In this episode we speak with WWU Biologist Dr. Heather Fullerton about bacteria, tube worms, sewage, science cruises and cracks in the ocean floor. We also discuss bad movies and possible volcanic vents on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
Additional information: Enceladus is a moon of Saturn that has cryovolcanism
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[? Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ?]
? Neutron, proton, mass defect, lyrical oxidation, yo irrelevant
? Mass spectrograph, pure electron volt, atomic energy erupting
? As I get all open on betatron, gamma rays thermo cracking
? Cyclotron and any and every mic
? You’re on trans iridium, if you’re always uranium
? Molecules, spontaneous combustion, pow
? Law of de-fi-nite pro-por-tion, gain-ing weight
? I’m every element around
? Lead, gold, tin, iron, platinum, zinc, when I rap you think
? Iodine nitrate activate
? Red geranium, the only difference is I transmit sound
? Balance was unbalanced then you add a little talent in
? Careful, careful with those ingredients
? They could explode and blow up if you drop them
? And they hit the ground
(Dr. Regina) Welcome to Spark Science where we explore stories of human curiosity. I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff, I teach physics and astronomy at Western Washington University. I’m here with my company-host, my tallest friend, Jordan Baker.
(Jordan) Um, hello. I have no credentials other than tallest friend.
(Dr. Regina) You earned that.
(Jordan) Yeah. I earned that. There’s a lot of hormones in milk that I drank as a young child.
(Dr. Regina) We we’re from Lynden so we got it.
(Jordan) We were force fed milk by the gallons.
(Dr. Regina) With tubes.
(Jordan) Yeah, yeah, exactly.
(Dr. Regina) At school! So, we actually, this is a total aside, remember in middle school we were like, right, our middle school was right in front of the Darigold and it stunk like rotten milk, like all the time.
(Jordan) That’s how you knew you grew up in Lyndon.
(Dr. Regina) You do improv at the upfront theater. Are you doing that tonight?
(Jordan) I probably am.
(Dr. Regina) Probably?
(Jordan) It’s Thursday night so I can drop in if I want to.
(Dr. Regina) You should because, um, Jake and I are actually going to visit you tonight. Our listeners, listen to this, this will have happened in the past when we’ve aired this show but I will finally go watch Jordan Baker be an entertainer on the stage. I’m going to do it tonight so you better go.
(Jordan) Does that mean that I have to go to one of your classes?
(Dr. Regina) No.
(Jordan) OK.
(Dr. Regina) You should though, but, you could be one of my demo guys.
(Jordan) Sure.
(Dr. Regina) OK. Alright, well, I’m super excited about today’s show. We have somebody else from Western Washington University and I’m going to let Jordan introduce her.
(Jordan) This is Dr. Heather Fullerton. We will be talking about bacteria and volcanic vents. I’m not sure how the two intersect.
(Dr. Regina) She’s a post-doctoral research associate in the biology department at Western Washington University. Welcome thank you for coming. Talk to us Dr. Heather. Does anyone call you that?
(Dr. Fullerton) No. [Laughing.] No one calls me Dr. Fullerton either.
(Dr. Regina) Well. I’ll call you Dr. Fullerton.
(Dr. Fullerton) No, that’s word.
(Jordan) Just call her Dr. Heather.
(Dr. Regina) That sounds cool. Um, growing up I never knew what the heck a postdoc was. Jordan do you know what a postdoc is?
(Jordan) A postdoc.
(Dr. Regina) A postdoc or a post-doctoral research assistant?
(Jordan) Uh, oh, just the postdoc sounds like a surgical, like a person who does sutures and stuff. [Laughing]
(Dr. Fullerton) I know pretty much nothing about human physiology. So, not doing that. It means I got a PhD and I’m not yet a professor. I’m in the neither region between having a real job and not being in school any more.
(Dr. Regina) Tell us a little bit about yourself. We are going to talk about bacteria in volcanic vents but how did you get into this, where did you get your doctorate degree? How did you end up at Western?
(Dr. Fullerton) So, I guess it actually started in high school. I took a microbiology class and we went around and swapped places around the school and streaked that out on media plates and looked at what grew after a day. I was like, “Oh my god, there’s all this stuff around me and I can’t see any of it.” I was super excited and . . .
(Dr. Regina) What was the dirtiest place in your high school?
(Dr. Fullerton) I think it was the benches where everyone would sit and eat lunch. The bathrooms were actually really clean because those got cleaned every day.
(Dr. Regina) I have seen a fair amount of kid shows that do this. My daughter witches something called Ruff Ruffman. The dirtiest place was the phone. You know the landline phone. That was the dirtiest.
(Dr. Fullerton) What about cell phones?
(Dr. Regina) It was like an older show. [Laughing.]
(Jordan) They weren’t invented yet. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Regina) Or like, just didn’t do that. It was like an actual lab or something that they were looking at.
(Jordan) I’ve heard cell phones are the grossest places around.
(Dr. Fullerton) Because we take them everywhere, in the bathroom, etc.
(Jordan) Oh Gross! Who takes it, I do. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Regina) Everyone does.
(Dr. Fullerton) So high school, that was in Kirkland.
(Dr. Regina) Oh you’re a Washingtonian. Cool.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah. UW has a microbiology major and I was like, I’m going to do that. I did that and my senior year I was like, OK, what do I do now. I was working in a research lab at UW studying mouse muscle biology, so totally different. I thought, I’m going to apply to grad school because I don’t know what to do now. A couple of my professors were like, “You should totally apply to grad school, you should think about going to an Ivy League school, go over to the east coast, get something different.” I was like, “OK.” [Laughing.] So I went to Cornell. The more I thought about it, deciding what I wanted to do for grad school, I was like, really excited about microbial metabolism.
It goes back to the, you know, my micro labs at UW we went around and isolated microbes from all sorts of different environments, I was like, this is absolutely crazy that there are all of these microbes everywhere, they’re living off of all sorts of different things, what else is out there? What are they doing? How are they making a living? That’s what I did at grad school.
