Learn about new research into how social anxiety works in the brain; how scientists developed the first synthetic self-replicating genome; and the adorable sounds penguins make underwater.
Learn about new research into how social anxiety works in the brain; how scientists developed the first synthetic self-replicating genome; and the adorable sounds penguins make underwater.
It's harder for people with social anxiety to remember encounters that ended positively by Kelsey Donk
Scientists just created the first synthetic self-replicating genome by Cameron Duke
Penguins can call underwater by Steffie Drucker
Fun videos from Chicago’s Museum Campus:
Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/memorys-role-in-social-anxiety-the-first-synthetic-self-replicating-genome-and-penguins-can-call-underwater
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about new research into how social anxiety works in the brain; how scientists developed the first synthetic self-replicating genome; and the adorable sounds penguins make underwater. Prepare for a cuteness overload.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
According to a new study, people with social anxiety have a harder time remembering social interactions that ended well. And that tells us more about how social anxiety works in the brain. And THAT could help us come up with better ways to deal with it.
When someone with social anxiety is about to enter a high-stakes social situation, like meeting the in-laws or doing a big work presentation, they’re often flooded with memories of situations that ended badly in the past. This can feel pretty discouraging, and a little like self-sabotage. But new research from the University of Waterloo suggests that people with social anxiety actually have a harder time remembering positive social interactions. It’s a memory bias — the good, happy social memories are harder to retrieve.
Researchers asked 197 participants to imagine themselves in a few fictional social scenarios, like going on a blind date or attending a house party, and some fictional non-social scenarios, like making dinner alone or getting a bill in the mail. The scenarios either ended well or ended badly. So maybe the date was great or maybe they didn’t want to see you again. Maybe you made new friends at the party, or maybe you didn’t end up talking to anyone. In the non-social scenarios, maybe dinner tasted good or bad, or maybe that bill was low or high.
Later on, the participants were asked to remember the name and details of as many of the scenarios as they could, and note whether the experience was positive or negative. All of the participants, no matter what level of social anxiety they experienced, had similar memories for the non-social scenarios. But the participants with the most social anxiety had worse memory for the social scenarios that had a positive outcome.
According to the researchers, socially anxious people might not be able to remember the good because positive memories just don’t fit in with how they see themselves. Their anxiety tells them that social events always go badly for them, so the good memories are less memorable. It’s like when you have a roommate who thinks you never do the dishes. Even if you do the dishes sometimes, they may not remember because it doesn’t fit their picture of you. It’s just that in this scenario, the socially anxious person is the judgy roommate and their social interactions are the person who actually really does do dishes sometimes, I swear!
The researchers don’t offer a fix for the socially anxious, but you might want to spend a little more time thinking about the things that went well in any given interaction. The mood boost it gives you might even make things go even better next time. [AD LIB, Ashley has advice]
Scientists have built the first completely synthetic self-replicating DNA. While it’s not contained in a cell, this DNA can still do many things you’d expect from the DNA of a living thing. That may put us one step closer to fully-fledged synthetic organisms!
While this is the first time scientists have managed to custom-build a self-replicating, functional DNA sequence from the ground up, it's not the first time scientists have made synthetic DNA. Artificial cells have existed for a while now, but their DNA has basically been a computer-made copy of a genome that already existed, just with some tweaks. This DNA is different: the scientists chose a specific set of genes and assembled them in an entirely new way.
That set of genes is pretty tiny. The new DNA is just 116 thousand bases long, which is smaller than the smallest natural genome we know of.
The DNA is so small because it only has genes that encode for proteins involved in copying DNA. That includes a full set of bacterial DNA-copying genes and the genes for ribosomes — those are the biological machines that make proteins. Why such a focus on replication? Well, life requires reproduction, and that all starts with the ability to copy DNA. Still, this DNA isn’t technically alive. It isn’t nearly complex enough to earn that title.
This was no easy task, of course: building self-copying DNA is tricky. The information to build the proteins you need to read and copy DNA is encoded in the DNA itself, but if there’s nothing to read or copy the DNA with, well, nothing happens. You see my point.
That’s why the scientists dropped their synthetic DNA into a water bath full of DNA-reading proteins and ribosomes. When that happened, the proteins began copying the DNA into strands of RNA, and those built proteins that copied the DNA. And then made more and more copies.
At the moment, this process is purely in vitro, which means that it’s only happening in test tubes. But it represents a small first step toward building simple organisms from the ground up. Right now, even the simplest organisms have tons of genes, and scientists aren’t sure what they all do. So a valuable next step might be to make self-replicating DNA a little bigger and more complex. One day, this technology could help us produce tailor-made synthetic organisms that can metabolize plastics or even treat genetic diseases. The secret is all in the DNA.
Scientists just learned that penguins make noises underwater. And fair warning: the noises are incredibly cute.
Anyone who’s been to the penguin exhibit at their local zoo knows that they’re noisy birds when standing atop the ice. Here’s what they sound like above the water:
[Insert penguin sounds] [maybe from this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHjolA8GQLQ ]
We know a lot about the penguin chatter that happens on land. Penguins have unique voices, which help them recognize their mates and chicks among a colony of up to 20 million individuals. Some also sound off from the sea surface to form hunting groups.
Given that penguins spend most of their lives at sea, with a lot of that time underwater, scientists figured that they’d be able to call underwater, too. But no one had actually heard it happen. That is, until a researcher at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa named Andréa Thiebault [ahn-DRAY-uh TEE-boh] was watching penguin body cam footage to learn more about how they hunt. That was when she heard the first recordings of seabirds making sounds underwater.
Those clues led Thiebault and her team to do more digging. They attached action cameras to 25 penguins from three different species and recorded 10 hours of footage. Thiebault analyzed the footage and found 203 different underwater calls! They sounded like this:
[Insert sound file]
Did you catch that? Most of the calls were super short, lasting less than a tenth of a second on average. The penguins were usually alone when making these sounds, which suggests that they’re not for communication. Generally, the penguins only chirped while hunting, especially when gaining speed in the water or successfully snapping up a fish. This helps explain why we haven’t heard these noises from captive birds — they’re usually fed dead prey.
As excited as the researchers were to hear these sounds, they were equally puzzled over why the penguins made them. One theory? The noise is like a penguin burp: an air bubble they release so they can swallow a fish. Other ideas included the possibility that it called other penguins over to eat, or that the vibration of the call stunned prey so they couldn’t escape. Or? The penguins could just be excited that they got some food. Relatable.
Let’s recap the main things we learned today
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Kelsey Donk, Cameron Duke, and Steffie Drucker, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!