Today, you’ll learn about a new process that can make cells younger by up to thirty years, the incredible artificial intelligence that is helping piece together the puzzles of ancient texts, and how researchers have developed a rapid test for viruses like coronavirus that is just as accurate as PCR tests and takes only thirty minutes.
Today, you’ll learn about a new process that can make cells younger by up to thirty years, the incredible artificial intelligence that is helping piece together the puzzles of ancient texts, and how researchers have developed a rapid test for viruses like coronavirus that is just as accurate as PCR tests and takes only thirty minutes.
The fountain of youth may be closer than we think.
The overlap between artificial intelligence and the ancient world.
Turns out some things can actually be good, fast, and cheap.
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/de-agin-sensation-indiana-jones-needs-ai-rapid-est-test
TITLE:
DE-AGIN’ SENSATION, INDIANA JONES NEEDS A.I., RAPID-EST TEST
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Calli and Nate — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today, you’ll learn about a new process that can make cells younger by up to thirty years, the incredible artificial intelligence that is helping piece together the puzzles of ancient texts, and how researchers have developed a rapid test for viruses like coronavirus that is just as accurate as PCR tests and takes only thirty minutes.
CALLI: Without further adieu, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: Whoosh]
NATE: Calli, I know we’re in our thirties, so, my body is starting to see the earliest effects of old age. I wonder what it’s going to feel like when I get much older.
CALLI: I know what you mean. I’m already feeling some aches and pains, and when I get hurt, things seem to heal a bit slower than they used to.
NATE: Totally. Thankfully, soon we might not have to feel this old ... because of new de-aging technology.
CALLI: And you tell me I watch too many sci-fi movies.
NATE: Well, aging makes for pretty good sci-fi subject matter since it’s such a complex process.
CALLI: Cells get bigger and become less able to divide and multiply. Doesn’t seem that complex?...
NATE: Okay, the process of it isn’t all that complex, but the mechanisms at work are.
CALLI: Another fun fact, lots of waste products build up in our tissues and change as you age.
NATE: Wow, you know a lot about aging.
CALLI: Seemed smart to look it up, because I dunno about you, but I’m aging.
NATE: Everybody ages, Calli! I think I’m experiencing the common problem of connective tissues getting stiffer.
CALLI: You could also be losing tissue mass and atrophying. Or maybe your tissues are getting lumpy or more rigid. All those are common symptoms of old age.
NATE: You know, I’m also starting to enjoy hard candies, and Bingo nights.
CALLI: (laughs) Nice.
NATE: But big questions remain ... we don't really understand why we wear down as we get older. Some believe it’s simple wear and tear, others say it’s caused by byproducts of our metabolic systems, and some think it’s more controlled by our genes.
CALLI: So what’s this “de-aging” you’re so confident in, Benjamin Button?
NATE: It’s not nearly that extensive. Although I wish there was technology to make me look like Brad Pitt at any age.
CALLI: Honestly... same.
NATE: I’m talking about regenerative biology. They use stem cells. More specifically - induced stem cells.
CALLI: And what makes a stem cell “induced”?
NATE: It’s a quick way of saying it went through a process that clears the cell so it can be used as a blank slate to create any kind of cell.
CALLI: Ohhh I’ve heard about this in people getting muscles or skin repaired.
NATE: Skin is actually our focus here as researchers were recently able to “time jump” human skin cells by thirty years.
CALLI: “Time jump”!? What does that mean?
NATE: It means they were able to take existing skin cells and ... with some of the same techniques used to induce stem cells ... rejuvenate them! After the process, the skin cells still had their specific bodily function, but biologically were thirty years younger. The researchers had finally struck the delicate balance between reprogramming cells, making them biologically younger, and keeping their specific functions in tact.
CALLI: So they found the fountain of youth?
NATE: Not quite the fountain of youth. But they did fix the problem of having to erase cells entirely for reprogramming. With this new method they can merely stop the cells during their natural degeneration and renew them. The results are very very promising for future applications of de-aging.
CALLI: How could they be sure that the cells were functioning as if they were “younger”?
NATE: That was the final test to make sure the process worked. It’s one thing to engineer the cells to appear younger in biomarkers. But the team ran a trial where they made an artificial cut in a layer of cells in a petri dish. During the recovery process, the rejuvenated cells moved into the cut faster than the old cells.
CALLI: So at the very least we have cells that can heal injuries faster.
NATE: That’s what this research is in the beginning stages of.
CALLI: This is like the super biology version of “out with the old, in with the new”.
NATE: That does sound better than “out with the old, in with the molecularly regenerated”.
CALLI: So can these techniques be applied to other parts of the body?
NATE: There’s hope for that possibility. During the study the team also saw youthful changes to a few genes that were linked to Alzheimer’s and cataracts. Both of which are age-related diseases.