I had a couple different organisms that I studied and they degraded toxic organic compounds. So, things that cause cancer in humans and that are, one of them is super prevalent, trichloroethylene, which is two carbon molecules double bonded together with three chlorine molecules on them.
(Dr. Regina) I’m trying to visualize that. I’m bad at chemistry. [Laughing.] As in I didn’t take it. I’m a terrible scientist in that way.
(Dr. Fullerton) It’s a really common molecule. It’s a really heavy molecule and it’s used a lot in industrial processes.
(Dr. Regina) Did you do that at Cornell, or did you do that at University of Washington as well?
(Dr. Fullerton) This is all Cornell so, I mean, I had a lot of lab experience. I started working in a lab my freshman year at UW.
(Dr. Regina) That’s very lucky of you. It’s such a huge school. It’s hard to get in to do research.
(Dr. Fullerton) I was just really excited to get experience and work in a lab. I worked in a couple of different labs and none of them had anything to do with my career now. That’s why I was able to get into the lab, because I wasn’t picky about what I was going to work on.
(Dr. Regina) That’s a lesson too for any of our listeners that want to be a scientist. Wherever you end up, however you get there, sometimes we need to be less picky.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah. So mostly, I chose the labs I worked in. They had advertisements out. I thought, “Sweet, I’ll make $7 an hour to wash lab ware.”
(Dr. Regina) Right, right.
(Dr. Fullerton) But it got my foot in the door. It was like, “There’s no dirty dishes. Do you want to learn how to set up this very standard biological reaction right now?” Yes I do! Yes I do want to learn how to do that.
(Dr. Regina) Wow.
(Dr. Fullerton) So, I learned a lot of basic biology techniques while getting paid to do it. That was awesome.
(Dr. Regina) So, after Cornell, you graduated with your PhD in 2012, you told me this I’m not just psychic. Then you applied for this thing called the postdoc, which a lot of people do after they get a PhD. You decided to come here to Western. Did you want to come back here to the Northwest?
(Dr. Fullerton) Yes. So, I mean, you live other places, you realize how awesome the Northwest is.
(Dr. Regina) For our listeners in Italy, we have like, four. [Laughing.]
(Jordan) Come check us out.
(Dr. Fullerton) It was great, my families here, they’re all in Kirkland in Seattle so it’s an easy drive to see them rather than an all-day flight.
(Jordan) They’re just far enough away.
(Dr. Regina) In Kirkland, I agree. [Laughing.] So in this research you were saying that bacteria decomposed, I’m using your words here, it was waste right? You said ground water, or maybe you didn’t say but that’s what you mean. So you’re doing that here at Western?
(Dr. Fullerton) No that was my graduate research, was with the trichloroethylene degradation. Now it’s the volcanic vents.
(Dr. Regina) Oh that’s right.
(Dr. Fullerton) Way sexier. [Laughing.]
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take me back to Wondaland
? Me thinks she left her underpants
(Dr. Regina) If you’re just joining us this is Spark Science, I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff.
(Jordan) And I’m Jordan Baker. Today we’re joined by Dr. Heather Fullerton, microbiologist.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? The grass grows inside
? The music floats you gently on your toes
? Touch the nose, he’ll change your clothes to tuxedos
? Don’t freak and hide
? I’ll be your secret santa, do you mind?
(Dr. Regina) How do you do that? That’s a personal question I want to know. How do you go from, they’re both interesting, going from decomposing waste in ground water to volcanic vents? What’s the progression and how did you get a postdoc doing that? They seem very different although they both deal with water.
(Dr. Fullerton) A lot of the techniques for the environmental microbiology stuff, the techniques are the same. You’ll go out into the environment and get some wastewater or volcanic sludge, whatever it is, and put it in a test tube, extract its DNA or try to get something to grow. The process is the same. Just different organisms are doing it. So, the tools are still the same.
(Dr. Regina) What is the craziest stories you have about bacteria decomposing waste or eating waste?
(Jordan) It’s going to get crazy.
(Dr. Fullerton) It was kind of gross, one of the bacteria, bacteria and bacterium . . .
(Dr. Regina) Tell us the difference.
(Dr. Fullerton) Bacteria is a single bacteria or a singular organism. There is never just one bacterium. This one bacteria that I worked with. That sounds weird.
(Dr. Regina) That’s OK, English is not our specialty.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah, we’re scientists, right? [Laughing.] It had to grow with waste water extract. We had to go to the Ithaca waste water plant and get waste water.
(Dr. Regina) Fun.
(Dr. Fullerton) Which is awesome and disgusting. Like, the waste water processing is all done by bacteria for the most part.
(Dr. Regina) What kind of bacteria? Bacterium? Bacteria?
(Dr. Fullerton) Bacteria. There’s lots of them. So there are aerobic treatment which is done by air microbes to break down the big stuff but not the big, big stuff which is filtered out. [Laughing.]
(Jordan) I love this skirting around the issue. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Regina) Our radio listeners are not seeing her face. She’s like big stuff! [Laughing.] We all know what she’s talking about. The solids.
(Dr. Fullerton) That’s actually how they talk about it. We’d have to go to the waste water treatment plant and get waste water treatment sludge.
(Dr. Regina) How did you get it?
(Dr. Fullerton) There’s these . . .
(Jordan) Tell me it’s a ladle. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fullerton) No, it’s not a kitchen ladle. We would go and there’s these big vats and they’re sealed. This is the anaerobic digester. It’s for more solids and has more retention time.
(Dr. Regina) Give us is definition of anaerobic for our listeners.
(Dr. Fullerton) Oh, no oxygen. So the organisms that I worked with in grad school all died in the presence of oxygen.
(Dr. Regina) Wow.
(Dr. Fullerton) Which made working with them really difficult.
(Dr. Regina) Yeah. You being an oxygen breather.
