Learn how Microsoft Excel is forcing scientists to rename genes, why the relationship itself is more important than the person you choose, and whether we actually burp or sneeze in our sleep.
Scientists renamed human genes because of Microsoft Excel by Grant Currin
A new study finds that the person you choose isn't as important as the relationship you build by Kelsey Donk
Why don't we sneeze or burp in our sleep? by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Natalie)
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/why-dont-we-sneeze-in-our-sleep
[MUSIC PLAYING] ASHLEY HAMER: Hi. You're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiositydotcom. I'm Ashley Hamer.
NATALIA REAGAN: And I'm Natalia Reagan. Today, you'll learn how Microsoft Excel is forcing scientists to rename genes and why the relationship itself is more important than the person you choose. We'll also answer a listener question about why we don't seem to burp or sneeze in our sleep, or do we?
ASHLEY HAMER: Let's satisfy some curiosity. Geneticists have been dealing with a big problem for years now. And I'm not talking about sifting through all the cell goo to find the wispy strands of DNA or figuring out how to sequence all 3 billion base pairs in the human genome. No, this adversary isn't the mind-bending complexity of life itself. It's Microsoft Excel. I'm not joking.
They're actually renaming genes to avoid a problem in Excel. The problem is in the software's quote unquote, "feature" that automatically converts certain combinations of numbers and letters into dates and other forms of data that the program thinks you'll prefer. For instance, humans have an incredibly important kind of protein called septins that do things like create a structure that cells need while they divide. The genes that cause your cells to make and use septins have names like S-E-P-T 2, sept 2.
You can probably see where this is going. When a scientist enters the name of one of those genes into Excel, the program says to itself, hey, that looks like a date and changes it to the numeric date for September 2 of that year. The same thing happens with membrane-associated RING-CH type finger 1 which geneticists call M-A-R-C-H-1, MARCH-1. This is way more than a small annoyance.
According to an analysis published in 2016, one in five papers published in leading genomics journals that listed genes in an Excel file contained this kind of mistake. Over the 10-year analysis, that added up to more than 700 studies. How'd the geneticists fix the problem? Microsoft probably issued an update that required them to restart their computers, right? Well, not exactly. Get a load of this.
Last month, the Human Genome Organization's gene nomenclature committee changed the names of the genes that Excel kept turning into dates. Over the past year, 27 genes have been given new alphanumeric codes. Step-2 is now septin-2, MARCH-1 is now MARCHF1. This actually isn't the first time the Gene Nomenclature Committee has changed a gene's alphanumeric symbol.
For instance, the gene formerly known as CARS is now CARS1 because the former name kept causing genetics papers to erroneously show up in searches for, well, cars. And it's not just the alphanumeric codes, a gene once known as headcase homolog Drosophila is now HDC homolog cell cycle regulator because the original name felt insensitive to the parents of cancer patients who had mutations to that gene.
I mean, how would you feel if your kid had cancer and someone told you, oh, yeah. It's a mutation in the headcase gene. So while this isn't unprecedented, it's still pretty frustrating. At least it puts everyone else's software troubles into perspective.
NATALIA REAGAN: Microsoft Excel can be incredibly frustrating. So I feel a little bit better that it's not just me.
ASHLEY HAMER: Totally. This is very relatable.
NATALIA REAGAN: Dating apps get relationships wrong for so many reasons. But now, we have another one to add to that list. A huge study recently looked at the relationships of a whopping 11,196 couples and found that their satisfaction in the relationship did not depend on how compatible their personalities were.
So all that time we spend answering those questions about our preferences and affiliations and our favorite way to spend a Sunday afternoon, well, this study suggests, that's a waste of time. Instead, the most important, most significant predictor of relationship quality and success is the relationship itself. That's right. It's not about how well you're matched, it's about the relationship you build.
To reach this conclusion, researchers used data from 43 longitudinal studies where couples had been asked about themselves and their relationship. The individual characteristics included things like income, satisfaction with life, and empathy. The relationship details included things like affection, power dynamics, sexual satisfaction, and how satisfied they thought their partners were.
Each couple had been interviewed twice so the researchers could measure how important each of these characteristics were at two points in the relationship. So what did they find? At the start, relationship-related characteristics accounted for about 45% of the differences in a given person's relationship satisfaction.
Their own personality accounted for about 19%, and their partner's personality only accounted for about 5%. As the relationship matured, these numbers got smaller. But the results remained. Relationship traits were always more important than individual ones. The top predictors of relationship satisfaction were things like being able to say, my partner wants this relationship to last forever or I feel lucky to have my partner.
Sexual satisfaction, knowing how happy the relationship makes your partner, and conflict resolution could also accurately predict relationship satisfaction. But like I said, individual characteristics did have some effect. The important ones were like life satisfaction, depression, attachment avoidance like a fear of commitment, and attachment anxiety like a constant worry about the state of the relationship.
Those individual characteristics can probably predict how someone behaves in a relationship and the kind of relationship they're likely to build. That is very different from the traits you see on a dating site, which deal more with a person's temperament and personal preferences.
So if you're worried about whether a potential partner's personality might not match with yours, give it a chance. The research suggests that if you can build a relationship full of mutual appreciation, sexual satisfaction, and low conflict, you're probably on the right track.
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm always in favor of a study that shows how full of BS dating apps are.
NATALIA REAGAN: Oh, yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: Because I spent many years on them, and I was so frustrated with them. They always seem like the answer and they never are. I mean, they are for some people but not for me. We got a listener question from Natalie who writes, "I'm curious. People fart in their sleep, but why don't people sneeze or burp while sleeping?" If you don't mind my saying, Natalie, that question is a gas. Sorry. Natalia is rubbing off on me.