CALLI: We haven’t discovered the fountain of youth, but we’ve got a tip from a guy about where it might be on the map.
NATE: Essentially. The researchers are going to further study the process. They want a complete understanding of the rejuvenation mechanism. Once they know more about how it functions with cells, they can chase that gene lead and see if it’s possible to identify and target the best genes for rejuvenation in general.
CALLI: Wow! That sounds really promising.
NATE: It is! I’m hoping they figure some stuff out soon. None of us are getting any younger.
CALLI: At least not yet!
[SFX: Whoosh]
NATE: What does this say? I can never read your handwriting?
CALLI: Nate why do you have my journal?
NATE: Oh I was just doing some research for your birthday and it looks like you say you could use a new…Loptape?
CALLI: Give me that back, man I’m glad these scribbles are indecipherable.
NATE: It may not stay indecipherable for long. Not if we apply artificial intelligence.
CALLI: Please don’t!
NATE: Researchers from DeepMind, an Alphabet subsidiary, have developed an artificial intelligence software that can fill in missing and fragmented text from the ancient world. Maybe your journal is next.
CALLI: Let's keep it in the ancient world, Nate. So what are they reading?
NATE: Right now it's working with ancient Greek texts.
CALLI: Why would we need help with Greek? Aren't there scholars who work with ancient Greek all the time?
NATE: Oh absolutely. We’re lucky to have highly trained scholars and historians, but they often run into a big problem: inscriptions with huge missing sections of text. These texts are often on materials like stone and metal, that break, degrade, and fragment over time. After thousands of years, we don’t always have a full story to work with.
CALLI: Oh I get it, I spilled coffee on a book and half the pages became illegible in just seconds.
NATE: You need a sippy cup. But it’s not spilled bean juice making these texts hard to read. Many of the stone and metal tablets were moved all around the ancient world, which can make it hard to figure out where they came from originally. And their age can be difficult to tell because carbon dating only works with materials that were once alive, so it doesn't work with stone or metal.
CALLI: Well if experts have studied their entire lives to fill in these missing puzzle pieces, how do you train an AI to have the same sort of analysis in any reasonable amount of time?
NATE: They fed the AI, called Ithaca, more than 78,000 ancient Greek inscriptions and the accompanying meta-data, like location and age, when we knew it.
CALLI: All it needed to fill in blanks was complete inscriptions from elsewhere? How can it know what isn’t there? It’s not like every text is just a duplicate.
NATE: Totally. It’s not easy filling in the blanks. It’s tedious work that requires endless cross-referencing, and tons of expertise in the specific language and the region’s history. But for AI programs like Ithaca...? This is literally what it’s designed to do! Pattern recognition is the bread and butter of these kind of models.
CALLI: So is it pumping out tons of new information?
NATE: It’s not making up new information per se, it’s just helping historians do what they have long done, just a bit better.
CALLI: Well just how good is it? Are we getting those big answers?
NATE: In the research published in Nature, Ithaca was able to restore missing letters with 62% accuracy,
CALLI: That sounds pretty good! But how do you test the accuracy of missing information?
NATE: They were a bit tricksy about it, to be honest. They fed the program pieces of complete inscriptions. Basically, they made the blanks themselves. Like if I programmed the AI to understand presidential speeches and pulled some words out of the Gettysburg Address. The results were impressive, but some historians are quick to point out it was still only right two out of three times.
CALLI: But that's all on its lonesome, what if we combine its power with the insights of those scholars?
NATE: Scholars on their own could replace missing text with about 25% accuracy, but when they used Ithaca as one of many tools in their toolbox, that accuracy improved to 72%.
CALLI: Oh thats a huge leap, like going from squinting at the stars to using Galileo’s telescope. Didn’t you also mention date and place?
NATE: With its pattern recognition, the software can place a text in one of 84 regions of the ancient world with 71% accuracy, impressive since many of these texts were moved over the last few thousand years. And it can also date texts to within about 30 years of their writing.
CALLI: 30 years? For texts thousands of years old? I can’t even tell how old Paul Rudd is.
NATE: No one can. But Ithaca is already helping us. For example, we thought an inscription at the Acropolis of Athens was from four-forty-eight to four-forty-seven BC, and Ithaca corrected that. It’s from four twenty-four BC.
CALLI: Pretty small change. A little over twenty years?
NATE: Sure, but that’s longer than the reign of some kings! Making sure these inscriptions are in their proper place on the timeline affects how we view them in the context of other historical texts. Basically, it gives us a better understanding of the political history of Athens.
CALLI: So are we confined to ancient Greece? There are so many ancient civilizations with fragmented inscriptions we could decipher.
NATE: Because of the nature of the software, we could upload and analyze texts from just about any other ancient language…like Mayan or cuneiform. And we could look at any kind of medium, including papyri and manuscripts.
CALLI: So long as no one points it at my journal.