(Dr. Fullerton) Right and them dying in the presence of oxygen, so, when I was working with them we had an indicator media that would turn pink if they got exposed to oxygen. I’d pull out, you know a month long experiment that I was doing and half of my bottles were pink and it’d have to start all over again.
(Dr. Regina) That’s so frustrating.
(Jordan) That’s a bummer.
(Dr. Fullerton) Anyway, so we’d pull out, the anaerobic chamber had a nozzle on the side. You would put a container underneath the nozzle and collect it. Then I’d take it back to the lab and filter it up and then I’d have to pour it back down the drain to go back to the waste water treatment plant.
(Dr. Regina) Oh wow. You’re like, “You’re returning to your home now, good luck.”
(Jordan) Did you have to distill it a little bit, get some of the water out so it was more solid?
(Dr. Fullerton) No, [laughing] we actually filtered out the particulates. The bits.
(Jordan) [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah, it smelled, not good. It’s also flammable. The wastewater treatment plant in Ithaca generated a lot of their energy by burning the methane that was produced in these giant tanks.
(Dr. Regina) You were telling me also, we had met earlier and you were telling me about, the house and the apartment you were living in in Ithaca and how that related to your research.
(Dr. Fullerton) It was actually, totally random, moving across the country, I looked on Craig’s List to see who wanted roommates. There was another grad student who was in the chemistry department and she had a spare room. I was like, “Hey I’m moving from Seattle, can I live with you?” She was like, “Yeah, cool, come on over.” And, ah, there was this old electricity generator, like plant, electric whatever they’re called.
(Dr. Regina) Electric plant?
(Dr. Fullerton) Electric plant? Sure. But they had these barrels of trichloroethylene that they would use in whatever kind of process that they used.
(Dr. Regina) What other things is that chemical called?
(Dr. Fullerton) It’s used actually a lot in dry-cleaning, but so, somehow these barrels they had got knocked over and they had this huge spill. The generator at that plant is no longer in use but they contaminated all of the houses down the hill. They had to send out these people to come and check basements. Our basements was contaminated. The people that came and tested the air quality were really concerned when they heard what I worked with when I’d bring home samples from work.
(Dr. Regina) Wow, well, you’re like, “Well I have one in my pocket here . . .”
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah, I sleep with it.
(Jordan) I have this jar of [laughing.]
(Dr. Regina) From the waste water treatment plant. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fullerton) They’re like, “Do you leave your lab coat at work?” I’m like, “Do I wear a lab coat?”
(Dr. Regina) Yeah. I leave all five of them at work.
(Dr. Fullerton) I wear them all at once.
(Dr. Regina) [Laughing] yeah.
(Dr. Fullerton) Uh…
(Dr. Regina) I don’t have to wash them. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fullerton) But, anyway, our basement was contaminated so they put in a radon aerator they suck the air from the basement to above the house because the solution to pollution is dilution.
(Dr. Regina) Right. Is that a song?
(Dr. Fullerton) It’s kind of what environmental engineers say.
(Dr. Regina) Really? Wow.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah, because you’re allowed to be exposed to things in really small quantities.
(Dr. Regina) Wow, that’s sort of scary.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah, but it’s also not like I hung out in my basement. It was a creepy old basement, like half finished.
(Dr. Regina) Did you get to play D&D down there?
(Dr. Fullerton) No. [Laughing.] There are so many spiders! So many spiders.
(Dr. Regina) So, you’re like, “I’m not worried about the contamination, it’s the spiders, that’s what got me.”
(Dr. Fullerton) Yep.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? The grass grows inside
? The music floats you gently on your toes
? Touch the nose, he’ll change your clothes to tuxedos
? Don’t freak and hide
? I’ll be your secret santa, do you mind?
(Jordan) If you’re just joining us this is Spark Science, I’m Jordan Baker.
(Dr. Regina) And I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff. Today we are joined by Dr. Heather Fullerton who studies bacterias.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? Dance in the trees
? Paint mysteries
? The magnificent droid plays there
? Your magic mind
? Makes love to mine
? I think I’m in love, angel
(Dr. Fullerton) You’re poop is about 25% bacteria by weight.
(Dr. Regina) [Laughing] And I just giggled.
(Jordan) So by weight, if I was to weigh my stool samples, 25% of it would be bacteria.
(Dr. Fullerton) That’s a rough estimate.
(Dr. Regina) That’s huge though!
(Dr. Fullerton) Actually, lots of research right now going on in microbiology with poo with the microbiome project. All of the stuff you hear about diets effecting moods and stuff, that’s all tracked through people’s poo.
(Dr. Regina) So, tell me more about this project actually. [Laughing.]
(Jordan) [Laughing.]
(Dr. Regina) I know there’s, um, citizen science projects. Is it one of those?
(Dr. Fullerton) It depends on what project they’re doing. It’s a huge project funded by the NIH.
(Dr. Regina) For our listeners, the NIH is the National Institute of Health. They’re the big founders of anything to do with human disease, right? They’ll give you money. They’re trying to figure out if there’s anything to do with food and mood.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah, food, mood, and systematic disease. Crohn’s disease is one that is being studied. Arthritis, schizophrenia, depression, acne, everything that you could think of, there’s probably been a study to see how it relates to poo. Diabetes is a huge one. They have all these mouse models that they use to study these.
(Jordan) Little mice in bikinis.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Regina) My god, it took me a while. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fullerton) They grow up mice without any bacteria and then they give them bacteria to see how they react and different ratios of different types of bacteria to see if they can develop diabetes in a different way or not because we eat food, it gets digested, but most of the digestion happens by bacteria in our guts, not by our human cells doing things.
(Dr. Regina) Right. That’s so fascinating.
(Jordan) I just learned a little bit about this last night in my last birthing class. They were talking about the microbiome or whatever.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yes.
(Dr. Regina) I did not pay attention in my birthing class. Go ahead.
