Finding Genius Podcast

The connection between alcohol and gut health is established in scientific literature: alcohol is an inflammatory agent. But as researchers like Vincent Maffei work to improve the quality of life for HIV patients, every bit of information of how that inflammation develops makes a difference, especially in how alcohol and bowel problems connect. Listeners will learn The difference between chronological and biological health and how HIV patients experience increased biological aging, The connection between alcohol and G.I. issues, particularly less diverse microbiota, and The significance of their findings, specifically the abundance of Prevotella spp., a bacteria that may be a mediator between alcohol and cell senescence. Vincent J. Maffei is with the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Parasitology at LSU. As a graduate student, he became involved in LSU's Comprehensive Alcohol Research Center (CARC) and studied how dysbiosis accompanies biological aging. He combined this with studying how alcohol affects the intestines, and now studies this specifically with HIV patients. More specifically, he works to find associations between alcohol use and advancing aging in HIV patients and their guts. He explains to listeners about several players in this complex mix of cause and effect: alcohol and gut health as well as alcohol and HIV patients. He establishes that any amount of alcohol can be harmful to someone suffering from HIV. Combine that with an already-established connection with alcohol and dysbiosis in the gut, and researchers are faced with a very real problem to solve for these patients. He does a careful job explaining the background to listeners, bringing in other studies more general to alcohol use and explaining its effect on T-cell senescence, which basically means they lack the ability to copy themselves—limiting their ability to fight infection. Senescence is also a characteristic of biological aging. He explains that the administration of alcohol breaks down the gut barrier, allowing microbes to migrate from the lumen of gut into tissue, which causes inflammation. He also explains their worthy end goal: to identify some sort of microbiota intervention to relieve this component of inflammation in HIV patients, improving their life span and quality of life. Hopefully their findings will lead to more precise mechanisms that can be leveraged in therapeutic modality. For more, see the CARC website: medschool.lsuhsc.edu/alcoholresearch. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Researcher and physician Yoshifumi Saisho is on a mission to change diabetes treatment in his country. His research on the physiology of type 2 diabetes in Japan versus the U.S.A. makes an exciting case for his argument. Listeners will be treated with an explanation of his model-shifting findings and learn How beta-cell numbers in our pancreas connect with diabetes development, What these beta cells indicate when non obese patients in Japan develop type 2 diabetes at the same proportion as their more obese American type 2 counterparts, and Why Yoshifumi Saisho argues for a paradigm-shift view of diabetes from a glucose-centric disease to a beta-cell–centric disease. Yoshifumi Saisho is a researcher and physician with the Department of Internal Medicine at Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo. When he began his career, he decided he wanted to be a doctor that would treat the entire patient rather than just one part. He also was focused on preventative aspects of disease. These two motivators still dominate his work and he shares compelling evidence about diabetes manifestation that centers on beta cells. He says that pancreas tissue samples have shown that beta-cell mass is reduced by around 50 percent in patients with type 2 diabetes. Also significant, patients in Japan who develop type 2 diabetes are not as obese as American diabetics but both share this reduction in beta cells. How does this happen and why does it matter? Well, it's our beta cells that make insulin. He explains his theory for why this lower beta-cell number happens. When we eat excess carbs, he says, beta cells release insulin to take care of it. Humans don't increase beta-cell numbers under excess sugar, so each beta cell works harder to release more insulin. Therefore, he thinks that these beta cells die off from exhaustion and overwork. Preservation of beta cells must be important and this is why he'd like to change how the Japanese view diabetes. Japanese treatment for diabetes views it as a glucose-centered problem but he argues that if health professionals shift to seeing it as a beta-cell disease, treatment and prevention will be more successful. He hopes to appeal to the concept of avoiding wastefulness. We need to apply conservation language to our physical body's resources as well, he adds, and utilize nutrition and fitness facts as tools for reducing beta-cell workload. In other words, beta cells are a limited and precious resource in our body. For more about Yoshifumi Saisho's work, he suggests googling his name. Here are Yoshifumi Saisho's recent two papers and the website for ResearchGate for more information. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14656566.2020.1776262 https://www.emjreviews.com/diabetes/article/editors-pick-how-can-we-develop-more-effective-strategies-for-type-2-diabetes-mellitus-prevention-a-paradigm-shift-from-a-glucose-centric-to-a-beta-cell-centric-concept-of-diabetes/ https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yoshifumi_Saisho Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Sarah Hallberg was charged with setting up a clinic to treat obesity and researched her way into a remarkable finding: the low-fat emphasis engrained in medical school as preventative of obesity had no real backing in actual outcomes. This started her journey that led to type 2 diabetes treatments centered on a low-carb intervention. Listeners will hear about How her research uncovered that this low-fat med school lesson didn't play out in studies, How she defines low carb and what kinds of results she got with patients who'd taken insulin for years, and How she blended her successful clinic work