Learn about CRISPR technology and applications in GMOs; a hallucinogenic plant that’s both beautiful and deadly; and how scientists are working together to understand Fast Radio Bursts, which are one of the universe’s greatest mysteries. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com — with some help from Synthego’s Meenakshi Prabhune and Kevin Bryant — to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: The Hallucinogenic Angel's Trumpet Plant Is Beautiful and Deadly — https://curiosity.im/2EbynRj How scientists are working together to solve one of the universe's mysteries — https://curiosity.im/2EfVhG2 More from Synthego: CRISPR Cuts, Synthego’s official podcast — https://www.synthego.com/podcast About Synthego — https://www.synthego.com/company Follow Synthego on Twitter — https://twitter.com/synthego Meenakshi (Minu) Prabhune on Twitter — https://twitter.com/minu_pr If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Learn about CRISPR technology and applications in GMOs; a hallucinogenic plant that’s both beautiful and deadly; and how scientists are working together to understand Fast Radio Bursts, which are one of the universe’s greatest mysteries.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com — with some help from Synthego’s Meenakshi Prabhune and Kevin Bryant — to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
More from Synthego:
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom
Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/gene-editing-with-crispr-and-gmos-w-synthego-fast-radio-bursts-and-angels-trumpet
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got the latest and greatest from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you'll learn about how scientists are working together to understand fast radio bursts, which are one of the universe's greatest mysteries.
CODY GOUGH: You'll also learn about a hallucinogenic plant that's both beautiful and deadly. Trippy.
ASHLEY HAMER: Plus, we'll talk about CRISPR technology and GMOs with experts from the genome engineering innovation company Synthego.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily. One of the most baffling puzzles of modern astrophysics is the nature of fast radio bursts. And thanks to a new project, scientists from all around the world are working together to solve this cosmic mystery. Ashley, how have you not told me about this before?
ASHLEY HAMER: I don't know about everything in the universe, Cody. [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: You know about everything in the universe, Ashley. That's why you're here for.
ASHLEY HAMER: This is totally new to me. I didn't know what fast radio bursts were, and I'm super intrigued now.
CODY GOUGH: All right. Well, I thought black holes were cool because of you, and now I think fast radio bursts are just the coolest thing. So as reported by The Conversation, fast radio bursts were first discovered in 2007 and the relatively rare extremely bright flashes of light with radio wavelengths. They last only milliseconds. They come from outside our galaxy, the Milky Way. They come from parts of the universe with enormously strong magnetic fields, and they pass through a lot of gas or dust before they get to Earth.
Sounds like we know a lot about fast radio bursts, right? Well, no. We don't know exactly where they come from or what causes them or whether we might be able to use them as cosmological standards to measure the large-scale properties of our universe. Dozens of theories about fast radio bursts have been proposed, from ones that follow standard physics to ones featuring cosmic strings to the token explanation that it was aliens.
There's a massive amount of variation in the theories that have been proposed, and it takes a lot of work to narrow down the theories. 50 models have been proposed to date, and only three have been eliminated. That's why researchers have set up an online catalog that lists each theory, along with its pros and cons.
A Fast Radio Burst Catalogue and a Fast Radio Burst Theory Wiki have been set up so scientists around the world can track theories and predictions, weigh in on research, and add new data and discoveries along the way. Some of this data will come from projects in Africa, like the Hydrogen Intensity and Real-Time Analysis Experiment, also known as HIRAX, the MeerKAT radio telescope, and the Square Kilometre Array telescope. But this online collaboration will also provide insight into scientific sociology as international researchers work together and hopefully end up agreeing on the most acceptable explanation for fast radio bursts.
Let's be real though. If you're into theoretical physics and you want to look into how fast radio bursts have something to do with neutron stars, black holes, pulsars, or dark matter, then you're welcome. The Fast Radio Burst Catalogue could be your next online rabbit hole, and it's one that you can spend a lot of time going down. You can find links to all of these resources in our full write-up on curiosity.com and on our free Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
ASHLEY HAMER: Today in weird deadly things you should definitely avoid, we wrote about a hallucinogenic flower that's been linked to several deaths. We shouldn't have to tell you, but we will anyway. Don't eat these flowers.
CODY GOUGH: I mean, you have to tell people to not eat Tide Pods. So--
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, those things definitely look like candy.
CODY GOUGH: [CHUCKLES] I'm just saying, it's not a given.
ASHLEY HAMER: I don't make a habit of eating flowers myself.
CODY GOUGH: I don't make a habit of eating Tide Pods--
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, that's good.
CODY GOUGH: --anymore.
ASHLEY HAMER: [CHUCKLES] So the flower I'm talking about is called the Angel's trumpet. It's a beautiful bell-shaped flower ready to send you straight to the hospital. It's poisonous. At best, eating the flower will result in terrifying hallucinations. But at worst, it can leave you dead.
