Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Uh. Let's give a shout
Speaker 1: out to our one and only the man the myth
Speaker 1: Legend super producer, Mr Max Williams, and they called me
Speaker 1: ben joined as always with Mr Noel Brown. Uh Noel.
Speaker 1: We like like most people, we like to think of
Speaker 1: ourselves as fairly distinct here in the in the mass
Speaker 1: of humanity. Right. Oh yeah, we're special boys. Here we go,
Speaker 1: there we go. We uh. We, like many other people
Speaker 1: throughout ancient history to the modern day, have spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time wondering where we came from, wondering about
Speaker 1: our origins as individuals. And like many people, you know,
Speaker 1: we we know a little bit about our ancestry. We
Speaker 1: don't know everything, however, and that's why we were interested
Speaker 1: to team up with twenty three and me. Nowadays, you know,
Speaker 1: it's easier than ever to learn about your past through
Speaker 1: the power of genetic testing, and Nola have to ask
Speaker 1: and Max you as well. Growing up, did you, guys
Speaker 1: ever have a member of your family who was like
Speaker 1: obsessed with their genealogy? I didn't really personally, and in fact,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until uh no spoilers yet, but um that
Speaker 1: I took the twenty three and me a test that
Speaker 1: I really had much sense of my heritage at all.
Speaker 1: So this was super eye opening and fascinating process for me. Um.
Speaker 1: But no, I definitely am aware of folks that take
Speaker 1: that very seriously and kind of consider themselves like armchair
Speaker 1: you know, genealogists or anthropologists or what have you. But
Speaker 1: there was really nobody in my family that that much
Speaker 1: mentioned that when I was growing up. How about you, guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually have a pretty extensive story about this one.
Speaker 1: It's uh so my paternal grandfather, so my great grandfather
Speaker 1: and my dad's side of the family, he was adopted
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds and they lost all his
Speaker 1: adoption papers. So there was really like no idea where
Speaker 1: that's tide of my family came from. It's just been
Speaker 1: kind of things. So my aunt has been spending with
Speaker 1: the last no joke, like thirty plus years just trying
Speaker 1: to dig up stuff, and like she recently did a
Speaker 1: test like this and it's got like some more answers,
Speaker 1: but it's been up it's been like a kind of
Speaker 1: like a lifelong pursuit of hers right there. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had I had something similar because of the controversy
Speaker 1: surrounding my paternal line, the Malungeon side of my family.
Speaker 1: Uh So there were times where people were actively hiding there. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess they're perceived membership of that group and as
Speaker 1: a result, they're hiding some of their genealogy. But of course,
Speaker 1: as time went on, people became less hesitant, you know
Speaker 1: about acknowledging the past and the truth, and now here
Speaker 1: in it is easier than ever for people to, as
Speaker 1: we said, learn more about what led to you being
Speaker 1: here a fellow ridiculous historian listening to this show today.
Speaker 1: But today's question, how did the world changing science of
Speaker 1: genetic testing and our concepts of DNA? How did they
Speaker 1: evolve from the work of ancient philosophers and Augustinian friars
Speaker 1: all the way to these cutting edge innovations. In today's show,
Speaker 1: we're going to unravel some of the history of genetic research,
Speaker 1: and along the way we might share some of our
Speaker 1: own personal experiences. Because spoiler, folks, Noel and I each
Speaker 1: took some tests with twenty three and me. Uh and
Speaker 1: Noel I believe that this was your second test with
Speaker 1: the group. Yeah, it was, uh, and let me tell
Speaker 1: you a lot of things have changed for the better.
Speaker 1: It was probably a couple of years ago that I
Speaker 1: took the test previously and the one that we took
Speaker 1: for this episode. This partnership just had way more granular information,
Speaker 1: including stuff about potential health risks, markers that are contained
Speaker 1: you know, within my genetic code or genetic code, your
Speaker 1: genetic code um, that can give you indications as to
Speaker 1: whether you're predisposed to certain medical conditions. So it was
Speaker 1: very very illuminating me. The last one was great too,
Speaker 1: but it really feels like they've added a lot more
Speaker 1: bang for the buck and a lot more features, a
Speaker 1: lot more results that are very meaningful, not to mention, um,
Speaker 1: I believe Ben, you and I have some interesting kind
Speaker 1: of shared results that we will also say for the end. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you might be surprised by how this sort of technology
Speaker 1: can connect you with people you never imagined yourself connected with.
Speaker 1: But let's let's start there, right What makes you? Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's the lay of the last People were asking
Speaker 1: what makes me me? What makes you you? Well? Before
Speaker 1: the concept of microscopes well before DNA was even a thing.
Speaker 1: The history of this, like the the ancestry of ancestry
Speaker 1: research and d NA starts all the way back in
Speaker 1: like five thousand b c e which I think might
Speaker 1: surprise a lot of people, Oh for sure. And I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it was really more of a philosophical question
Speaker 1: for a long long time. I mean, there was certainly
Speaker 1: observations made towards various traits and things that family members possessed,
Speaker 1: but the whole idea of like who who am I,
Speaker 1: where do I connect in the universe, and you know,
Speaker 1: life and all of that was much more of a
Speaker 1: of a philosophical question. But you're right then as early
Speaker 1: as five thousand b c. E UM, humans were practicing
Speaker 1: something called selective breeding. So there was an acknowledgment of, Okay,
Speaker 1: how do we isolate these traits and figure out how
Speaker 1: to express them, whether it be livestock or or crops
Speaker 1: or what have you, or even you know, humans. There
Speaker 1: was a certain amount of selective breeding that came with,
Speaker 1: like in reading, uh, and you know the idea of
Speaker 1: maintaining a bloodline. And as we know that, there were
Speaker 1: some pretty catastrophic consequences to those um activities, but you know,
Speaker 1: their head was kind of in the right place. They
Speaker 1: just really didn't quite know what they were doing, but
Speaker 1: they definitely did when it came to the livestock and
Speaker 1: the crops to make more robust crops and more hearty livestock. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a k A. The reason you have things like corn,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, the reason you have domesticated
Speaker 1: crops as they're called. And there's something really interesting about that.
