What do mushrooms, pants, and astronauts have in common?
They're made of genes! The state of #SciComm and a couple of gene-based articles (not written by me) with brief commentary (written by me) for your weekend reading.
Hey Amateurs! Coming to you live from a rainy Saturday afternoon with my softest clothes on and jazz playing in the house. So far it’s been a great day for mac and cheese and eye contact with the crows that like to land in the tree right outside.
I love days like this. All the meandering newsletter thoughts that came around just as I was falling asleep last night get to marinate a little longer, free of time pressure or competing priorities. Funnily (or frustratingly) enough, the question I planned to explore this week didn’t quite strike the delicate balance of specific/novel/whimsical/digestible that’s necessary for this kind of discussion. My attempt to find a nugget of hope for the topic led me back to Massive Science, one of my favourite publications. It didn’t solve my problem, but I tumbled into another world of concepts to consider instead.
Massive Science is a great example of how concerted effort from an organization can change the state of an industry. Science communication is notorious for its gatekeeping and ivory-tower sensibilities. Amateur and emerging science writers, especially, run into lots of barriers to publishing their work. The avenues are often limited to one of two options: one, peer-reviewed studies; and two, the “science-lite for the masses” space where writers (from both science and non-science backgrounds) are paid meagre sums to contribute to the churning blogosphere content monster.
It’s hard to believe that their model is possible at all in this age of such precarious publishing, but they’re almost singlehandedly growing the number of trained and experienced science communicators out there.
What Massive Science has done is a throwback to the kind of individual investment seen in days of yore. Their in-house writing program offers training in “science storytelling” through seminars, one-on-one mentorship with professional editors and researchers, and a built-in platform for publishing. It costs just $10 to enrol and they pay writers for every published piece. This is the kind of (financially) accessible training that actually makes a difference for people. Access to training and industry connections are hard to come by - you often need to know somebody to even have a chance at getting a byline.
It’s like something out of an old-timey movie that involves a chance encounter and an offer of mentorship based on, I don’t know, charm and good timing.
I love their work so much. It’s particularly great to see the writers’ affiliations along with their name at the top of every article. Lots of scientists from every stage of life, from undergraduates to grad students and doctoral fellows, all working toward reaching the wider world with their research.
In recognition of science writers everywhere, this week’s issue is highlighting two Massive Science articles about genes.
And in case there’s anyone in your life who might be interested, here’s the link again to the Massive Science Consortium writing program. You can also share this post with them!
So the two short articles below are what I’ve been reading today. Last year (oof, maybe two years ago now????) I read Carl Zimmer’s She Has Her Mother’s Laugh about the process of understanding of the human genome through a bunch of real-life examples. It was both fascinating and a disturbing window into how genetics are used as a basis for institutional racism and ableism. The evolutionary aspect of genetics poses this problem when it’s time to extrapolate meaning from data; it can often be co-opted for sinister agendas.
Today, though, my interest in how genes work was piqued by two articles that focus on the shapeshifting characteristics of genes in one evolutionary generation.
The first piece is about how astronauts’ genes change when they travel to space. Since I’ve already covered the risks of exposure in space, it caught my eye right away. Anything that could be fodder for science fiction ideas is right up my alley these days (especially since this reminds me of all the near-future materials science in the Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy - highly recommend).
The second piece is how some types of fungi borrow genes to rewire their relationships with other species. After reading about the deep evolutionary ties between corn, beans, and squash in agriculture in Braiding Sweetgrass (I wrote a short ode to the book and its author, Robin Wall Kimmerer in August), this idea makes so much sense. There are extreme advantages to gain for plants if they can figure out a way to team up with others.
Even though it’s not something I wrote for you, please enjoy! Below are both articles in their entirety.
How does space travel affect astronaut’s chromosomes?
Astronaut study reveals new intricacies of spaceflight radiation’s stress on telomere length
Sree Rama Chaitanya, Molecular Biology, Instituto de Medicina Molecular
Astronauts go through intense stresses like microgravity, confinement, and space radiation during space travel. But the aftermath of space travel on astronauts’ health is not clear.
Building on the earlier NASA twin study, two studies report the impact of space travel on telomere DNA (or telomeres), the buffering sequences present at the end of our chromosomes.
Telomeres shorten with age, and shorter telomeres are associated with greater risk of disease. Our cells maintain the length of the telomeres with the help of an enzyme called telomerase. But every time cells duplicate, telomeres tend to get shorter, a sign of aging cells.
To understand the effects of space travel, the researchers report analyzed the DNA in blood and urine samples from 11 NASA astronauts, and compared them with age- and sex-matched controls on the ground before, during, and after spaceflight.
Overall, the radiological scientists observed shorter telomeres after astronauts returned to Earth. Surprisingly, they also observed increased telomere length in the samples collected during spaceflight. (This is a general trend, but individual variations exist.)
The team then tested if telomerase is responsible for increasing telomere length during space travel. But they figured that this wasn’t the case, as telomerase activity was not detected in the samples collected in space. However, they found signatures of an alternative pathway that cells deploy when telomerase is not available, called DNA damage responses. An increase in telomere length during space travel may not be considered as a good sign of longevity, at least for now, because continuous replenishment of telomeres is seen in immortal cells like cancer, stem, and germ-line cells.