with Virta Health to produce a well-researched application for type 2 diabetic patients accessible to everyone. Dr. Sarah Hallberg is the Medical Director at Virta Health; previously, she founded Indiana University Arnett's Medically Supervised Weight Loss Program and still serves as their Medical Director. Even before medical school, she focused on physiology, exercise, and nutrition and fitness facts. Her research into obesity before the clinic opened aligned with type 2 diabetes causes. She gives listeners an intriguing story about the dramatic effect the low-carb diet had on her patients at the Indiana University Clinic. In fact, the plan quickly morphed into a type 2 diabetes diet. Her work with the clinic and Virta Health on low-carb plans is reversing type 2 diabetes with diet and exercise in numerous patients. Dr. Hallberg gives listeners a helpful picture of how this plan works as she defines what low carb means in her clinic. Generally, if under 25% of daily calories come from carbs, or if one consumes under 125 grams of carbs per day, it's considered a low-carb diet by professionals. But she utilizes an even lower number, with less than 10% of calories from carbs a day, or less than 50 grams per day. She's careful listeners understand that this is NOT a no-carb approach and some carbs are good providers of micro nutrients and such. A small amount of those carbs will come from dairy and the biggest amount comes from non-starchy vegetables and seeds. She gives an interesting description of the physiology for these interactions as well as how adding whole-food fats make a difference. Finally she describes how the Virta Health plan and application works. It's a direct-to-consumer product and provides users with frequent personalized contact with a health coach. For more about the program, see virtahealth.com. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

This podcast brings cutting edge theory to standard, everyday cancer treatment, calling for a new approach. Professor and author James Shapiro is speaking about evolution and cancer at the Cancer & Evolution Symposium in October. Lucky listeners get a preview of his revolutionary ideas in this podcast where he connects lessons from cancer biology to evolutionary biology. He applies those ideas to a push for better cancer therapy treatment through an effective combination of big idea shifts with specific examples. Listeners will finish this enlightening podcast with a better understanding of What cancer evolution can teach evolutionary biologists about the capacity for rapid change, How cancer progression is akin to the Cambrian explosion in its punctuated evolutionary rate, and Why rethinking cancer evolution and immune system interactions should take cancer treatment in a different direction. James Shapiro is a professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago and author of Evolution: A View from the 21st Century. Cancer is an evolutionary disease, he says. Think about it: each stage follows evolutionary steps, from a benign cancer cell, to a malignant cancer cell, then a metastasizing cell, and eventually to cellular diversification and resistance to all kinds of agents. This tremendous ability to diversify so rapidly caught his attention and it seemed worthy to look at what cancer's ability for rapid change implied about evolution. He then sets the stage for listeners by describing the connection between cell damage and "insults" to the beginnings of cancer. He discusses the role of events like chromothripsis (chromosome shattering) and polyploidy in cancer development and connects them with earth-shattering events like asteroid collusions that resulted in mass extinctions. These events on earth were followed by rapid evolution and new organism development. Similarly, cancer leaps ahead into tremendous heterogeneity and diversification as it progresses. He then makes these ideas applicable: cancer treatment needs to stop this rapid evolution capability. This is the main goal of the symposium—to address cancer in a different way because it adapts and rapidly evolves as it reacts to present treatments. He gives examples of how some oncologists are attempting this already, using "adaptive" therapy where they tone chemotherapy down to try to avoid triggering the evolution. He also emphasizes that cancer can help evolutionary biologists better understand evolution. Cancer, he says, is a demonstration of the inherent potential for evolutionary change; furthermore, it can show evolutionary biologists that organisms have the ability to change themselves and increasingly so. Cancer shows us how much potential and capability exists in cells to change their heredity and acquire new characteristics. Listen in for more of this rapid evolutionary change happening in cancer and evolutionary biology disciplines. For more about the symposium, see cancerevolution.org. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

There are ten million viruses in one single drop of seawater, and many more viruses than stars in the universe. How does this understanding shape how we perceive them, us, and life in general? Press play to discover: How multiple persistent, invading viruses contributed to the formation of the immune system of cellular organisms What happens when the counter-regulation between thousands of viruses in the genome gets out of control How the evolution of placental mammals is an example of how a persistent virus cares for the growth and development of its host Viruses have affected every organism on the planet since the start of life. Most of them infect their host in a persistent way, which means they don't kill the host, but try to invade the genome of the host where they will remain. But are they alive? According to Guenther Witzany, they absolutely are. His reasoning is based on the fact that viruses depend on the genetic code. Furthermore, they cooperate, compete, and communicate with one another, which means they exhibit biotic behavior. Witzany is an accomplished author and philosopher of science, language and communication, and biology. In the late 1980s, he proposed a concept of life as a communicative structure. His work revolves largely around understanding the association between language and communication and the genetic code, and how the cells of an organism and viruses coordinate their behavior and interactions to reach a common goal. He discusses his view on the dividing line between living and nonliving entities, provides examples of specific forms of communication used by plants, the idea of communication as a prerequisite to coordination between cells, toxin-antitoxin systems in biology, what might dictate whether a virus is lytic, lysogenic, or endogenizing, and more. Check out Witzany's authoritative books and research on the topics of communication and coordination in cellular organisms, and the abundance and significance of the role of viruses on the planet. Follow the link here: http://www.biocommunication.at/. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Professor François Fuks researches epigenetics in human diseases. Along with our immune response process, scientists know that genetic alterations have a say in cancer progression. Professor Fuks researches how this interacts with epigenetic alterations and his work has led to a much sharper distinction between different types of cancers. Listeners will learn How the two-hit hypothesis works with epigenetics modification and genetic factors, Why understanding epigenetics and disease can lead to life-saving therapies, and What new "epidrugs" may soon be available and what they are capable of targeting. François Fuks is a professor of epigenetics at the Université libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. He's the director of the Laboratory of Cancer Epigenetics and the Cancer Research Center and founded a company that seeks to address the epigenetic field called Epics Therapeutics. He explains the gist of his research in terms of the careful and ground-breaking work his team has down with epigenomics and epigenetics in cancer. If cancer were a book series, he says, one volume is known but he and others are discovering another volume: this volume shows epigenetic chances and effects that have implications for diagnosis and therapeutics. He describes these implications in careful detail, describing a tight interplay that can lead to alterations in cancer progression. Genetic and epigenetic events are very tightly connected. These dynamic modifications can switch back and forth, adding marks but also removing. He explains this crosstalk in detail, how the different "lations" from demethylation to phosphorylation work in epigenetics and genetic forces, and how imprinting plays a role. He then addresses an exciting discovery. Scientists had asked if epigenetics could present a more complete picture than the subgroups we already divide cancer into. The answer is yes, epigenetics has enabled a better picture, adding subgroups and better classification for cancer treatment. Listen in to learn more about this as well as what "epidrugs" might offer future patients. For more about his work, see his lab's web page: http://fukslab.ulb.be/ Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Efforts to stop SARS-CoV-2 in its tracks have been ongoing for months, and now there might be something tangible that makes it happen. Press play to learn: How to trigger viral mutations that prevent SARS-CoV-2 from replicating in the human body, thereby preventing the "cytokine storm" associated with COVID-19 COVID-19 prophylaxis in communities that may need it the most? Whether it's possible, and how it's being investigated What's necessary in order to warrant emergency use authorization for an antiviral drug in treating COVID-19 Fueled by a long-standing fascination with infectious diseases and pandemics like the Black Death, Dr. Armand Balboni earned a dual MD/PhD degree at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Having spent 17 years in the US military as an officer working on a number of infectious diseases including Ebola, dengue fever, and malaria, he discovered unmet needs in the marketplace, and wanted to design a socially-conscious company to meet those needs. In 2014, this goal manifested as Appili Therapeutics, a pure play anti-infectives company. Today, the team at Appili Therapeutics is working on phase II and phase III clinical trials for the most advanced product that is an oral tablet for COVID-19: an antiviral medication called favipiravir. This medication has already undergone three phase III clinical trials in the US and been approved for pandemic flu in Japan and China. The expectation is that the current phase II and phase III clinical trials will show that favipiravir is safe and effective specifically for the treatment of COVID-19. Dr. Balboni anticipates that this medication will be available for use against COVID-19 by early next year. Dr. Balboni explains the importance of each stage in the US clinical trial process, the specific mechanism of action by which favipiravir works against viral replication, Operation Warp Speed as it applies to both vaccines and therapeutic drugs, possible side effects of favipiravir, and more. Visit https://clinicaltrials.gov/ and https://www.appilitherapeutics.com/ for more information. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

A Tyrannosaurus rex prompted a successful radiologist of over 30 years to redirect his focus on something completely different: evolutionary biology. Press play for a fascinating look into the mind of William B. Miller, Jr., where medicine, evolution, and virology intersect. Press play to explore: Are viruses alive, and if so, does that mean they're self-aware? Are viruses capable of contingent decision-making, and if so, how should that direct the means by which we control them for our own benefit? In what way living things "know" doubt and make predictions, and what this may imply about viruses As a radiologist, Dr. Miller noticed recurring patterns of overlap between infectious diseases and cancer. At the time, scientific evidence provided Dr. Miller with no explanation as to why he was noticing these reiterative patterns. Then he met Sue, one of the world's best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex specimens. He noticed several features of the skeleton that were shared by the human skeleton, and his interest was