Speaker 1: I can't remember who I was speaking to, but we
Speaker 1: were talking about the old question what is the most
Speaker 1: successful form of life on the planet. And you know
Speaker 1: a lot of people would just say humans. But if
Speaker 1: you think about it, the idea of wheat being domesticated
Speaker 1: or corn being domesticated, it sounds like humans won that game.
Speaker 1: But if you look at it from the perspective of
Speaker 1: the plant, they kind of won because now they're spread
Speaker 1: across the planet. I thought that was kind of trippy. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I actually heard an interview with an entomologist who specifically
Speaker 1: um focuses on flies. UM and flies. He believes we're
Speaker 1: one of the most successful species in the history of
Speaker 1: the world because of their you know, ability to kind
Speaker 1: of bob and weave and and and dodge things and
Speaker 1: just you know, they're one of the most successful aerialists
Speaker 1: on the planet. And also they essentially feed on dead stuff,
Speaker 1: which there's always gonna be plenty of. Also, I believe
Speaker 1: they've been around, uh much longer than humans. So while
Speaker 1: we may be successful and good at, like, you know,
Speaker 1: making stuff and figuring things out, it's all kind of
Speaker 1: self serving and at the end of the day, we're
Speaker 1: only really a blip in the historical record. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we're like a fad to crocodiles, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: We're like POGs to crocodiles and alligators. But but you
Speaker 1: were you a pug guy? Were you a pargman? No?
Speaker 1: I had some POGs, but I wouldn't say I was
Speaker 1: a parkman. I just I had enough to play the game.
Speaker 1: And then I didn't get super into the game. I
Speaker 1: actually like the art more. That's right. I barely understood
Speaker 1: how the game was playing. I just know there were
Speaker 1: slammers and they were the POGs, and I mean it
Speaker 1: was kind of like Tiddley winks you want other people's
Speaker 1: POGs by slamming them in a stack. I don't know
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. We're not here to talk about pole.
Speaker 1: We are here to talk about is pan genesis. Yes,
Speaker 1: let's talk about a little bit about the great philosophers
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, So let's go to Aristotle. Aristotle is
Speaker 1: one of the first people on record who said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I wonder if traits acquired throughout an organism
Speaker 1: lifetime can be transmitted to their offspring. Essentially, and not
Speaker 1: to be too to gruesome here, folks, but essentially, the
Speaker 1: question is if I took five people and I cut
Speaker 1: off a different finger on each one of their right hands,
Speaker 1: would their children also be missing the same finger when
Speaker 1: they were born because that trait was acquired during that
Speaker 1: person's unfortunate lifetime. He's kind of added to this guessing
Speaker 1: game with this theory, the one you just mentioned pan genesis,
Speaker 1: which sort of describes how these traits could be passed
Speaker 1: on through particles called gimus, which sort of encapsulated the
Speaker 1: traits and then allowed them to be transmitted to reproductive cells.
Speaker 1: And then he also thought about what he called the
Speaker 1: form giving principle, and a lot of the stuff you're
Speaker 1: gonna hear from these ancient thinkers, by the way, is
Speaker 1: in principle, powle not super duper far off. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: believed in something called the form giving principle that was
Speaker 1: a property of an organism that was able to be
Speaker 1: transmitted through bodily fluid, specifically semen, which he believed was
Speaker 1: kind of like blood, but a more pure form of
Speaker 1: the stuff. And also we believed that the mother's minstrel
Speaker 1: blood was another one of these uh, form giving fluids.
Speaker 1: He believed that this interacted in the womb to direct
Speaker 1: uh the early development of an organism. M hmmm. So
Speaker 1: again you can you can see where uh, someone working
Speaker 1: with the technology at the time could have reasonably started
Speaker 1: making these suppositions. But Pythagoras, Aristotle, they weren't the only
Speaker 1: folks who were thinking through this. Hippocrates and Epicurus also
Speaker 1: had their own takes on the idea of heredity. Heredity
Speaker 1: is just the passing on of traits from parents to offspring,
Speaker 1: whether that's through sexual reproduction or through a sexual reproduction.
Speaker 1: And it's weird because hippocrates theory is sort of is
Speaker 1: kind of similar to Darwin's later ideas that involved hereditary
Speaker 1: material collecting from throughout the body. But again, one thing
Speaker 1: we wanna be careful of here is we want to
Speaker 1: avoid just focusing on the ancient Western philosophers, because people
Speaker 1: in India and China we're thinking about this too. That's right.
Speaker 1: And the Sharaka Samita that was written or at least
Speaker 1: a distributed around the three ancient Indian medical writers observe
Speaker 1: the characteristics of the child were determined by what they
Speaker 1: saw is four distinct factors, the first being those from
Speaker 1: the mother's reproductive material, second from the father's sperm, and
Speaker 1: the third from the diet of the pregnant mother. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the fourth being the accompanying the soul. So while
Speaker 1: there were some of these do feel pretty connected to
Speaker 1: modern scientific understanding of reproduction, that fourth one kind of
Speaker 1: imparts a more religious characteristic as well. Yeah. Yeah, one
Speaker 1: through three you cannot along home going, okay, uh huh sure.
Speaker 1: And then number four is where we see just how
Speaker 1: how inextricably intertwined, Uh, the ideas of religion were with
Speaker 1: the ideas of medicine. You know, it's funny, but the
Speaker 1: idea of things becoming attached to the soul as it
Speaker 1: enters the fetus, what does that reminds you of? Uh?
Speaker 1: Anybody scientology? I was thinking cloud Atlas forincarnation and but yeah,
Speaker 1: well those are all kind of in the same wheelhouse.