(Jordan) They were saying to like get a blanket from home to swaddle the kid in when you first get there, not the one from the hospital. Don’t let people touch it in the first couple of hours because they want to put bacteria into your child which, in the stomach and in the system and stuff, they could be effected.
(Dr. Fullerton) Your kid is sterile before its born.
(Dr. Regina) Not reproductively sterile but, you know, yeah.
(Dr. Fullerton) Bacterially. The placenta is a pretty good filter to keep everything out. The mother’s blood and everything is clean and it’s a good environment. But, as soon as the baby comes out into the open, like I said, there’s bacteria in the air, there’s bacteria everywhere it gets colonized by all these bacteria. Depending on how the child is born, either C-section or vaginally, the microbiome of the newborn is going to be different.
(Dr. Regina) How drastic is that difference for the bacteria.
(Dr. Fullerton) The vaginal birth, the child is going to be covered by bacteria from the vagina. If it’s C-section, it’s going to be like, skin type bacteria regular adults have. Looking at the microbiome like we’ve been doing is a really new science.
(Dr. Regina) Wow. How new is it? I don’t remember that word and I gave birth, um, almost 7 years ago.
(Dr. Fullerton) I think the first time I started seeing stuff researched about the human microbiome project was like, 2009, 2008.
(Dr. Regina) I did just miss it. Oh wow.
(Dr. Fullerton) It was pretty hot when it first came out. It still gets a lot of funding and importance. There’s a whole NIH center for the microbiome project.
(Dr. Regina) You know so much more than me, Jordan.
(Jordan) Speaking of things coming out of holes, the volcanic vents, I was still trying to relate that to bacteria.
(Dr. Regina) Yeah, tell us about the bacteria that you study now that are not like the ones in the groundwater. How are they different? How do they relate to volcanic vents?
(Dr. Fullerton) They’re pretty much the same in that they’re bacteria.
(Dr. Regina) Excellent.
(Dr. Fullerton) That’s about it. [Laughing.]
(Jordan) Well I guess we’re done here. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Regina) The end. [Claps hands.] Microbial metabolisms, how do they live? Where do they live? What are they doing? How do they make a living, that’s what you said?
(Dr. Fullerton) How do they make a living?
(Dr. Regina) I loved that line.
(Dr. Fullerton) The tectonic plates that you talked about with volcanoes, I heard that show.
(Dr. Regina) So Heather is one of our listeners now. She listened to our volcano show, yeah, Dr. Caplan-Auerbach, she was talking about these volcanoes under water. So, you deal with cracks in the sea floor that are volcanic vents.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah. Same thing. Kind of. When it’s exploding and there’s lava flows and stuff, that’s pretty exciting and there’s not going to be bacteria there because its a little too hot. But, the ocean’s crust is the largest aquifer. Whenever there’s the magma that comes up close, the water comes by it and gets super-heated and finds these cracks and comes up through the cracks. It has to expel like Yellowstone but, these are kind of constant trickling of water. So, there’s a couple different places I go, one is Lo’ihi mount off the coast of the main land of Hawaii. It’s going to be the next Hawaiian island in like, 100 thousand years, so, right around the corner.
(Jordan) I’ll book my vacation.
(Dr. Fullerton) Totally. It erupted, its last eruption was in 1996 and it formed, so all these vents, all these cracks. The magma chamber is still there and the water is trickling back by it. So, water is still going to get heated even though it’s not erupting. So, these vents have calmed down since then and they’re a little cooler. I went there in 2013 and the hottest temperature we recorded was about 50 degrees Celsius.
(Jordan) So like 112 Fahrenheit? What’s the conversion on that?
(Dr. Fullerton) 37 Celsius is body temp.
(Dr. Regina) So that’s 70, sorry no, that’s 98.8. So 70 is like 20 something Celsius.
(Jordan) You scientists and your metric.
(Dr. Regina) I don’t know what exactly 50 Celsius is.
(Dr. Fullerton) Like 120.
(Dr. Regina) OK, so you were close.
(Jordan) I was close.
(Dr. Regina) You’re pretty good.
(Jordan) I live next to Canada.
(Dr. Regina) When I was growing up I remember seeing these underwater volcanoes. You were talking about how some of those get really, really hot, like up to 300 degrees Celsius.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah, 300 + depends on geology and how it’s going to happen. The Mid Atlantic Ridge is where some of those hotter vents are. You have these black smokers. They’re these giant chimneys that are spewing black smoke at the bottom of the ocean.
(Dr. Regina) They were really cool in the 90s. I remember because they were huge!
(Dr. Fullerton) They we’re discovered until 1977, was when people first went there. There is these giant animals that live there too which are called giant tubeworms.
(Dr. Regina) How giant are these tubeworms? I love these things.
(Jordan) Is this like Tremors?
(Dr. Fullerton) No. [Laughing.]
(Jordan) OK, they’re not that huge.
(Dr. Fullerton) Like three meters tall.
(Jordan) If it was like standing up?
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah, like those are the biggest ones.
(Jordan) Like long? Or that’s how fat they are?
(Dr. Fullerton) That’s how long they are.
(Dr. Regina) But that’s terrifying though. Three meters for a tube worm, by these volcanic tubes, oh my.
(Dr. Fullerton) I’ve never seen them before.
(Jordan) What’s the diameter?
(Dr. Fullerton) Not very big actually. They’re tall and skinny. Actually there’s another species that’s short and fat.
(Dr. Regina) Yeah. I think I’ve seen pictures of those.
(Dr. Fullerton) The short and fat ones live actually off the coast of Washington.
(Dr. Regina) Oh wow! Here in Washington State, yes.
(Jordan) Not Washington DC.
(Dr. Regina) I know. I’m just assuming there are listeners that don’t live in Washington State even though 90% of our listeners are in Washington State.
(Dr. Fullerton) The volcano Axial I think, is right off the coast between Washington and Oregon. It has a cabled observatory. We can constantly monitor how it’s tremoring. Not because of the tremors.