Scientists observed persistent telomere DNA inversions during and after space travel. Inversions occur when DNA breaks and does not repair or reattach in the same way, leading to changes in DNA sequences.
Many factors like stress or radiation-induced DNA damage, diet, and sex of the individual can affect telomere length. Here, scientists were able to positively correlate telomere length with some biological factors like oxidative stress, inflammation, and radiation. But with a low sample number and lack of diversity, scientists state the inability to pinpoint the exact causes.
Understanding the ramifications of space travel on human health is pivotal both for astronauts and future space tourists before stepping into the unknown.
Fungi create genes to “win over” their plant friends and neighbors
The vast majority of plants depend on fungi for life, and fungi are always learning how to best befriend plants
Attabey Rodriguez Benitez, Science Friday and University of Michigan
The soil beneath our feet is like a noisy bar where getting the attention of your crush can be an impossible mission. Plants and fungi face similar problems hearing each other through all the “noise” in the soil. Good communication is not just important for their mutual survival, it can also have a profound impact on the food crops we rely on to eat.
About 80 percent of plants depend on a symbiotic relationship with fungi to stay alive. For example, fungi get sugars from plants, and fungi supply plants with soil minerals that are far away from their location.
Monocultures, where large fields have only one kind of plant like wheat, soybean, and corn can deplete soil nutrients. Using fungi could be a way for farmers to help their crops get more, but matching the fungi to a specific crop can be challenging: we need to know how they communicate using specific genes.
Researchers have found that fungi can gain genes for plant-attracting characteristics in multiple ways, including making them from scratch or borrow from other fungi.
After fungi exposure to the root, if plants express a specific gene at their root during symbiosis, it can suggest that might be important fungi communication, explains Yen-Wen (Denny) Wang, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of a recent study on fungi genes and plant relationships published in the Genome Biology and Evolution journal.
Mutualistic fungi, the type that partners with plants are constantly evolving and understanding how their genes for communication change over time can be quite tricky. Wang’s study pulled sequences from databases and compared them to figure out how fungi “learn” to talk to plants by making new genes from scratch or borrowing from other fungi.
During the study, Wang uncovered a gene in the Amanita fungi he was studying that was duplicated. This gene was responsible for degrading the cellulose from plants. They hypothesize this duplication might be used for substrate degradation. Other fungi that are harmful to plants like Pyrenophora tritici-repentis have duplicated genes that are virulent and harm wheat plants.
Another strategy Wang uncovered while tracking fungi genes was gene duplication, which is the equivalent to having a similar pick-up line twice in your repertoire. With this strategy, fungi can modify the duplicated gene leading to new functions and impressing plants in the way leading to perhaps forge a better relationship.
With three options to choose from, gene swap, gene duplication, and making new genes, how do fungi decide which will be their first move? Let’s crash a fungus and plant’s date.
Plants aren’t very romantic, they usually have their guard up for indications that their prospective fungi dates have ill-intentions and could make them sick.
In just one gram of soil, there are thousands of pathogenic and symbiotic organisms, explains Dr. Peter Pellitier, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford Biology & UC Santa Cruz Environmental Studies.
“You’re probably picking up thousands of different fungal species,” he says. “And so, the plant is trying to sort through, like who’s good, who’s bad.” Parsing through the bad and good actors in the soil is crucial for a plant’s survival.
“If the plants cannot recognize those pathogens, then the plants could go extinct,” says Wang. These pathogens can take advantage of plants to the extent they leave plants without nutrients and eventually killing them. If plants did not know how to sort through good and bad actors, it could lead to an epidemic and even the end of the species in extreme cases.
“It’s pretty interesting that this gene is actually from other fungi”
During their first “date” or encounter, some plants will send chemicals to their roots to drive off harmful organisms, like some fungi. But fungi have evolved counter-measures to plant defenses. Some fungi families have acquired a gene that codes for the enzyme deaminase, which transforms the defense chemicals into something less harmful to fungi and turns off the defense response. According to Wang’s study, friendly fungi could have gotten this gene strategy from harmful fungi, but contrary to them, fungi want a healthy relationship with plants.
“It’s pretty interesting that this gene is actually from other fungi,” says Wang. These fungi got the deaminase gene through horizontal gene transfer, which is when fungi exchange genes with one another, from a fungus that is not symbiotic, and repurposed it for friendly relationships. This dance of genes is what makes their relationship blossom, for their mutual benefit.
Knowing where these genes come from and how fungi employ them answer a fundamental evolutionary question in the field of biology and set the foundation for understanding fungi communication. In addition to these genes, fungi have “junk DNA” that most people thought wasn’t useful. However, Wang thinks otherwise ” I hypothesize that these genes are pretty important to the fungi, as well...they introduced very different kind of tools for the fungi.” Determining the evolutionary fundaments of fungi and how they communicate can be leveraged by other fields like agriculture to improve crop cultivation.
Happy weekend, friends! Back to regularly scheduled programming next time.