Speaker 1: But I mean, that's the idea of like negative things
Speaker 1: becoming attached to the soul from birth to carry the
Speaker 1: follow you along for the rest of your life and
Speaker 1: cause you to you to develop all kinds of problems.
Speaker 1: That that just reminds me of that that concept within psychology,
Speaker 1: not that l Ron Hubbard was anything but original, you know. Anyhow,
Speaker 1: I walked around the corner for that for that slight
Speaker 1: this But let's jump around in time. No, like when
Speaker 1: you hear this, when you thought about this episode right
Speaker 1: as you tuned in, you were probably thinking of Charles
Speaker 1: Darwin and his famous eighteen fifty nine banger on the
Speaker 1: Origin of Species full title on the Origin of Species
Speaker 1: by means of natural selection or the preservation of favorite
Speaker 1: races and the Struggle for life. We'll get to that
Speaker 1: in a second. Darwin is a recurring guest on our show.
Speaker 1: But if we're talking about genetic research and we're talking
Speaker 1: about the full scope of this, you can kind of
Speaker 1: divide it into two broad eras. All the stuff before
Speaker 1: a guy named Gregor, Johann Mendel and all this stuff
Speaker 1: after this Friar. Yeah, that's right. Modern genetics really started
Speaker 1: with the work of this man who was an Augustinian Friar.
Speaker 1: He was really into the idea of propagating pea plants,
Speaker 1: like you know, like English little green peas. When he
Speaker 1: published his work specifically on the reproductive qualities of these
Speaker 1: little fellas in eighteen sixty six, he established the theory
Speaker 1: of Mandelian inheritance um. He became the first person to
Speaker 1: lay out a scientific and mathematically founded uh science of genetics,
Speaker 1: even before it was even called that. And this is legit.
Speaker 1: You can find it in his Encyclopedia Britannica Entrigue, which
Speaker 1: personally I thought did a good job of breaking it
Speaker 1: down in an understandable way. So let's get in the
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts. Strap in for some math. Don't worry,
Speaker 1: we're gonna, We're gonna. We'll be right there with you.
Speaker 1: Try to make it easy, okay, Matt, mass me up. Ben,
Speaker 1: let's math up. So the reason Mindel wants to study
Speaker 1: the p plant, the edible p or Pissum sativum, is
Speaker 1: because it had a lot of distinct varieties. It was
Speaker 1: easy to control, you know, like easy to grow, but
Speaker 1: then also easy to control how the plants pollinate. And
Speaker 1: there was a high proportion of successful seed germin nations,
Speaker 1: which means, you know, it was UH. If you were
Speaker 1: making something new or trying to attract something, you had
Speaker 1: a higher than average likelihood of that plant actually growing
Speaker 1: to pass the seed stage. So he tested UH for
Speaker 1: for about two years, from eighteen fifty four to fifty six.
Speaker 1: He tested thirty four different varieties for what he called
Speaker 1: the constancy of their traits. And when he wanted to
Speaker 1: see how these things transmitted, he chose seven traits that
Speaker 1: he thought were expressed in a distinctive manner. And it's
Speaker 1: stuff that's like a lot of it's stuff that's visually
Speaker 1: apparent to him. So like tall plants and short plants.
Speaker 1: What colors are their seeds? Green or yellow? So he
Speaker 1: referred to these kind of alternate versions UM as contrasted characters. UH.
Speaker 1: He also referred to them as character pairs UM. And
Speaker 1: you know, this is very similar to what we talked
Speaker 1: about in ancient times, the idea of kind of crossbreeding
Speaker 1: different things to create a strengthened single trait. He would
Speaker 1: cross varieties that were the same except for one trait.
Speaker 1: So for example, tall might be crossed with short um
Speaker 1: and then there would become a generation of hybrids, which
Speaker 1: he referred to as F one. That generation would display
Speaker 1: the character of one variety but not that of the other. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he believed, or at least using terms that he developed,
Speaker 1: one of the characters was dominant and the other one
Speaker 1: was recessive. Just this, this checks out what we know
Speaker 1: today right in terms of like eye color and all stuff.
Speaker 1: We get more into that in a bit, but he
Speaker 1: was definitely barking up the right genetic tree. So in
Speaker 1: the offspring that he raised from all of these crossed hybrids,
Speaker 1: which he referred to as second generation or F two,
Speaker 1: he would see the recessive trade appearing. And then he
Speaker 1: noted that entirely third of them had the original heritable traits,
Speaker 1: while two thirds were of that hybrid arrangements you know,
Speaker 1: or rather you know, presented the more of the hybrid
Speaker 1: kind of qualities. So he yeah, maybe, man, why don't
Speaker 1: you you you kind of did the research on the
Speaker 1: math here, So why don't you take us home here
Speaker 1: with like kind of the the solution. Oh for sure.
Speaker 1: So this goes to uh, Gregor's major discovery. He says, Look,
Speaker 1: after I've read these successive generations of plants, just as
Speaker 1: you described, Noel, I'm seeing by the time I get
Speaker 1: to the descendants of the dominant group, I can rewrite
Speaker 1: that three to one ratio, you know, that kind of
Speaker 1: dominant to recessive appearance ratio. I can rewrite it to
Speaker 1: one to two to one. And by this we mean
Speaker 1: fifty of that second generation we're true breeding. Fifty percent
Speaker 1: we're still hybrid in a in a way, he was.
Speaker 1: He finally he was arriving at an understanding what we
Speaker 1: call dominant and recessive genes today. This major discovery probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been made by his predecessors because they didn't
Speaker 1: grow statistically significant populations of testing material, which is a
Speaker 1: very cold way to say living things. And they didn't
Speaker 1: follow the individual characters or characteristics separately to establish their
Speaker 1: relationships to each other overall. So this is big, big stuff, right,
Speaker 1: This is world changing stuff. He publishes it, and everyone
Speaker 1: ignores him. Everyone sort of ignores him. It comes out
Speaker 1: in like not very well known scientific journal. Most of
Speaker 1: the scientific community at large isn't aware of it. And
Speaker 1: if you were talking about heredity at this time, you
Speaker 1: are much more likely to be in a slaughter or
Speaker 1: a cafe talking about Darwin's hot button theory of evolution
Speaker 1: by natural selection. And uh. He also Darwin, we should say,
Speaker 1: wasn't super perfect aside from his culinary taste, which we're ambitious.