(Dr. Regina) I love how this is totally linking to our other show. So, you were saying, where you look in Hawaii, are these cooler vents. They don’t have tubeworms.
(Dr. Fullerton) They don’t, no.
(Jordan) The Fonz vents. The super cool.
(Dr. Regina) No one’s going to get that.
(Dr. Fullerton) We did see a shark.
(Dr. Regina) Really?
(Jordan) What kind?
(Dr. Fullerton) A Six Gill. It was but 1500 meters depth. So those sharks are known for being down real deep. It was really interested in part of the ROV, so the remotely operated vehicle that we use. This stuff is too deep in the water to scuba dive to. So we have to use these remotely operated vehicles. So you asked me, how did I transition? Well I saw an advert for, like, study volcanic vents. I was like, “Yeah, done.” [Laughing.]
(Jordan) Do you get to use a little control thing underneath the waters?
(Dr. Fullerton) We actually do have an X-box controller in the control van for the ROV.
(Jordan) I don’t play video games but I imagine that is awesome. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Regina) You were saying that the ROV you use is the same one that found the Titanic? We were just talking about that.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah. It’s constantly in use. You have to book time way in advance to use it to get to take it out. It’s operated by the Woods Hall Ultrasonographic Institute, Or WHUI. I don’t know. I just like that word. They have a bunch of other ROVs that they operate too. But everyone wants AVs. It depends on what you’re doing. You’re limited by how much science you can get done because of how much bottom time you have.
(Dr. Regina) The bottom of the ocean. [Laughing.]
(Jordan) [Laughing]
(Dr. Regina) This is the worst episode ever. Well, OK, so absolutely, let’s go back to your bacteria. You were saying no tubeworms but what are the things that, or the entities that you are looking at?
(Dr. Fullerton) It’s really cool at WHUI, there are a lot of these different vents and there’s different bacterial mats or microbial mat which is something a lot of people don’t know what that means.
(Dr. Regina) No. It sounds terrifying.
(Dr. Fullerton) Your organic apple cider vinegar, you know how it has that stuff in it? That would be like a bacterial mat kind of. Or like, your kombucha mother.
(Dr. Regina) Oh my god kombucha.
(Jordan) Like the yeast at like the bottom?
(Dr. Fullerton) Like the leathery little bit. The bacterial mat actually has a very distinct 3D structure for how the bacteria grow and interact. At the top of the mat you will have different bacteria than at the bottom of the mat because the chemistry is going to be different.
(Dr. Regina) Even though this is bacteria, you can still see it with your naked eye, it’s that big, the mat is?
(Dr. Fullerton) The mat is that big. At Lo’ihi you have very distinct mat morphologies which is really cool. My favorite ones, you can call them vails, it’s this very delicate fluffy white, orange-y material, like a vail. It kind of like, waves in the wind of the wind of the shimmering water, the hot water that’s coming out of the vents. You can, so Jason, the ROV, one of the apparatus we use is um, a suction sampler. It’s a vacuum hose that’s attached to the robot. You just suck up the sea floor.
(Dr. Regina) You’re vacuuming the sea floor.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yes.
(Jordan) Well it’s dirty. Someone’s got to clean it.
(Dr. Regina) Yeah, it’s full of bacteria.
(Dr. Fullerton) This vail material just peels off. It’s interwoven and connected so if you don’t get the whole piece there’s this wave-y vail. It’s really pretty.
(Dr. Regina) What kind of damage does that do though? Once you take that away, what are you effecting?
(Dr. Fullerton) We did an experiment where we mowed down an entire vent field.
(Jordan) So violent!
(Dr. Regina) We just mowed it down to see what would happen.
(Jordan) I’m picturing machine guns like [makes an automatic machine gun sound]
(Dr. Fullerton) You were talking about how you have to go out and poke things with a stick so that’s what we did. See how hard this rock is. Does it fall over? No, so it’s a real rock. Not just a crusty bacterial mat. So we cleared off this area and put down a marker which was a PVC pipe square around where we mowed it down. Whoever we get money to go back, we’ll go back and see how much it grew.
(Dr. Regina) OK. Compared to another sample, like a test site, you know, that didn’t get mowed down?
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah, we can do in situ colonization experiments where we’ll put down some sort of surface for bacteria to cling onto and grow. So, then we’ll get those back after time like one day, two days, three days depending on how good the weather is and how far away we move from those sites.
At Lo’ihi it’s really nice because it’s just one smallish area and the weather is usually pretty good.
(Dr. Regina) And you guys are on a boat that’s like our there for days, right?
(Dr. Fullerton) Yes. For that cruise, we were out . . .
(Dr. Regina) Yeah, you call them scientific cruises which I find adorable.
(Dr. Fullerton) It’s not like Princess Cruise Line though.
(Jordan) It’s not all inclusive?
(Dr. Fullerton) There’s no alcohol allowed. And there’s no sauna or swimming pool.
(Jordan) Why would you call it a cruise?
(Dr. Regina) It’s on a boat.
(Dr. Fullerton) It’s on a boat. It’s on a big boat. Its 274 feet long.
(Jordan) But there’s no pool.
(Dr. Fullerton) No.
(Dr. Regina) There’s something called the ocean that they can go in.
(Dr. Fullerton) No, we can’t.
(Dr. Regina) Oh that’s right because you don’t want to contaminate.
(Dr. Fullerton) Well you don’t want to, you can’t really get back up.
(Dr. Regina) Oh yeah.
(Jordan) Somebody’s gotta have a rope ladder or something?
(Dr. Fullerton) Probably but there’s also, you know, very powerful motors on these boats.
(Dr. Regina) Oh my god that’s terrifying.
(Dr. Fullerton) So, you don’t go off the boat. You don’t get to go swimming in the ocean. That cruise was 18 days long. Which isn’t that long.
(Dr. Regina) It’s not a three hour tour.
(Dr. Fullerton) No. But we could see the big island of Hawaii most of the time.