You may be thinking, well, hallucinating doesn't sound that bad. You know who else thought that? People who ate the Angel's trumpet because they were hoping for a psychedelic trip and ended up in the hospital. Here's what the American Journal of Psychiatry says about the Angel's trumpet, quote, "Ingestion of Angel's trumpet flowers, or a tea brewed from them, results in an alkaloid-induced central nervous system, anticholinergic syndrome characterized by symptoms such as fever, delirium, hallucinations, agitation, and persistent memory disturbances. Severe intoxication may cause flaccid paralysis, convulsions, and death," unquote.
The danger in this plant comes from chemical compounds called tropane alkaloids. These cause intense side effects, including visual and auditory hallucination, confusion, and paralysis of the smooth muscles, the muscles that make up your vital organs. Now there is a way to reverse the effects, but you'll have to come up with an injection of a glaucoma drug called physostigmine. So again, keep them in the garden and out of your mouth.
CODY GOUGH: Before we get to our last story, I want to give a special shout-out to some of our patrons for supporting our show. Thank you, Ben [? Juric, ?] Julian Gomez, [? Katrina ?] [? Constantine, ?] Dean Norris, [INAUDIBLE], and Michael [? Kovich. ?] I cannot tell you enough how valuable your contributions are.
ASHLEY HAMER: If you're listening and you want to support Curiosity Daily, then visit patreon.com/curiosity.com, all spelled out. Any amount helps, and we offer a lot of bonus material as our way of saying thanks to our patrons, like bonus interviews and access to our Discord server. One more time. That's patreon.com/curiosity.com.
CODY GOUGH: CRISPR is pretty hot these days. It's a technology that's already being used to permanently modify DNA in living organisms. And one day, we might even use it to treat genetic diseases in humans.
ASHLEY HAMER: On the other hand, you know what's not hot these days? Genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, specifically GMO foods. Some people don't want anyone in a lab coat going near their food, even if it's to improve its nutrition or sustainability. To a lot of people, natural is always better. That raises an interesting question. As CRISPR becomes more mainstream, should scientists worry that public trust will go the way of the GMO?
CODY GOUGH: Ashley and I got some answers from Minu Prabhune and Kevin Bryant. They're both science communicators at Synthego, which is a leading provider of genome engineering solutions. And they host CRISPR Cuts, Synthego's official podcast. Here's what they told us about how foods actually are genetically modified in the first place and how CRISPR is different than the GMO process.
MINU PRABHUNE: I think you're right in that people are really afraid of GMO food, and many people are actually not maybe supportive of that. But then as you said, it also depends on what they perceive when they think of GMOs because it's not even clear if they think that a gene has been taken from another species and introduced in a crop. That's one way. Or with CRISPR, you might just actually have cut out one gene from a crop, and there is no insertion of anything else from any other species. So there's literally no contamination as such. But maybe people don't know this difference. And then that's our job probably to inform this and make this distinction between what they might be afraid of and what is actually being done. And maybe that might help positive public perception about this topic.
ASHLEY HAMER: Besides transgenic mutations, where you take a gene from one species and put it into another, how is CRISPR different than the GMO process?
KEVIN BRYANT: One way that it can be different is you can specifically introduce a naturally occurring variant into a plant that already didn't have that variant. So over the course of tens or hundreds or thousands of years, just by cells dividing, they'll incur small point mutations over time randomly. And some of those will lead to an outcome that farmers want.
In some cases, it will kill the plant, and then those will just go away. In most cases, there's no result at all. It's just the plant doesn't even notices the change. But in some small but non-0% probability, randomly mutations arise that are good.
Ultimately, that's the basis of natural selection. But it's also the basis of modern farming. These kind of variants have been identified and bred to be more common since we've been actually doing farming.
It's just been an inefficient process. It can take tens of years for these variants to become common. And CRISPR technology is allowing these already-being-used processes just to be more efficient now. So ultimately in the end, you don't have any unnatural sequences, and you get to that point faster and more efficiently.
ASHLEY HAMER: That was part of a much longer conversation Cody and I had with Kevin and Minu. And you can hear a lot more of our conversation on Synthego's official podcast. You can find CRISPR Cuts-- that's C-R-I-S-P-R-- on your favorite podcast app, or visit synthego.com/podcast.
CODY GOUGH: Each episode of CRISPR Cuts features interviews with the CRISPR expert to talk about their work or offer their views regarding the increasing role of this genome editing tool in our lives and help draw a line between its potential and the hype. Ashley and I were honored to be their guest, and you should check it out if you want to learn more about what Synthego's working on.
ASHLEY HAMER: Or if you just can't get enough of Cody and me. You can find more links to learn about Synthego in today's show notes. But one more time, that's synthego.com/podcast, S-Y-N-T-H-E-G-O.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow with the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
NARRATOR: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.
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