Speaker 1: Check out weird historical flexes uh to learn more. He
Speaker 1: uh he had a theory that not all his theories
Speaker 1: widely accepted his own theory of heredity, which she had
Speaker 1: called pangenesis as well, and just didn't really didn't really fly. Uh.
Speaker 1: So to find the next part of the story, we
Speaker 1: have to fast forward to eighteen three. Let's just remember that,
Speaker 1: I mean, reading through this now and talking about this
Speaker 1: now with so many echoes of what we know to
Speaker 1: have been determined to be true and accurate. So it's
Speaker 1: just like, well, why wouldn't people play attention to this?
Speaker 1: But at the time it was like very out there right,
Speaker 1: like it would not have been connecting with like the
Speaker 1: sort of traditional scientific thought of the time. And it's
Speaker 1: just one guy kind of like breeding pea plants and
Speaker 1: and espousing these kind of like whackado notions of traits
Speaker 1: and qualities in offspring, So would not have been like
Speaker 1: an easy cell necessarily which you write them if we
Speaker 1: pressed the fast forward butt into eight three, who got
Speaker 1: a man named August Weissman who was an evolutionary biologist
Speaker 1: from Germany who was making waves by breeding mice after
Speaker 1: chopping off their tails like three blind mice style. But
Speaker 1: presumably you know, for science, for science a little yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he uh. He did this for reasons, as he assured
Speaker 1: them mice police. Mainly, even though this sounds ghoulish, there
Speaker 1: there was something important to it. He wanted to disprove
Speaker 1: this popular idea of lamark ism, the concept, like we said,
Speaker 1: similar to the ancient philosophy concept that physical characteristics of
Speaker 1: apparent organism can be carried through to the offspring. So
Speaker 1: when mice with amputated tales gave birth to mice with
Speaker 1: absolutely normal tales, they proved a crucial point. So we
Speaker 1: don't the names of those mice are lost to history,
Speaker 1: but thank you now we we do know a very
Speaker 1: interesting field that's more in the realm of psychology today. Epigenetics,
Speaker 1: the idea that trauma can be um you know, carried
Speaker 1: or passed down through generations. So in theory, the trauma
Speaker 1: of having their tails chopped off could have been you know,
Speaker 1: carried to their offspring. Yeah. That's a great point, man,
Speaker 1: because epigenetics is the study of the way gene expression
Speaker 1: has changed, Like what is more active in your genetic
Speaker 1: code instead of like your actual genes getting altered. There's
Speaker 1: a great study about starvation and World War Two that
Speaker 1: goes to this epic. Genetics is like still very much
Speaker 1: the forefront of genetic science today. Yeah, that is a
Speaker 1: good point. Maybe the mice were traumatized, certainly possible. Um,
Speaker 1: but let's get into some more breakthroughs. Here's some names
Speaker 1: that might ring a bell. Watson and Crick. I think
Speaker 1: there's like a biopic about these guys. Think Jeff Goldblum
Speaker 1: played Watson or Creg. I can't remember which, Gil played
Speaker 1: both of them. Maybe certainly possible. Yeah, we're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Daniel de Lewis played every character in the whole movie. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, they are you know those names like, leave
Speaker 1: it if you don't know exactly what they did, because
Speaker 1: they are, uh, the American biologists that are largely created well,
Speaker 1: they are credited with discovering DNA in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: but you know, as is off of the case, with science,
Speaker 1: though timing is everything. Who's first to market with something
Speaker 1: is not necessarily the same as like who actually discovered
Speaker 1: the things. So DNA was in fact first identified in
Speaker 1: late eighteen sixties eighteen sixty nine to be precise, by
Speaker 1: a Swiss chemist named Friedrich Mascher. But again, Watson and
Speaker 1: Crick are the names that you probably think of when
Speaker 1: you think of of d N A and and DNA
Speaker 1: sequencing and all of that. Also, to jump in here
Speaker 1: real quick, the name of it is the Race for
Speaker 1: the Double Helix, who aired on September four seven aired
Speaker 1: So it was a TV movie. Yeah, and it had
Speaker 1: Jeff Goldbloom as Jim Wasson, Tim Pickett Smith as France Crick,
Speaker 1: Alan Howard as Maurice Wilkins, and Juliet Stevenson as Rosalind Franklin.
Speaker 1: Some names pop up here in a little yes hit
Speaker 1: the sound of cue right now? Awesome, Thanks Max, and
Speaker 1: thanks Matt Frederick. So here's the thing. Those guys are
Speaker 1: super famous, and rightly so, but there's more to their story.