(Dr. Regina) You could see it from afar.
(Dr. Fullerton) We were pretty far away. On clear days when the haze was low we could see it.
(Jordan) You’d go up into the crow’s nest and say, “Land ho!”
(Dr. Fullerton) We weren’t allowed to go up into the crow’s nest.
(Jordan) Jeeze!
(Dr. Fullerton) But we could go up to the bridge if we asked first.
(Jordan) This is the worst cruise.
(Dr. Regina) You had to ask permission.
(Dr. Fullerton) It’s to keep us all safe.
(Dr. Regina) Right. I mean, that is important.
(Dr. Fullerton) Its government funded research. We’re not going out there to have a good time. I’m trying to be responsible.
(Jordan) Fine.
(Dr. Fullerton) It’s your tax money.
(Dr. Regina) Our listeners have actually brought this up. Some politicians like to portray government money as these scientists are going off and their buying these sports cars, and they’re like living up the life, but really, we’re not, right?
(Jordan) What sports car do you have?
(Dr. Fullerton) I have a Fiat?
(Jordan) Oh yeah, that’s sporty.
(Dr. Fullerton) And a bike. [Laughing.]
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? Early late at night
? I wander off into a land
? You can go, but you mustn’t tell a soul
? There’s a world inside
? Where dreamers meet each other
? Once you go, it’s hard to come back
? Let me paint your canvas as you dance
(Jordan) Welcome back. If you’re just joining us this is Jordan Baker. We’re talking about life at volcanic vents.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? Dance in the trees
? Paint mysteries
? The magnificent droid plays there
? Your magic mind
? Makes love to mine
? I think I’m in love, angel
(Dr. Regina) Let’s get back to volcanic vents. We were talking about the black and white smokers and these really, really hot . . .
(Dr. Fullerton) So there’s been lots of TV shows like NOVA and specials on these black smokers and the tubeworms because the tubeworms are super interesting. When they were first discovered people were like, “This is where life began, look at these animals, they’re so primitive.” So we’ve started looking at them more and . . .
(Jordan) What have you discovered?
(Dr. Regina) There animals like us in a way. They have a stomach but they don’t have a mouth or an anus.
(Jordan) How do they consume? How do they eat? How do they live?
(Dr. Fullerton) How do they make a living? Their stomach is called a trophosome. It’s full of bacteria. The bacteria, they have the big plumes, the red plumes, that brings in the chemicals that are released from the black smokers down to the bacteria. Bacteria transform that into energy and stuff and give that back to the tube worm. So the tube worm is growing off these bacteria that are in their gut.
(Dr. Regina) Oh wow.
(Dr. Fullerton) They’re animals but there kind of like plants in a way because they’re chemosynthetic. These vents, very deep, very dark, we eat plants or we eat animals that eat plants. All of our energy comes from the sun ultimately.
(Dr. Regina) Right.
(Dr. Fullerton) But when you’re living in an area where there is no sunlight, where do you get energy? You get it from the chemical energy that is released from the core of our earth.
(Dr. Regina) Wow. It’s so amazing. So you were talking about in these cooler areas where you did research, they’re not black and white smokers, they’re more red and orange for some reason.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah. So, they’re cooler so the chemistry is different. These are really iron dominated systems. The black and white smokers are more sulfur dominated. These iron vents, they’re going to be red and orange because that’s the color of rust. When it comes out of the crust, it’s soluble iron, and then as the bacterium metabolizes it, it turns into rust. My bacteria poop rust.
(Dr. Regina) So they eat oxygen and poop rust?
(Dr. Fullerton) Yes.
(Dr. Regina) Wow. That’s so awesome.
(Jordan) Hard core.
(Dr. Fullerton) The energy is a lot different. There’s not a lot of energy that can be made from that process. Not like the sulfur vents, the white and black smokers. So there’s not as much macrofauna, so big animals. There are some shrimps and some fish.
(Dr. Regina) That are all the way down there by those vents?
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah. So that’s at Lo’ihi, but at the Mariana Arc, I went there in 2014 from Thanksgiving to Christmas. I missed both holidays.
(Dr. Regina) On your fancy cruise with restrictions.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah. It was off the coast of Guam, super-hot, everything was decorated with snowmen and palm trees, I was like, “What?” [Laughing.]
(Dr. Regina) It’s festive.
(Dr. Fullerton) You also have to wear pants and shoes because you’re working in a lab.
(Dr. Regina) Right.
(Dr. Fullerton) It was super-hot and sweaty. There are all sorts of different types of vents along the Mariana Arc, which is right next to the Mariana Trench. We actually went over and floated over the Mariana Trench you know, to avoid a typhoon.
(Jordan) That’s all.
(Dr. Fullerton) No big deal.
(Dr. Regina) When people say scientists lives aren’t exciting, that sounds very exciting.
(Dr. Fullerton) Do you like getting seasick?
(Dr. Regina) No I don’t. But I get seasick a lot.
(Dr. Fullerton) I did too.
(Jordan) [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fullerton) That was a really hard cruise because the weather wasn’t cooperating. If the weather is bad, they’re not going to put the robot in the water because you don’t want to lose an 8 million dollar robot on the bottom of the ocean where no other robot can get it. Its very analgous to space, which I’m going to bring us back to eventually, where going to get there, because this is all applicable, is that right? Applicable?
(Jordan) Applicable.
(Dr. Regina) What’s wrong with me today? With exobiology and NASA grants and talking about Europa and Enceladus we’ll come back to that. Go ahead. So you’re doing this research and you’re looking at these other bacteria.
(Dr. Fullerton) The Mariana, it’s all the same hydrothermal system. They’re all on the same crack on the tectonic plate basically. But, each seamount, each volcano is a little bit different. Which is a little weird. There is one where half of the volcano is white and sulfur-y and then the other half of it is orange and irony. On this seamount, there are tons of muscles. The muscles again have Enceladus that are feeding them off of the chemicals in the vents. One of the cool things about this place too, is that the pressure is so great, and there’s so much carbon dioxide that there are liquid CO2 bubbles coming out of the crust.
(Dr. Regina) That’s so crazy.
(Dr. Fullerton) It makes a really interesting study because muscle shells are calcium carbonate which dissolve in acidic waters. But you have liquid CO2. So you have these very acidic waters and these muscles that are living right next to it. They’re totally cool. They’ve totally adapted to that environment.
(Dr. Regina) Are they edible?
(Dr. Fullerton) Um, no. They stink.
(Jordan) Why would you want to?
(Dr. Regina) I don’t know, it’s hard, my brain goes straight there. Of course they’d be gross.
(Dr. Fullerton) They’re pretty big, they’re like as big as a mango, a small mango.
(Dr. Regina) That’s huge. And then they’re just like littered?
(Dr. Fullerton) They’re everywhere. There’s tons of them. So, Jason, Jason’s the robot.
(Dr. Regina) Right, the ROV. We keep saying Jason but we mean the ROV, the remote operated vehicle.
(Dr. Fullerton) One of my colleges on this cruise was actually named Jason so it made it confusing for him. He’s like, “I’m not a Robot!”
(Dr. Regina) He had an identity crisis. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fullerton) Probably. But we gave Jason, the robot, a net. He went down and was scooping up muscles. Filling up the net, putting them in a basket, scooping them up, filling this basket. He got like 50+ muscles from four scoops with his net.
(Dr. Regina) How do you deal with the pressure difference when bringing objects up?
(Dr. Fullerton) Oh they die.
(Dr. Regina) The end.
(Jordan) [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fullerton) The bacteria don’t actually care. Bacteria are tiny and um, water is pretty much incompressible. So the pressure deference between the bottoms of the ocean at 1500 meters versus land, it’s that much. There are bacteria that are called piezophile, which means pressure-loving bacteria. They only grow in a pressure chamber.
(Dr. Regina) Wow. That’s what I was saying, you have this liquid that was at, you know, some pressure that’s higher down there, then you bring it up to the surface . . .
(Dr. Fullerton) Everything is, that we collect, is open.
(Dr. Regina) I got it. Oh, OK good.
(Dr. Fullerton) We’re not like, sealing it tight . . .
(Dr. Regina) It doesn’t burst when it gets . . .
(Dr. Fullerton) There is pressure valves and then the robot is picked with oil so that it doesn’t comprises and die. Pressure is a huge difference. It’s really hard on the robot. That’s why everything that’s on the robot is pressure rated to certain depth, which is a greater depth than it can actually go. For safety.
(Dr. Regina) I want to take this moment then, because we’re talking about pressures, in our previous discussion we were talking about how much I love Europa and I love of course space, our listeners know this, but a lot of this bacteria stuff and volcanic vents, it’s all been in the literature and discussion of talking about Europa and Enceladus and all these other moons of these other planets that have water. They could possibly have these volcanic vents at the bottom of, you know their oceans. Therefore they might be able to have bacteria and organisms. You were saying, yeah, they totally could but the pressures would be totally different.
(Dr. Fullerton) Those organisms, if they’re there, their evolutionary pressures, not atmospheric pressure but the growth pressure, is going to be completely different than anything on Earth. But, there will be similar constraints like carbon we would expect to be a major player in all like and water. If there’s a water rock interface that’s going to be that. Or ice water interface. That’s going to be a place where life could form. These moons of Jupiter have large gravitational pulls on them from Jupiter. Their core is probably liquid too. They could have vents the same way earth has vents.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
(Jordan) If you’re just joining us, this is Jordan Baker. Today we’re talking about life at volcanic vents.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? This is your land
? This is my land
? We belong here
? Stay the night
? I am so inspired
? You touched my wires
? My supernova shining bright
?Halleluja Halleluja Halleluja
(Dr. Regina) Scientists have found volcanic activity in Enceladus right? What did you call them? The chryovolcano? Chriovolcenism, yeah. And then there was a Titan right has it? And Europa, I mean, we haven’t seen any plumes yet but we see the cracking of the ice of Europa. Jordan, do you know anything of what I’m talking about here?
(Jordan) I have no idea what we’re talking about other than it’s a couple of moons from Saturn? Jupiter, sorry.
(Dr. Regina) Titan is Saturn, so you’re right.
(Jordan) Titan is Saturn?
(Dr. Regina) Well, Titan is a moon from Saturn. Sorry.
(Dr. Fullerton) One of what, 16? Something like that?
(Dr. Regina) Yeah, Enceladus is Jupiter or Saturn. I can’t remember now. Oh no, god. Listeners tell me, I’ll look it up right after, I feel bad, but Europa is definitely one of the four largest moons of Jupiter. I was obsessed with it and we’ve talked about it on other shows. It’s just covered with ice. I think of it as cold water world, is basically what it is.
(Dr. Fullerton) Very cold!
(Dr. Regina) Very, very, very cold.
(Dr. Fullerton) They’re doing the, NASA is doing the Europa Clipper soon.
(Dr. Regina) Yes.
(Dr. Fullerton) They’re gearing up for . . .
(Jordan) They’re sending a Viking ship?
(Dr. Fullerton) Yes.
(Jordan) Awesome.
(Dr. Fullerton) Vikings like the cold.
(Dr. Regina) Yeah, they cut the ice. That’s what Frozen told me.
(Jordan) Yep. [Laughing.] That’s a good movie.
(Dr. Fullerton) There’s actually a really bad movie about Europa.
(Dr. Regina) Yes! The Europa Report. Is that bad? Because I haven’t seen it and all of my relatives are like, “You’ve got to watch this.”
(Dr. Fullerton) You kind of do.
(Dr. Regina) All but two maybe have mentioned it.
(Jordan) [laughing.]
