through more wars and cold wars and shoulder pads and Britney Spears,

bottles have been dug up and seeds would grow. And for more than 100 years, these bottles have been excavated in the spring. The last time a bottle was dug up was in the year 2000, and Frank was the one to do it. And even though this happened 20 years ago, Frank remembers it like it was yesterday. I got up like about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning.

Frank drives out to this mysterious site on campus. He meets his colleague. They both stoop down really low, carefully searching for the bottles. You're down on your hands and knees with a paintbrush. And then we found the bottles. He can see the last remaining few in the dirt. He leaves them there and covers everything up, hides his tracks.

And then he took that bottle back to the greenhouse and then Frank and his colleagues spread the seeds on a tray with soil and watered them. And then you just wait. And the waiting is the hardest part, right? I mean, the curiosity is like, come on, come on. But, you know, as scientists who work with seeds, we knew that you shouldn't expect to see something

for at least a week to 10 days. So, but, you know, that didn't stop me from going down and still peeking in and saying, you know, wakey, wakey. Come on guys. When the very first one germinated, I mean, it wells up inside of you. It's like, yes, yes. Then the question just becomes how many and who, but you know that, you know, when you see that very first one break the surface of the soil, it'll kind of leave, that pushes up and it opens. You're like, wow, you're part of, now it's really real. You're standing on the shoulders of your giants. Two types of seeds still grew into plants after 120 years of being stuck in a bottle.

So that was in the spring of 2000. And now, 20 years later, Frank can't wait to do it again. To seed, could seeds really germinate after 140 years? So when were you supposed to pop the next champagne bottle? We were supposed to do an excavation sometime in the middle of April. But by the time we got to April, our governor in the state had pretty much issued a stay-at-home order. That order basically shut the university down. I was all gangbusters that, no, come hell or high water, we're going to sit there and excavate a bottle and do this experiment, by God. And it just got to the point where, no, we can't. We're shut down. It's just too much of a risk to do this. We have to postpone it.

And so as May was ticking over, how were you feeling? Disappointment's probably about the strongest feeling. It's like, you know, oh, geez, you know, come on. It's been 140 years and this has to happen now. Why not just like sneak in there in the cover of night with a little shovel? I mean, no one would know. The world, the scientific world would know because you have to report when you excavated the bottle and how you did it. Oh, and then everyone know that you broke the bottles.

Frank doesn't know when he'll be able to dig up the next bottle. He's hoping in the fall, but he might have to wait until next spring. It would be such a beautiful moment of symbolism if they did regrow. Yeah, talk about resilience. You know, plants come back, you know, the birds come back, you know, our crops come back. We're able to cultivate and eat and be happy. And this whole, you know, it's a circle of life.

It's so much a part of who we are. I mean, it is who we are. I mean, it is who we are. So much like Simba waiting to take the throne, one of the longest running experiments in the world will have to wait a little longer. And in this case, it might not matter too much. The seeds will still be waiting there for Frank. But in other cases, it's different. If researchers miss their window, then it's gone. And for our next scientist, the stakes are high. Yeah, my name is Christine Figgener and I'm a marine conservation biologist and I try to collect data on sea turtles.

So usually I work in Costa Rica and right now I'm stranded in Texas. Christine is at Texas A&M and you might remember her from our episode about plastics. She's the one who filmed that viral video of a plastic straw stuck up a poor turtle's nose. Usually, at this time of year, Christine would be studying Atlantic leatherback sea turtles because it's breeding season in Costa Rica. So you have to imagine an animal that weighs close to a ton that is very slowly making its way from the waterline up on the beach very laboriously is then digging a nest with her hind flippers and then starts dropping her eggs. But so far, this year, Christine hasn't been able to see this.

Amid the pandemic, flights to Costa Rica were cancelled. And this led to a big problem for Christine. These turtles are endangered. And she not only tracks and monitors them for her work, but her team also helps protect them from poachers who go after the turtle eggs, sometimes selling them as an aphrodisiac. And so to save the eggs,

Christine and local researchers wait while the mama drops her eggs. And then they take them to a hidden part of the beach until the babies are ready to pop out. All of a sudden you have those hatchling little noses that just kind of peek out and wiggle around. And then all of a sudden it's like an explosion. You have like 200 babies kind of coming out that all make their way to the ocean. And we have hundreds of those nests per season if we're good. So we can release up to like 30,000, 40,000

babies per season. This is amazing. So if you don't come and protect the eggs, what happens to them? See, this is the thing I'd rather not think about. So I'm really getting nervous. The chances are that poachers will dig them up and either sell them or use them for their own consumption. And now for them, yeah, it's probably almost like a free show when they can just go out and nobody is there that actually prevents what they're doing. I think that I'm letting my turtles down. I need to be there. I know I need to be there, but there is no way for me to actually be there.

And even for her colleagues in Costa Rica, they couldn't get to the turtles either, because the beaches have been closed. And Christine doesn't think that that's going to stop the poachers. And while it's really hard for researchers like Christine to know what's going on in the places that they're usually trying to protect, there are already reports that poaching is on the rise in some other countries. A lot of the conservation efforts that are going on usually are not happening right now. And unfortunately, a lot of species absolutely depend on those efforts. And, you know, conservationists or not, we're all stuck at home right now. And so now that you're not in Costa Rica looking at sea turtles, instead, what animals have you been able to see in Texas?

Well, I have my squirrel friends outside the window. Your squirrel friends. Usually I'm feeding them nuts just for fun, but now I'm thinking, well, how much meat does one of those squirrels have, you know, in case the apocalypse is coming? Just kidding. Not kidding. Surely not that much, right? Actually, they're pretty fat.

You would be surprised. Like a chicken leg, I would say, probably. Two of them. Yeah. After the break, we'll head to the one continent on Earth where there's no coronavirus at all. Welcome back. Our final stop today is a research station at the end of the world.

It's a place where no one has coronavirus. And we wanted to know what that feels like right now. So we called up the guy who runs the place. My name is Aaron Hurd. I'm the winter station manager for McMurdo Station in Antarctica. If you were to go outside right now, what would you hear? I would either hear the wind blowing, which is a common soundtrack to life in Antarctica, and the wind's not blowing. I would not hear anything. No birds chirping and no planes flying and no traffic in the distance. Just silence.

Just pure silence. It is perfectly silent. Right now it's dark. So it'll be dark most of today. We'll get a little bit of light. The sun won't break the horizon. So it's very easy to see stars that are not easy to see most other places. The Milky Way looks like, it looks like almost like a cloud a lot of times.

It's very cloudy looking. It's shockingly bright. Just, it looks so different here than anywhere else I've ever been. Right now, there's around 150 people living at McMurdo and other nearby stations. And Erin told us that they're only seeing a few small changes because of the coronavirus. Like a science group was supposed to come down, but their trip got cancelled because McMurdo wasn't letting anyone in. But just generally speaking, Aaron says that with no coronavirus around, there is still research going on as normal,

and day-to-day life is basically the same. Pretty close, yeah, yeah. We eat in a cafeteria in a dining room, and not everyone is in there at the same time, of course, but that's where most people cross paths in a typical day. When you described that cafeteria, I couldn't help but say, no, no, like, don't, you can't all eat together. A hundred people eat crazy.

And then I realized it's okay. Yes. Isn't that crazy to think about that you over in Antarctica have a much better social life than us in the US? Yes. Yeah. We've actually talked a bit about that. The Antarctic New Zealand Research Station is very nearby and they invited us over for their Anzac Day celebration. Anzac Day is a holiday in Australia and New Zealand to remember soldiers that died during war. It's like our version of the U.S.'s Memorial Day. It's tradition for Aussies and New Zealanders to wake up at the crack of dawn and go to their city's war memorial site. And there's this moment when the sun comes up and everyone is thinking about these lost soldiers. Across Australia and New Zealand, there were little Anzac Days,

but the crowds couldn't come together like usual. In Antarctica, though, things were different. Well, good morning and welcome, everybody. Thanks for coming to today's Anzac Day service. Aaron sent us a recording of this year's service from the New Zealand base in Antarctica. We thank all those who are working on the front line during this COVID-19 crisis.

It takes courage and hope and optimism to look forward to better times. Better times where we can come together and share once again. It was just kind of dawn, so the sky was kind of purple. It was very special. I think maybe in some ways more special because we were able to be together standing in a group as the flag was lowered.

We happen to have one of our participants in McMurdo, a very, very talented horn player, and she was able to play, I forget the name of the song. The Last Post is what it's called. Yes, exactly. The Last Post is what it's called. Yes, exactly, it was remarkable. And we noted that it was most likely was the most widely attended Anzac celebration on the planet that day. So with all, you know, 30 or 40 of us standing there. This was a little slice from scientists around the world right now.

Researchers trying to keep their animals alive. A botanist itching to crack open some very old seeds. And a station manager, who while the rest of us can't, is gathering for those we've lost. That's Science Faces. This episode was produced by Laura Morris with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, Rose Rimler,

Meryl Horn, Mathilde Erfolino, Michelle Zhang and Sanduja Srinivasan. We're edited by Blythe Terrell with help from Caitlin Kenny and Alex Bloomberg. Fact-checking by Diane Kelly. Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard. Music written by Peter Leonard, Marcus Begala, Emma Munger, and Bobby Lord.

And a big thanks to all the researchers who left us messages and spoke to us, including Dr. Stella Karposha, Dr. Joanna Jonah, Anjana Parandaman, Professor Marco Fiesta Bianchetti, Mike Pendleton, and Dr. Alessandra Fidelis.

A special thanks to the Zuckerman family, Joseph LaBelle Wilson and Jack Weinstein. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.