Speaker 1: A lot of people, probably ourselves included, at some point,
Speaker 1: have made the mistake and thought those guys discovered DNA
Speaker 1: by themselves in the nineteen fifties. This is not the
Speaker 1: case in reality. Instead, DNA was first identified all the
Speaker 1: way back in the late eighteen sixties and eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine by a Swiss chemist named Friedrich Meischer. He wanted
Speaker 1: to figure out what made white blood cells. White blood cells,
Speaker 1: so you know, those that are part of the body
Speaker 1: immune system, and his main source of those cells was
Speaker 1: kind of kind of growdy, kind of gnarly. He got
Speaker 1: most of these white blood cells for his research from
Speaker 1: pus coded bandages that he took from a clinic. So, um,
Speaker 1: you can't do that today. That is wild plus coded
Speaker 1: bandages as a metal band if I ever heard one,
Speaker 1: or at the very least a song, Yeah, that's pretty
Speaker 1: pretty gross. Uh So, he noticed that when you added
Speaker 1: acid to a solution of those cells, that a substance
Speaker 1: separated out from the solution, and that substance was able
Speaker 1: to be dissolved again in an alkali solution. So in
Speaker 1: investigating that solution, he discovered that it had some pretty
Speaker 1: unusual properties. It was different from other proteins that he'd
Speaker 1: looked into before that he was you know, much more
Speaker 1: familiar with through his past research. And my share called
Speaker 1: this substance nucleon because he believed that it had like
Speaker 1: you know, leached out from the nucleus of the cell um,
Speaker 1: which you know, at this point that was something that
Speaker 1: people understood, the nucleus of the seller, just the makeup
Speaker 1: of the atom and the cell, etcetera. So Masha had
Speaker 1: discovered essentially the basis for or for all of life,
Speaker 1: the molecular basis DNA. And then he decided, how how
Speaker 1: am I going to figure out how to pull this
Speaker 1: out in its purest form? Yeah, and he you know,
Speaker 1: he didn't know that exactly what he had discovered, but
Speaker 1: he discovered it. And then in the decades after his discovery,
Speaker 1: we see this cavalcade of breakthroughs by many other researchers,
Speaker 1: other scientists, people like Phoebus Levine and Irwin Chargeth carry
Speaker 1: out these research efforts to learn more about the DNA molecule,
Speaker 1: including its primary chemical components and the ways those components
Speaker 1: work together. We actually get Philouette amalogy nerds the name
Speaker 1: DNA from a biochemist named Albrick Coastal In one good
Speaker 1: old Albrick, who i'll call Al, identified nucleon as a
Speaker 1: nuclear Yeah. Yeah, if he'll be my bodyguard. So he
Speaker 1: provided the present chemical name dexo ribo nucleic acid DNA,
Speaker 1: and then he also went on for extra credit to
Speaker 1: isolate the five nucleotide bases that are the building blocks
Speaker 1: of DNA and are in a First we have at anine,
Speaker 1: then we have a sias scene, then we have guanine, finemine,
Speaker 1: and your a scill Yeah, not to do much too
Speaker 1: much p humor, but your a sill feels like you
Speaker 1: get ripped off, like, uh, you know, a diuretic of
Speaker 1: some kind. Yes, with a bunch of fine prints at
Speaker 1: the very end of the commercial. Right, So there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of a a bitter sweet note to greg
Speaker 1: Or Mendel's story. It wasn't until nine sixteen years after
Speaker 1: his death in four that he finally got his due.
Speaker 1: Three separate botanist Hugo Devrace, Carl Corren's Eric vonche r Buck,
Speaker 1: all of them independently rediscovered the work of this obscure
Speaker 1: Augustinian Friar, and with the new breakthroughs in the understanding
Speaker 1: of cells and chromosomes, they were able to kind of
Speaker 1: ground his weird p plant experiments, and so people were
Speaker 1: able to say, again, the guy never lived to see it,
Speaker 1: but people were able to say, Wow, he was really
Speaker 1: onto something. And then in nineteen o two, just a
Speaker 1: few years later, things kick up another notch. A scientist
Speaker 1: in Walter Sutton says, Hey, the segregation of chromosomes during
Speaker 1: the process of neosis are pretty much exactly like the
Speaker 1: segregation pattern that this friar predicted. Oh and people weren't
Speaker 1: calling them jeans yet. That still hasn't happened. No, no,
Speaker 1: it definitely wasn't. That didn't happen until nineteen o nine,
Speaker 1: when a guy by the name of Wilhelm Johansen came
Speaker 1: up with it. He coined it. He used it to
Speaker 1: describe the men Elian unit of of of reproduction. He
Speaker 1: also used the terms genotype and phenotype to separate the
Speaker 1: genetic traits of an individual um and the way it
Speaker 1: ultimately came to look. So, as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: here is a list, a kind of a quick hit
Speaker 1: list of other notable breakthroughs of the time when only
Speaker 1: just the round robin these ben yes. So in nineteen eleven,
Speaker 1: a guy named Thomas Hunt Morgan, along with his students,
Speaker 1: used fruit flies to show the chromosomes carry jeans. They
Speaker 1: also discover what we call genetic linkage. George Beatle and
Speaker 1: Edward Tatum's experiments on the red bread mold um known
Speaker 1: as Neurospora crassa also be a good name for a
Speaker 1: metal band um show that genes act by regulating distinct
Speaker 1: chemical events. They actually proposed the two fellows that each
Speaker 1: gene directs the formation of a single enzyme. And then
Speaker 1: in ninety three, again, just a few years later, William Askedbury,
Speaker 1: who is a scientist from Britain, gets the first X
Speaker 1: ray diffraction pattern of DNA and it shows that DNA
Speaker 1: must have a regular periodic structure. This leads him to
Speaker 1: say that, hey, maybe nucleotide bases are stacked on top
Speaker 1: of each other, but what's DNA actually made of? H
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty to Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase attempt
Speaker 1: to answer this question, showing that only the DNA of
Speaker 1: a virus needs to enter a bacterium to infect it,
Speaker 1: which gave a strong bit of support for the idea
Speaker 1: that janes are in fact made of the stuff the
Speaker 1: stuff DNA. Yeah, and so those are just a few
Speaker 1: of the scientists and just a few examples of the
Speaker 1: research that all went into, leading to Watson and Crick.
Speaker 1: Watson Cricks discover read. Without the foundation provided by those folks,
Speaker 1: James D. Watson Frances H. Crick may have never reached
Speaker 1: their groundbreaking conclusion nineteen fifty three that the DNA molecule
Speaker 1: exists in the form of a three dimensional double helix.
Speaker 1: But before we go there, let's hold up max record scratch. Look, look, look.