piqued like never before. He dove into a new understanding of evolution of life on earth: evolution based on cognition. Rather than subvert Darwinism, it explains it in an arguably better way, and according to Dr. Miller, leads directly to the question of how to place viruses in the correct evolutionary schema. This conversation leads to so many compelling topics, including how infectious disease and evolution mirror each other, the concept of the virocell, forms of communication between viruses, a new science called sociovirology which involves the ideas of cooperation, codependence, and collaboration between viruses, why a virus is either lytic, lysogenic, or endogenizing, philosophical implications of the virome, what Dr. Miller means when he refers to viral "personalities," in what way the principle of parsimony seems violated by the sheer number of incomplete virions in certain viral infections, how the idea of quasi-species has been used as one of the origin of life theories, where he believes the field of virology needs to go, and so much more. Check out Dr. Miller's book, The Microcosm Within: Evolution and Extinction in the Hologenome, and visit his website at http://www.themicrocosmwithin.com/. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Returning guest Nils G. Walter examines RNA molecules from every possible angle, literally and metaphorically. His lab at the University of Michigan brings multidisciplinary minds together to discover what RNA research may offer the medical community. Listeners are in for expert assessments on Why multiple molecular players lead to such divergence in viral structure and functions; How viral spread is simply evolution on a molecular level, retaining mutations that lead to success; and What's an "interactome" and what does this concept have to do with the movie Avatar. Nils G. Walter is a professor of Chemistry and Biological Chemistry at the University of Michigan. Early in his career he mentored with Nobel Laureate Manfred Eigen, who developed the quasispecies theory, a way to understand how molecules in the precellular RNA world evolved into more complex life forms. This experience underpins much of his present work as well as how he answers Richard's questions. For example, when Richard asks about the viral-like qualities of ribosomes and plasmids, Dr. Walter describes his work with the ARC protein, which his lab is studying. He describes its action sequence and adds that it is highly related to retroviral packaging proteins and carries information in our neurons. ARC, he says, has a way to communicate information between cells and reprogram the recipient cell just like a virus does. In other words, the relatedness of these particles is evident. Relatedness, in fact, is the name of the game. He comments that his lifetime of research reveals all of biology as connected—and this is why he is such a fan of Avatar. A dominate reason for this connection is this exchange of genetic material endemic to viruses, bacteria, and other infectious diseases and basic biological processes. For example, as extracellular vesicles transfer genetic information from one to another, so are there similar means of communication between compounds and molecules as well as environmental impacts (think epigenetics) that all come together to change genotypes. He shows this in concrete ways as he answers questions about viral agency or cellular "choice" by describing how many factors and interactions lead to different results. Rather than "choice," he asserts that the molecular environment changes the balance systems to go in new directions. For more about his work, see his lab's web page: sites.lsa.umich.edu/walter-lab. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Professor Robert Steneck started researching lobsters in 1983 and was one of the first people to explore the ecosystems of lobsters in their natural habitat, which, given lobsters' solitary and cautious nature, is no easy task. He gives listeners the opportunity to see this hidden world up close, discussing How remarkable the mating habits of these chitin-encased crustaceans are, How this ecosystem passenger's current habits reveal changing characteristics of the Maine coast marine ecosystem, and What fisheries report as current lobster catching status and why. Robert Steneck is a professor in the School of Marine Sciences at The University of Maine. He studies marine ecology as well as the importance of marine ecosystems to those who depend on them for their livelihood. While his studies include many aspects of ocean life and nature, he has an especially long history studying the Maine lobster population. He first gives the audience a helpful picture for how lobster fisheries and scientists have viewed the Maine populations the last several decades. In fact, when he begin observing and recording data in the 80s, popular thought held that lobsters numbers were declining. He showed that the population actually was increasing from 1985 until 2016. Now, climate change is changing lobster habits, and he and his students are involved in assessing this more carefully. He describes the effects warmer water seems to have on mating ages of lobsters as well as the lower oxygen numbers in the water from these same higher temperatures and rotting invasive seaweed. Along the way, however, he gives listeners an interesting glimpse into these ancient creatures' habits and activities, from the capacity to live about a hundred years to their ability to excise a claw for protection. He adds interesting details about their mating life, including the facility of a female to hold onto part of a sperm packet and fertilize a second batch of eggs a year or two after mating. He also describes what it is like to observe these creatures while SCUBA diving, how they use submersibles and recording devices, and what they've studied this past summer regarding lobsters no longer using their hiding nooks and crannies in underwater rock formations. Listen in to hear about this timely study and more amazing details about a day in the life of a lobster. For more about Robert Steneck's work, he suggests searching for him in Google scholar. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK