Work Text:
Sideways Science Episode 17: Extremophiles, astrobiology & water with Dr. Grace (04/23/2018)
Transcript:
[slight rustling]
Hello, and welcome to Sideways Science! My name is Dinah Shaeffer, and I’ll be your host this week, last week, and every other week in the future as well. Although between you and me, I wouldn’t say no to a co-host, with the amount of audio editing I have to do on my own.
Anyway, if this is your first time tuning in, welcome! We like to talk science here- specifically, niche, sometimes controversial science. Weird obscure research, minority theories, and silenced voices, all that good stuff. Now I have to disclaim here, as I do every episode, that what I am not entertaining are conspiracy theories or pseudoscience. I am not interested in crackpot ideas with no facts behind them, no valid logic, scientifically untested, or used to perpetuate other stereotypes and bigotry. Take your flat-earthing and phrenology elsewhere, thankyew.
Last episode we talked about plate tectonics and continental drift with the amazing geologist Doctor Thyra Askelson, which I know, you got taught about tectonic plates in 5th grade and I’m immediately contradicting my own spiel about the show’s premise. But I thought we’d take a blast to the past and discuss how fringe theories can become mainstream, how complicated and obscure science actually gets proven, and what gets to be brought into our understanding of the world. And hey, if you’re still skeptical about my choice of episode topic, go give it a listen and come back to this after.
This week we’re pivoting way away from the surface of the Earth and towards something much, much smaller. That’s right. We’re talking molecular biology, specifically, extremophiles and life conditions. This week’s guest was brought to my attention via email from one of our lovely listeners, Abby. Thank you, Abby, you led me to a goldmine. This scientist is no longer in the field, and while I’m not here to air any dirty laundry, it comes with the territory of this show that they had quite a controversial exit. This intrigued me, so I went and read the paper that started it all and you guys, it’s fascinating stuff. Totally out there, but really interesting and it’s got genuine merit. It’s exactly what this show is for.
So without further adieu, let’s get into my chat with Doctor Ryland Grace.
Dinah: Hi, thanks so much for coming on the show!
Grace: Ah, thanks for having me. I was surprised to get your email. It’s been a while since I’ve talked about this stuff, so uh, I might sound a bit janky, sorry about that.
Dinah: That is perfectly okay, don’t sweat it. And you aren’t out of practice explaining science, I hear.
Grace: [laughs] No, I’m really not.
Dinah: Before we get into it, would you like to introduce yourself? Name, pronouns, your field and your work, any other background you want to talk about, that stuff.
Grace: Um, okay. I’m Ryland Grace- Doctor Ryland Grace. He/him, I guess. I did my bachelors and PhD on molecular biology, and while I am kind of… known for my astrobiology opinions, I wasn’t in the field for very long, all things considered. [Grace chuckles]. I’m a teacher now, I teach middle school science and I am very happy to be where I am.
Dinah: [laughs] Well, ah, I’m glad you’re not trying to use this interview to get a foot back into academia, my word really doesn’t have that much sway over there. Or any.
Grace: No, that’s not it at all. To avoid a, uh, a Denmark-shaped elephant in the room, I just want to say outright that I took your invitation to come on the show because I wanted the opportunity to explain my research in a less… explosive way, than I did before. I do believe in those ideas still, but I know I didn’t handle it well at the time, and I just wanted the chance to get it out there in a better way and then go back to my life.
Dinah: No, absolutely, I’m glad to give you a platform to do that. On this show we believe in emotional growth and being able to defend your hot takes.
Grace: I like that. Sounds like something my students would say.
Dinah: Thank you, I think. Anyway, speaking of hot takes, I’m giving you the floor. Walk me and our listeners through your ideas. Help us see your perspective with your middleschool-honed science communication skills.
Grace: Yeah, so I started in college – undergrad – with molecular biology because I thought that DNA was the coolest thing ever.
Dinah: It is pretty damn cool.
Grace: Right? I always look forward to teaching the kids genealogy and punnet squares and all that. Anyway, so I went through my biology course thinking I’d do that then do a postgrad degree with a thesis on DNA, go into gene splicing, discover the new CRISPR, or what have you. That, as you know, is not what happened.
Dinah: What prompted the change?
Grace: I got the opportunity to do a paper on extremophiles in one of my third-year electives and I just… spiralled. My worldview shifted, I realised that life could be anything, could survive and thrive in any conditions you can think of and we have such a narrow view of where and how life can adapt. I thought there would be some really amazing things to discover in such a space.
Dinah: Would you be so kind as to stop and explain for me and our listeners what extremophiles are?
Grace: Oh, yeah absolutely. So, the term ‘extremophile’ is a pretty broad label and quite an arbitrary scientific category, really. It’s just used to refer to organisms that can live in extreme and previously considered inhospitable conditions, as you may have guessed. These are conditions like polar regions, deserts and arid environments, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, even nuclear contamination sites and underwater trenches. It’s usually microbial life, multi-cellular organisms are just too complex for those kinds of niches. Bacteria and archaea, chiefly, but also some fungi and some other edge-cases.
Dinah: Well, there is life in the Mariana Trench, after all.
Grace: Exactly.
Dinah: Do we know what sets them apart from non-extremophiles, like, biologically? What makes them special?
Grace: That’s a really good question. Amino acid composition and protein folding is thought to be a pretty key factor to extremophile adaption. To recap, for anyone who needs it before we keep going, proteins are molecules made of long chains of different combinations of amino acid chemicals. They fold into different 3D shapes that determines what they do, and they do a lot. They’re little machines in an organism, carrying out the necessary tasks for functioning, which makes them really important to understanding how extremophiles can be so flexible and adaptable to their conditions. We’re still trying to find the answers in their genes, where all of the amino acid combos are coded.
Dinah: I did, in fact, need that recap so thank you. Now for a really important question– do you have a favourite?
Grace: What, extremophile? Yeah probably. I mean, did you know that there’s a microscopic creature called a tardigrade that can survive in such wildly diverse conditions it can even handle exposure to outer space? They do something called cryptobiosis, where they can stop their entire metabolisms. They just kinda put themselves on pause until the conditions are hospitable again.
Dinah: Wow, that is so cool. Extremely valid answer.
Aside: Okay so, editing Dinah here. I don’t like to interrupt but I do feel like I have to mention that not only are tardigrades very cool and unique, they’re also adorable. Seriously. I was listening back to this bit and I thought to google them, and they’re, like, tiny squidgy eight-legged mole-looking creatures that wiggle about under a microscope. If you’re like me and you think bugs are cute, boy do I have a new weird little guy for you.
Grace: Isn’t it? Although full transparency, they aren’t technically universally extremophilic. They’re surviving not thriving in all those crazy situations. A tardigrade will die at some point if you shoot it into space.
Dinah: Well, on the topic of life in space – thank you for that flawless segue opportunity – I can absolutely see how you could go from researching extremophiles to wondering about how the conditions for life might be different elsewhere.
Grace: Well, the pipeline from extremophile research to astrobiology is a documented thing. You put the logic together yourself immediately, if we widen our horizons and look into all of the insane things on Earth life can adapt to, we’re more likely to have a framework for understanding how it could adapt to conditions that aren’t on Earth. Imagine we find a planet with legitimate signs of life that we want to understand better, but because of all sorts of differing factors to Earth, everything on the surface experiences complete darkness and pressures similar to that of the Mariana Trench. You want a person who understands piezophiles for that.
Dinah: Is that what you wanted to do?
Grace: I, uh, I just wanted to discover something new and understand our world better, like any good scientist does. Piezophiles are just one category of extremophiles, the ones that can handle crazy underwater pressure, and I did do research on them but they weren’t really my niche. I- alright, I’m gonna be honest, when I was narrowing down what I wanted to focus on, I did intentionally pick a category of extremophile that would not require me to do anything insane like get in a submarine to go to the bottom of the ocean or visit sites of radioactive fallout to do field work. They may be able to handle some of the most inhospitable conditions Earth has to offer, but I am a squishy human being and I’m not built for that [Grace laughs].
Dinah: [laughs] I hear you. Genuinely nothing sounds less appealing to me than being one of the people who actually go down to study the Mariana Trench.
Grace: Yeah, that’s how I landed on xerophiles. Well, that, and there’s less interest in them than what’s going on down at the bottom of the ocean. Which, I get it, it’s mysterious, but I wanted to look elsewhere.
Dinah: So, xerophiles, I have gathered from context and your paper that they are the ones who like deserts and thrive without a lot of water.
Grace: Right on the money. Xerophiles – xero from the Ancient Greek xerós for dry – are organisms that grow and reproduce in conditions with remarkably low water activity. So yes, usually found in extremely hot, dry, and arid deserts. They do a form of cryptobiosis, that thing I mentioned earlier about pausing metabolism, called anhydrobiosis which is induced by desiccation. Uh, desiccation is just the technical sciency word for extreme dehydration – think, like, all those times that Spongebob dries out and the animators give you a disgustingly detailed close up of him as a shrivelled up husk [Grace pauses then laughs awkwardly]
Dinah: How do they do that? You mentioned amino acids and protein folding, is it something to do with that?
Grace: Well, like all things, different species of organisms respond to and behave differently in their conditions. An important aspect to anhydrobiosis appears to be a gradual loss of water rate to avoid structural damage and give the organism time to work all of its magic in order to protect itself. Some anhydrobiotes get off easier by living in habitats that they can count on to lose moisture slowly, like moss or soil. They’re called external dehydration strategists.
Dinah: That is… an unexpectedly badass name.
Grace: [laughs] Yeah, they sound kinda like international molecular super spies, or something. There’s also internal dehydration strategists that live in more exposed habitats, so they have to have their own internal strategies, hence the name. In species that have a cuticle barrier, it can become less permeable to conserve water. Other species with appendages can curl or coil them into itself to reduce the surface area that moisture is lost through. But most anhydrobiotes increase concentration of a sugar called trehalose when they’re exposed to desiccation, that acts as a water replacement. To circle back to your original question, one of the dangers of desiccation for an organism is denaturation, the structure of their proteins literally unfolding. Trehalose helps prevent that.
Dinah: This is legitimately fascinating stuff. I might be jumping the gun here but I can see the logical conclusion, that if a sugar can replace water in some conditions under some environmental stresses, maybe in completely different planetary conditions, water isn’t necessary at all.
Grace: Yeah, that was definitely where my mind was going too at that point in my research. Not to mention the fact that xerophiles are also frequently halophiles, thriving in extreme salt-rich environments too. I actually had the opportunity, for a brief amount of time, to do some field work in the Atacama Desert in Chile, documenting bacterial diversity that we didn’t know was there for a very long time. The Atacama Desert is, ah, for a lack of better term, quite un-Earth-like. It’s conditions are often compared to that of Mars in terms of chemical composition, and we used to think it was sterile until we got better at finding the bacteria. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it, it just felt like such an oversight in our understanding of the world, that we were making so many connections about life on Earth and stretching our understanding, but we still couldn’t think outside of the box completely.
Dinah: Is this when you wrote your paper?
Grace: Yeah, I was properly pivoting into astrobiology after I got home from working in Atacama for a couple of weeks. I know how it sounds, but the thing about my paper and… you know, everything that happened as a result of it, was that it wasn’t really about being right. I tell my kids all the time that the point of having a hypothesis isn’t to be correct, or to frame all of your findings as proving you right all along, it’s to have a question to answer. And something not being what you thought it would be is an important answer too, because it allows you to then ask ‘why?’. The point of my paper, and why I do still stand by what I thought, was because our assumptions of life had a huge element of bias we refused to acknowledge.
Dinah: The assumption that water is necessary for life?
Grace: The belief that water is necessary for life on Earth is not a baseless assumption, I’m not actually a conspiracy theorist nut. It’s just- I said that thing earlier about the label extremophile being kind of arbitrary? It’s a biased category because it’s anthropocentric, it’s labelled as such because it’s so different from the conditions humans can survive. It made sense to me as an extension from that. Human beings and our perspective actually aren’t the center of the entire galaxy. Things can be completely different from how we understand them.
Dinah: I absolutely see your point… I’m about to ask a question and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, I can cut this in audio editing later. Do you want to talk about the backlash and the UNESCO conference?
Grace: No it’s- I’ll talk about it, you don’t have to cut it. I came on here figuring I’d have to address it somehow. I’m… not proud of how I reacted. I was in the field really young and in the baby stages of my career by the standards of academia, and I felt like no one wanted to hear what I had to say. I got increasingly frustrated with how people responded to my ideas, that for all the principles of discovery and innovation that the science community touted, they couldn’t seem to take any kind of contradiction to the mainstream status quo seriously. God, and I’m a white guy to boot.
Dinah: Did… did you know it would be the end of your academic career when you said what you did at the UNESCO conference, or was it completely spur of the moment? … Sorry, this was definitely more personal, no pressure to answer at all.
Grace: It’s okay. Um, I guess I knew in some capacity that I was burning some bridges when I went into that conference, but it wasn’t some grand ‘screw you’ dramatic exit I had planned. It was just an ugly combination of defensiveness, spite, cowardice, and definitely some self-sabotage that had all reached a boiling point. I’m older now, and I regret leaving how I did, but I guess I’m ultimately quite glad I’m not in academia. I would never have thought to become a teacher if I didn’t have a reason to go in a different direction.
Dinah: I’m glad you’re happier as a teacher now too. If there’s anything I’ve learned doing this show, it’s that loving science doesn’t have to look the same for everyone.
Grace: I like that a lot. Yeah, no, I love science differently now that I teach it to middle schoolers, if not more than when I was in the field. I’m trying to inspire all of these kids to care about how the world works, and it’s pretty hard to do that without a healthy sense of wonder for the natural world yourself. I’m also trying to teach my kids to think critically, stand strong, and defend their conclusions rationally, so hopefully if any of them grow up to be scientists of their own, they’ll go about it better than I did.
Dinah: We’re coming up on time, and that sounds like a beautiful closing message if you don’t mind leaving it here?
Grace: I don’t have anything else I’m desperate to say, that sounds good to me.
Dinah: Thank you again for coming on the show Doctor Grace, it was a pleasure to have you.
Grace: Yeah, it was really nice to have a chance to talk about this stuff. Thanks for reaching out and having me on.
So there you have it, we all learnt some things about extremophiles and anthropocentric biases. Doctor Grace was really a blast to have on the show, and an excellent explainer for obvious reasons. It got a bit more personal at the end there than we usually go, but there’s room for feelings and growth in science too. Academia isn’t everything.
I hope you all enjoyed this episode of Sideways Science. If you really super enjoyed the show, or if you’re annoyed by my mic quality and want me to get a more expensive one, you can sign up to my patreon for five dollars a month and have a chance to chat to me and other fans, see some behind the scenes stuff, and vote for what I talk about on the show.
My name’s Dinah Shaeffer, I’ll see you guys in a fortnight, make sure to learn something weird before then.
[End Transcript]
Comments:
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@djhungrymoney017 2 weeks ago
Im imagining dictator of the world Eva Stratt looking for scientists for the petrova problem and then she finds dr grace on a years old science podcast episode and is like “yeah i want that one”
@rosieposie 2 weeks ago
Well, good to know that we’re all here for the same reason, listening to an old episode of an obscure science podcast because we’re responding to the end of the world by being parasocial about the shockingly hot lead scientist on phm
@bee-boots 1 week ago
“My kids” 😭😭 Put him back in the fucking classroom
@dangrover9234 2 weeks ago
Genuinely, Stratt needs to get this guy on a talk show to explain Astrophage. I feel like I might actually understand how the space dots are eating the sun
@ctrlaltstop 5 days ago
The thing he said at the unesco conference that they dont actually repeat btw? yeah dr grace called the leading scientist in his field a staggering waste of carbon. iconic actually