Speaker 1: The Crick Watson story is told pretty often in schools,
Speaker 1: but there is another very important side to it. Enter
Speaker 1: Rosalind Franklin. Rosalind Franklin has entered the chat or the
Speaker 1: ring or whatever. Franklin was born in July twenty in London, um.
Speaker 1: She was the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family who
Speaker 1: valued education and public service. Yeah, she was a scientist
Speaker 1: when there was a lot of discrimination against women who
Speaker 1: wanted to enter stem science, technology, engineering math. When she
Speaker 1: was just eighteen, she matriculated in the Newnham Women's College
Speaker 1: at Cambridge University, studying physics and chemistry. After Cambridge, she
Speaker 1: went to work for the British Coal Utilization Research Association,
Speaker 1: and her work on the porosity of coal became her
Speaker 1: PhD thesis. As anybody who's working on a PhD or
Speaker 1: has obtained. One knows the thesis tends to be pretty
Speaker 1: specific once you get to that rarefied air. And this
Speaker 1: work allows her to travel the world as a guest speaker.
Speaker 1: She's an orator, a lecturer in n she moves to
Speaker 1: Paris where she masters X ray crystallography. This becomes her
Speaker 1: life work, and this is what leads her to make
Speaker 1: a crucial contribution to the discovery of the double helix
Speaker 1: structure of d a day. So some people think she
Speaker 1: got a raw deal out of it, a woman getting
Speaker 1: a raw deal in favor of men history. I don't
Speaker 1: know about that man that that seems incredulous now it
Speaker 1: happened all the time, and I would agree, I would,
Speaker 1: I would argue she definitely got a raw deal. Biographer
Speaker 1: Brenda Maddox called her the quote dark Lady of DNA,
Speaker 1: based on a pretty negative, uh sexist nickname given to
Speaker 1: her by one of her male co workers. But you know,
Speaker 1: her friends and and other colleagues believe considered her to
Speaker 1: be very kind, um and brilliant scientists. So this, this reputation,
Speaker 1: this idea, I don't know, this sort of like strikes
Speaker 1: me as sort of the character assassination. Character is that? Yes,
Speaker 1: character assassination almost? Is this the idea that like women
Speaker 1: in business or somehow like mean or like you know,
Speaker 1: not the docile creatures that men would have them be,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like it's absurd and it's
Speaker 1: based in the generations of of patriarchal uh bull ish
Speaker 1: if you will. Yeah. So a lot of scientists thought
Speaker 1: it was challenging to work with her because she wouldn't
Speaker 1: just roll over. She was thought to be short tempered
Speaker 1: and stubborn by those dudes. So there was a lot
Speaker 1: of friction between her and a co worker named Maurice Wilkins,
Speaker 1: in particular, while she was working at King's College. They
Speaker 1: were supposed to work together to find the structure of DNA,
Speaker 1: but because they really really did not get along, they
Speaker 1: ended up working kind of in isolation. And this was
Speaker 1: just fine with Franklin. She didn't need these dudes to
Speaker 1: help her. H Wilkins instead went looking for company at
Speaker 1: the Cavendish Library in Cambridge, and that's where his friend
Speaker 1: Francis Crick was working with James Watson on building a
Speaker 1: model of the DNA molecule, and that's where Wilkins showed
Speaker 1: Watson and Crick some of Rosalind's were work. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: waited Mante, I've seen this before, Okay, Yeah, So, unknown
Speaker 1: to Franklin, Watson and Crick actually kind of potentially took
Speaker 1: the stuff and ran with it. In particular, there was
Speaker 1: an artifact known as Photo of fifty one that was
Speaker 1: shown to Watson by Wilkins, an X ray diffraction image
Speaker 1: of a DNA molecule, and it was in fact Watson's inspiration, um,
Speaker 1: you know, to uh coined the idea of the double helix,
Speaker 1: you know, because the pattern was clearly a helix, and um,
Speaker 1: using Franklin's photo along with you know, the Admittedly, they
Speaker 1: did do some of their own work. H Watson and
Speaker 1: Crick created their now famous model. And when I say model,
Speaker 1: we literally mean like the you know, the way it
Speaker 1: looked like a thing you could do you see hanging
Speaker 1: in like classrooms to this day. However, until more recent times,
Speaker 1: Franklin's contribution was not acknowledged. UM. After her death, however,
Speaker 1: Krick did uh say that her contribution had indeed been critical.
Speaker 1: But it's sort of like after her death, too little,
Speaker 1: too late, buddy, you know, now that she's gone let
Speaker 1: me say, good job, but that's a you know, this
Speaker 1: is all a true story. Luckily, Rosalind Franklin has finally
Speaker 1: gotten her well deserved do and the modern world has
Speaker 1: acknowledged just how much society owes her for her research.
Speaker 1: And that's a bit maybe of a diversion for some
Speaker 1: folks or a tangent, but we felt it was an
Speaker 1: incredibly crucial one, uh And we wanted to thank the
Speaker 1: good folks over at Nature dot com for providing a
Speaker 1: lot of this information in the Rosalind Franklin biography. So
Speaker 1: in any case, that story aside, which is important. What
Speaker 1: you need to know is that Watson Crick were not
Speaker 1: the quote unquote discoverers of d N A. They were
Speaker 1: the first scientists to make an accurate description of that
Speaker 1: complex double helix structure, and their work was directly dependent
Speaker 1: on the research of numerous scientists we've named who came
Speaker 1: before them. Thanks to all this, humanity now is capable
Speaker 1: of making even greater strides and understanding the human genome
Speaker 1: and the many ways in which DNA affects you and
Speaker 1: your loved ones. This leads us to the modern age.
Speaker 1: How crazy is it? How astonishing is it? That we
Speaker 1: can just spit into tube and learn so much about
Speaker 1: not just our past, but our present and our future.