First of all, sleep burping does happen. Just like with farting, if you have enough gas in your digestive system, it's going to need to come out. Sleep burping is especially common for people with acid reflux and for those who use a CPAP machine for sleep apnea since it can make them swallow air. But overall, burping is rarer when you're asleep than when you're awake. Sneezing, though, seems to be pretty much impossible while you're asleep.
The reason both of these habits are so rare during sleep is the same reason you don't jump out of bed from a dead sleep and act out that ballroom dancing dream. When you're asleep, your body puts the brakes on muscle movement. So about 30 to 60 minutes after you fall asleep, you enter a sleep stage called stage 3 non-REM sleep, which most of us know as deep sleep.
It's really hard to wake someone up in this stage. And that's because their brain is basically blocking out sensory input. About 30 minutes after that, you enter the REM sleep stage, when your eyes start moving under your closed eyelids and your heart rate and brain activity rise to near-waking levels.
This is also when most of your dreaming happens. To keep your body from acting out your dreams during REM sleep, structures in your brainstem send signals to motor neurons in your spinal column that tell them to take a break. As a result, your muscles relax and motor activity stops.
A sneeze is a reflexive response to an external stimulus like dust getting in your nose. But when you're asleep, external stimuli don't really register in your brain. And even if they did, your muscles are too paralyzed to react. Paralyzed muscles are also probably why burping doesn't happen as much when you're sleeping.
A 2010 study of people with excessive belching, this is a real thing, showed that their burps almost completely subsided when they were asleep. But that was only true of burps that originated in the esophagus. Gas in the stomach still made them burp like normal. That makes sense. Those esophagus burps usually require you to consciously flex your diaphragm, which you can't do when you're sleeping.
So there you have it. You stop sneezing and burping when you're asleep because your muscles are relaxed and your senses aren't as sensitive. Thanks for your question, Natalie. If you have a question, send it in to podcast@curiosity.com or leave us a voicemail at 312-596-5208.
NATALIA REAGAN: Before we recap what we learned today, here's a sneak peek at what you'll hear next week on Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Next week, you'll learn about how the mantis shrimp can punch at 50 miles an hour without damaging its claws, why you see those brightly colored bumps in the sidewalk, what happens when you pull a muscle, how the redwoods have survived the California wildfires, and more. OK. So now, let's recap what we learned today.
NATALIA REAGAN: We learned that Microsoft Excel and genetic names have some problematic overlap. So in order to avoid repeated flaws, geneticists are actually changing the names of genes.
ASHLEY HAMER: Gene names are one of my favorite weird science topics because there are some super weird ones like sonic hedgehog, groucho, faint sausage, lunatic fringe, fear of intimacy, tribbles, one-eyed pinhead--
NATALIA REAGAN: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: There are so many weird gene names. It's the completely opposite solution that astronomers use because when they find a new star, they'll name it SYT 1, 2, 3, 4, you know. And it's just like a bunch of letters and numbers. But for geneticists, they're like, no. We want to be able to remember it. So they give it a super weird name. Just unfortunately, sometimes, mutations in those genes lead to very sad diseases and a funny name is no longer a laughing matter when that happens.
NATALIA REAGAN: This is when the morbid sense of humor would come in handy, right?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes. Yes, it would.
NATALIA REAGAN: Well, now it's interesting because maybe it's a way to make money. They always have those bias star or sponsor star. You could sponsor a gene and just be like, this is the Steve gene.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's a great idea.
NATALIA REAGAN: This is Kevin.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, man. I think we got a startup on our hands.
NATALIA REAGAN: This is Stephanie.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah. You can adopt gorillas at zoos, why not a gene?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Perfect. And we learned that it's not necessarily how compatible you are with your partner, but the actual relationship you build that determines the happiness and longevity of a relationship. That's not to say the personality doesn't matter at all, but it's apparently not everything. I mean, I will say that my fiance and I have some major differences, but the way that we approach a relationship is very similar and I think it works very well. And I think that's why it's a great relationship.
NATALIA REAGAN: Oh, that's sweet. Yeah. I think timing is something that is also so incredibly important.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, it is.
NATALIA REAGAN: Right? I've had so many relationships through the years that had we just been in at a different point in our life, we would have somehow made it work. But either I was at a point where I wasn't ready or they weren't or so on and so forth. It's really has to be that mutual like let's do it, let's go the distance.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. There's actually a study that I almost pitched for the podcast but it felt almost too obvious. Was that they found that whether someone is ready to get married is like a huge factor in whether they get married. Like it's just-- I mean, that seems obvious, right? But it shows how important timing is. Like if you want to get married and you start dating someone who doesn't, well, you're probably not going to get married.
NATALIA REAGAN: Probably not going to happen. And even though we might not sense that we burp in our sleep, we actually can. Although sneezing is virtually impossible. But sleep belching is actually a thing. It reminds me of what my great grandmother used to say. Wherever you may be, let the wind blow free.
She was a hoot. I never, actually, spent time with her. She died shortly after I was born, but she was Scottish and apparently a big fan of passing gas. So here's to you, great grandma Sarah.
ASHLEY HAMER: Amazing.
NATALIA REAGAN: Today's stories were written by Ashley Hamer, Grant Currin, and Kelsey Donk. And edited by Ashley Hamer who's the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Scriptwriting and editing by Natalia Reagan. Our producer is Cody Gough.
NATALIA REAGAN: Have a great weekend, and join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY HAMER: And until then, stay curious.
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