NATE: Ha, well keep it hidden from the world then, because the software is free and open source.
CALLI: Well then I’ll have my journal go the way of the Library of Alexandria.
NATE: Still too soon Calli.
[SFX: Whoosh]
CALLI: Nate, are you blowing bubbles?
NATE: You bet I am. Bubbles are the new ultimate science tool -- didn’t you know?
CALLI: Nate, I love this news, but no, I do not know…
NATE: Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas recently developed a rapid test that is just as accurate as our current PCR tests for COVID and other viruses, that can be done more quickly, cheaply, and easily, all thanks ... to bubbles.
CALLI: Did they get in a bathtub with a little rubber duckie and start solving world health problems?
NATE: I know they worked in a lab, but I don’t know about the bathtub… A study in Nature Communications covered a new method: digital plasmonic nanobubble detection ... or DIAMOND.
CALLI: This might seem like a silly question, but exactly how does having a faster test help us?
NATE: Well, the earlier we can detect viruses within patients, the earlier we can start treating them and stopping the virus from spreading. Imagine if you could go get tested, and get accurate results in 30 minutes rather than a few days, or even four or five hours.
CALLI: Right, and viruses can develop in your body, so getting results closer to the time you took the test, makes the results more accurate to how much virus you have!
NATE: And speaking of accuracy, these new tests are 150 times more accurate than our current rapid virus tests. Plus, researchers say they can be made for as little as $15 a pop.
CALLI: Oh, that would be huge, but how does it work? How were they able to make this huge leap forward?
NATE: Right. Researchers worked with respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. They attached gold…
CALLI: Gold and diamonds! This science is glitzy!
NATE: (laughs) Gold nanoparticles! They attached these nanoparticles to antibodies of the virus they were testing for.
CALLI: Antibodies, the little guys inside you that fight the virus.
NATE: Yes, exactly. Then they took a nasal swab from a patient, and mixed it with these combined particles. If the sample had the virus the researchers were looking for, then the antibodies would bind with the virus, which is what they normally do.
CALLI: So the virus and antibodies bind, but how can you quickly and cheaply notice something like that?
NATE: That’s where the gold comes in. Follow me on this for a second. Researchers would take the sample with the swab and the particles, and pump it into what's called a microchannel…it's kind of like a piece of angel hair pasta mounted on a glass slide.
CALLI: Bubbles, gold, diamonds, pasta, this story has all my favorite things.
NATE: Well the bubbles are coming back. The liquid sample flows through the microchannels, and passes through two lasers.
CALLI: Lasers too?! This just keeps getting better.
NATE: The first laser “activates” the gold particles. Basically, gold particles absorb energy from the lasers and start to expand. This expansion is powerful; enough that it can actually boil water in the sample, creating….bubbles. Then, the second laser is then used to determine the size of the bubbles. And that tells them whether or not the virus is present. If those gold particle covered antibodies latch onto the virus, the expansion becomes big enough to create big bubbles, whereas if the gold nanoparticles don’t have a virus to latch onto, they just create small bubbles.
CALLI: It's not the size of the virus in the bubble, it's the size of the bubble with the virus.
NATE: Somehow that sounds both inspirational, and accurate to the science of the story.
CALLI: That's what I do Nate. So will this work with other viruses?
NATE: Researchers say all they have to do is change the antibody they attach the gold particles to and it should work for basically any virus. That's a huge deal for things like the flu, and importantly, of course, coronavirus.
CALLI: Wow, can you imagine if these accurate, fast, and cheap tests were available all over the place? That’d sure reduce some folks' stress, reduce transmissions, make life in the world of a pandemic or endemic virus much easier! So when can we see these bubble tests?
NATE: Well, there is still a lot of work to do. The process will have to be approved by the FDA before it can be sent to hospitals, pharmacies, and maybe even homes. But the researchers are already working on creating a company to do just that, and they’ve won some funding in innovations competitions.
CALLI: I love hearing when good ideas are rewarded, even more so when those good ideas include bubbles, diamonds, lasers, gold, and pasta.
NATE: Cheers to that. There's only one thing to do then, blow some bubbles in the honor of science.
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up.
CALLI: A breakthrough in regenerative biology has uncovered a method by which skin cells can be made younger up to thirty years. While it’s not a full blown discovery of the fountain of youth, the research is very promising for the future of anti-aging biological technology.
NATE: Artificial intelligence is helping us fill in missing sections of some of the world’s most confounding ancient texts. Ithaca, a new program from DeepMind, is capable of recognizing patterns in text, filling in missing words, determining ancient texts’ age, and their original geographic location. And it's all available for free.
CALLI: Researchers have found a new, easy, fast, and affordable way to rapidly test for the presence of viruses in patients. The new method is 150 times more accurate than our current rapid tests and relies on studying bubbles. Next step, FDA approval.