Speaker 1: Like you said, no, it's come a long way since
Speaker 1: the last time you took a test. To answer your question, Ben,
Speaker 1: how crazy, how amazing, how insane, I would say, quite,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's remarkable and and we're going to get
Speaker 1: into very shortly, just how remarkable it was for the
Speaker 1: two of us, you know, as as human beings finding
Speaker 1: things out about ourselves that we never possibly could have
Speaker 1: without decades of detective work, you know, literally digging through
Speaker 1: family heirlooms and traveling record is how far medical records
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff. So in fact, this is
Speaker 1: pretty cool, man, I believe. As of today, we found
Speaker 1: out that the human genome has finally been fully sequenced. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: this news came out pretty recently. It was June seventeenth.
Speaker 1: You can find the full story on the cybverse dot com.
Speaker 1: The human genome is finally fully sequenced. It's been announced. Uh,
Speaker 1: we've figured it out, folks, We got them. As John
Speaker 1: Oliver would say, the first human genome was mapped back
Speaker 1: in two thousand one, is part of the Human Genome Project.
Speaker 1: But researchers knew it wasn't fully accurate what we've done
Speaker 1: now we not just being your host, but you know,
Speaker 1: we as society. The boffins went back through and filled
Speaker 1: in all those gaps and fixed all the errors that
Speaker 1: were in the first attempt at mapping the genome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are parts of it that had previously been kind
Speaker 1: of disregarded and referred to as junk DNA because they
Speaker 1: were seen as being comparable to copying errors, repeating sequences
Speaker 1: in fact that ultimately have been discovered to play a
Speaker 1: more important role in the development of some human disorders.
Speaker 1: There's a really great quote from one of the researchers.
Speaker 1: Just because something is repetitive doesn't imply its garbage. Evan Eichler. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a senior author of of one of the
Speaker 1: publications there, and this sequence is the most comprehensive reference
Speaker 1: mammalian reference genome ever. There are six new genome related
Speaker 1: publications that are coming out in the journal Science that
Speaker 1: will lead to an even better understanding of human evolution
Speaker 1: and the discovery of ways to treat disorders or targets
Speaker 1: that should be uh isolated to treat a variety of disorders.
Speaker 1: We're we're on the bleeding edge now. And Michael shots,
Speaker 1: a Johns Hopkins University professor of Computer science and biology,
Speaker 1: another senior author of some of this research, says, quote,
Speaker 1: we always knew pieces were missing, but I don't believe
Speaker 1: any of us realized how extensive they were or how
Speaker 1: interesting they were. And segue, uh No, I think that's
Speaker 1: something we can say about our own results. So we
Speaker 1: completed a twenty three and me test. I found out
Speaker 1: that some things were pretty normal. Other things were pretty surprising,
Speaker 1: Like I am genetically likely to be of average weight.
Speaker 1: That seems like a pretty normal thing. You can also
Speaker 1: see that I am not likely to be lactose intolerant.
Speaker 1: One of the big things for me was the Malungian
Speaker 1: stuff is true. My paternal line is a pretty crazy
Speaker 1: mix of genetic spaghetti Ashkenazi, Congolese, French, British, Irish, and
Speaker 1: then like two percent other. So don't know if that's
Speaker 1: Native American or it's just what they call on a side.
Speaker 1: At this point, well, before I get into that breakdown
Speaker 1: of mind, I just found out. I just found a
Speaker 1: really amazing new little section on the twenty three and
Speaker 1: me interface, which you get you know, log in when
Speaker 1: you send in your tests, and then using this whole
Speaker 1: like dashboard, and it's like the stuff that I keep
Speaker 1: finding that I didn't even notice that when I first looked.
Speaker 1: One of them is a button that says Neanderthal. I
Speaker 1: apparently have more Neanderthal DNA than thirty five percent of
Speaker 1: other customers. Neanderthals, of course, being prehistoric humans who interbred
Speaker 1: with modern humans before vanishing around forty thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: And this is, uh, you know, pretty amazing to me
Speaker 1: because one of the traits that I may have inherited
Speaker 1: from my Neanderthal ancestors is having a worse sense of direction.
Speaker 1: H I have an awful, awful sense of direction. If
Speaker 1: I did not have my Google Maps, I would never
Speaker 1: find my way anywhere. Uh. And that is just the fact.
Speaker 1: So now I can at least blame you know, my
Speaker 1: my my Neanderthal brethren on that I got more I
Speaker 1: think more. Uh then then just again, this is all
Speaker 1: rated to the average. Part of the reason these tests
Speaker 1: are more specific now is because there are more people
Speaker 1: have participated exactly. And that's the thing. Once you you know,
Speaker 1: become a part of the twenty three and me kind
Speaker 1: of community, you are, you know, and and you you
Speaker 1: are able to there's boxes you can check to keep
Speaker 1: all your data private and all of that, you know,
Speaker 1: at least in terms of, like, you know, having your
Speaker 1: identity associated with it. That's an important thing to consider,
Speaker 1: and that is absolutely a thing that they can do,
Speaker 1: and then they do do. But my breakdown is a
Speaker 1: little bit dull, but still a lot more detailed than
Speaker 1: it was when I took it previously. When I say dull,
Speaker 1: I just mean um, ninety eight point six percent Northwestern
Speaker 1: European and that breaks down to sixty point three percent
Speaker 1: British and Irish. Uh. And then they go into a
Speaker 1: little more specifics with Glasgow City the UK and County
Speaker 1: Dublin plus eighteen other regions and I've got thirty point
Speaker 1: five percent French and German and two point eight percent
Speaker 1: broadly Northwestern European, with the dash of Ashkenazi jew uh
Speaker 1: ancestry thrown in their point. Welcome, welcome. Yeah, the this
Speaker 1: stuff is fascinating. One one thing that we really enjoyed
Speaker 1: that uh, we just learned before recording this. I found
Speaker 1: a really interesting thing in the paternal Haplow group that
Speaker 1: uh lad us to one last short story. We want
Speaker 1: to tell a man named Neal of the Nine Hostages.
Speaker 1: We don't speak this language, so maybe mispronouncing it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Here's what we found in twenty three and me quote
Speaker 1: perhaps more myth in man. Noil of the Nine Hostages
Speaker 1: is said to have been a king of Tara, northwestern
Speaker 1: Ireland in the late fourth century CE. His name comes
Speaker 1: from the tale of nine hostages that he held from
Speaker 1: the regions he ruled over, though the legendary stories of
Speaker 1: his life may have been invented hundreds of years after
Speaker 1: he died. Genetic evidence suggests that the we Kneil dynasty
Speaker 1: again apologies to Native speakers whose name means descendants of Neil,
Speaker 1: did in fact trace back to just one man who
Speaker 1: bore a branch of hap blue group r M two
Speaker 1: six nine. These descendants ruled to various degrees as kings
Speaker 1: of Ireland from the seventh to the eleventh century CE.
Speaker 1: I am descended from them, and just before we started
Speaker 1: to rule, we found out, Noel, you're descended from the
Speaker 1: same dude brother. That's Cheered, right, and that's Um again.
Speaker 1: That's that common ancestor for us goes to ten thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. I think that must be why we haven't
Speaker 1: seen each other at the reunions. Must be. It's pretty interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: There is also a lot of health data that you
Speaker 1: can clean from this twenty three and me test various
Speaker 1: variants that show up in your your you know, your
Speaker 1: genome that can point to certain risk factors, you know,
Speaker 1: for diseases. Mine was pretty solid. Didn't have anything that
Speaker 1: was outlying that should be like a watch out. I
Speaker 1: think I I am a little bit more than averagely
Speaker 1: predisposed to age related macular degeneration, which is the most
Speaker 1: common cause of irreversible vision laws among older adults. Which
Speaker 1: is funny considering that I have really, really good vision. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just as I get older, it's gonna it's
Speaker 1: gonna wane on me. But everything else was pretty solid.
Speaker 1: I uh, you know, that's that's funny because I have
Speaker 1: a couple of things that stood out to me as
Speaker 1: only one seemed woefully incorrect. My caffeine consumptional I am
Speaker 1: likely to consume less and no, Max, you guys know
Speaker 1: that is fundamentally untrue. I beat the odds on that
Speaker 1: one because I drink way too much coffee. But overall,
Speaker 1: this stuff was really exciting for us and and nol
Speaker 1: I'd love for you to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: just how were you surprised by how much more as
Speaker 1: you said, granular, this became in just how many years
Speaker 1: has it been? What's our time interval here? At least
Speaker 1: four years? Um? Yes, I was, Oh my gosh, there's
Speaker 1: even a thing with an asparagus p detection was as
Speaker 1: we know that you did the thing for for I
Speaker 1: believe the stuff of Jus. No, maybe that was Josh,
Speaker 1: but it was one of the shows that you wrote
Speaker 1: for and worked on. All people's pa smell like asparagus
Speaker 1: when they eat it, only some people can't smell it. Uh,
Speaker 1: and and under traits here there's a section for asparagus
Speaker 1: odor detection and I am listed as likely can't smell
Speaker 1: and boy can I ever? That is so interesting. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly granular. Um like things like cleft chin or
Speaker 1: having dan driff. I've got a chance of getting dan
Speaker 1: drift early hair loss likely no hair lost, baby, I
Speaker 1: can tell you that I've got a good head of hair.
Speaker 1: Very excited. I've got a slightly higher than average odds
Speaker 1: of disliking cilantro. I know there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are probably one rain about that I don't
Speaker 1: flush when I drink alcohol. I have the red face
Speaker 1: that happens. Uh. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff here,
Speaker 1: and I think we're both surprised by it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I'm also interested in seeing where the technology goes in
Speaker 1: the future. One of the big takeaways I learned from
Speaker 1: this is that if you take a if you take
Speaker 1: this test again, you might find even more information. Would
Speaker 1: you say that's fair? I think so. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: that's where we end today's story. We went from the
Speaker 1: ancient past all the way to two where people are
Speaker 1: still asking what makes me me? What makes you you?
Speaker 1: What can I learn about myself and apply It's not
Speaker 1: just the past but the president and the future, And
Speaker 1: with companies like twenty three and me, it's easier than
Speaker 1: ever before. So thanks thanks to the good folks, to
Speaker 1: three and me, Thanks all I felt ridiculous historians for
Speaker 1: tuning in, And thanks of course to Mr Max Williams. Max,
Speaker 1: are you gonna? Have you ever taken a DNA test?
Speaker 1: I have not taken a DNA test for mostly because
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of paranoid about it. But Noelso that
Speaker 1: part about it. He's your identity, like like secret stuff.
Speaker 1: So maybe I will you know, and find out that
Speaker 1: maybe I'm related to that same guy that y'all are
Speaker 1: all related to. And Hey, if you like this episode,
Speaker 1: why not check out some of our other fellow podcasters
Speaker 1: on the iHeart podcast network, like Many Questions with Many Driver,
Speaker 1: or Prodigy with our buddy loll Berlanti, or a Hundred
Speaker 1: Words with Andrew cannon Um, where they these hosts share
Speaker 1: their journeys to health discovery or you know, finding out
Speaker 1: what makes them them or we we are you you
Speaker 1: all the same stuff that we talked about from a
Speaker 1: completely different angle. You can find their episodes in the
Speaker 1: spit feed Um, which is another show hosted by a
Speaker 1: dear friend of ours, Barrattunda Thurston on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Yes
Speaker 1: Sam of course, our good pals Annie and Sam over
Speaker 1: its Stuff, Mom Never Told You and Waiting on Reparations
Speaker 1: with our pals, Dope Knife and Link with Franco. Thanks
Speaker 1: also to Jonathan Strickland Dak the Quister, Thanks of course
Speaker 1: to Alex Williams, Christopher Hasiotis and E's Jeff Got Absolutely
Speaker 1: and you know what, We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.