(Dr. Fullerton) NASA’s really interested in, like, life processes and space processes. We’re exploring space, we don’t think that what happened on Earth is unique. If you can go out and study or find environments on earth that might be analogous to life on other planets, on exoplanets or icy moons or whatever, that if you write a convincing enough story about that, they will give you money to study this Earth analogue.
(Dr. Regina) Did you do that?
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah. I did that last week. That was a lot of fun. My idea was, hydrothermal vents make great places for life to begin because there’s lots of concentrated chemicals. Some of the earliest reactions that are hypothesized for life to begin, would happen spontaneously at vents. Vents are also deep in the water so they’ll be practiced from solar radiation. Early Earth didn’t have an atmosphere like it does now that protects us on the surface.
(Dr. Regina) Right. So let’s all hope Dr. Heather Fullerton gets her grant that she wrote last week. It’s really interesting and I’m so glad you can get funding from NASA because it’s such a hot topic. This idea that there might be microbes outside of Earth. Away from Earth, not on Earth.
You’re already talking about TV. You’re in movies, you’re saying the Europa report is bad. Now I want to watch it and I want to see how bad it is.
(Dr. Fullerton) It’s awful.
(Dr. Regina) OK. I want to talk about other, bad TV, bad movies that portray your field in a not so great accurate way.
(Dr. Fullerton) Um, well, so there’s lots of mistakes that happen in anything that deals with biology. One of them is, evolution is super-fast. It’s not. It’s real slow. It takes generations, and especially for evolution of people, it’s gonna take multiple, multiple, multiple generations so thousands of years.
(Dr. Regina) Right. Not like in 50 years we’re going to look like this.
(Dr. Fullerton) Right, or mutants like X-Men. We’re all a little bit mutants because we all look different.
(Jordan) Do you think that one day I could shoot lasers from my eyes?
(Dr. Fullerton) No.
(Jordan) Dang it!
(Dr. Fullerton) Are you from Krypton?
(Jordan) I don’t know? Cyclops, is he from Krypton? Are all the X-Men from a different planet?
(Dr. Regina) Touché Jordan.
(Jordan) Yeah!
(Dr. Fullerton) When mutations do happen in our genome, we just get cancer.
(Dr. Regina) Yeah, sadly it’s not like . . .
(Jordan) [Laughing] that’s the worst.
(Dr. Fullerton) You’re not going to turn into the Hulk because you get exposed to radiation. [Laughing.] Those are just the really common mistakes that happen in all of these movies and they’re not that exciting. You know, movies have to make things exciting. They have to go quickly. I think it was Outbreak where the virus went from being transmitted person to person to being airborne and they looked at it like through a microscope. One, you can’t see viruses in a microscope. They’re too small.
(Dr. Regina) See, I don’t know these things. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fullerton) So, that kind of quick change isn’t going to happen but it makes for really exciting TV. I was thinking about that question about movies and stuff and I was like, trying to think of a good example where they got it right. Actually, War of the Worlds, yeah, so the alien invaders all die.
(Dr. Regina) From water right?
(Dr. Fullerton) No that’s Signs. [Laughing.]
(Jordan) I was thinking the same thing! [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fullerton) That was bad. That was bad because . . .
(Dr. Regina) I didn’t like that movie for other reasons too. Sorry, War of the Worlds, how did the aliens die?
(Dr. Fullerton) They got infected with bacteria. All life on Earth is perfectly adopted to the bacteria that is in the air. The aliens come down and they’re like, “Oh crap.” They’ve never seen, they don’t have an immunity to this. Something like staphoreous or staphepidermis which is all over our skin, killed them all off. I don’t think the book gave them a name, but they all died.
(Dr. Regina) Our sad histories of colonization kind of tells us these things right? I agree. That is more accurate. You were saying, TV wise.
(Dr. Fullerton) Crime shows are bad.
(Dr. Regina) Crime shows are the worst! [Laughing.] But they’re so popular.
(Dr. Fullerton) Again, lab work is super slow and tedious a lot of times. You’ll set up a reaction to sequence a genome and you get the results like days, weeks later.
(Dr. Regina) So, CSI that’s like, “Oh, I put this in for an hour, I’m done.”
(Dr. Fullerton) Right. I know this person’s history, where they were born, how they grew up, and like, their parents, and they had this hair cut from their DNA.
(Jordan) We’re just watching all the faces change and ah, I get a hit on CODIS where it’s Charlie!
(Dr. Fullerton) I think there was one where they were given a DNA sequence and then they figured out what the guy looked like. I’m like, “Really?”
(Dr. Regina) So, I’m going to take a quick plug for my daughter. We were just talking about my daughter. She’s going to be 7 very soon. She was at a pool with her cousins just a couple of days ago and we all as kids know, when you’re at a public pool, sometimes kids poop in the pool. This is back to our poop discussion actually. You know when that happens, all the kids get out of the pool, you know this Jordan right?
(Jordan) Why are you bringing me into it? Like I was the kid. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Regina) No! [Laughing.]
(Jordan) Jordan you know this right? Remember this? I get the net out, they net the turd and then they shock it. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Regina) Then they test the water right, before people can come back in or they drain the pool. There’s this process. As this is going on my daughter and her cousins are sitting there and my daughter goes over to the like, the, you know the pool manager and my daughter is like, “Who pooped in the pool?” The manager is like, “Honey, I don’t know.” My daughter goes, “Can’t you get some DNA?”
(Jordan) [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fullerton) Most of that DNA would be bacteria.
(Dr. Regina) Right? She didn’t know that. But like, my daughter, somebody who’s not even 7 yet, believes these shows. I don’t let her watch crime shows, just heads up.
(Jordan) She wants Horacio to figure it out and put on his glasses.
(Dr. Regina) But she honestly thinks I think, in her mind, that you get DNA and instantly you know all of these things, you know? She has this kid show that did a similar DNA thing but it did take a few days in the show but she doesn’t understand that.
(Dr. Fullerton) They always take DNA from like a hairbrush or fingernails. Hair, unless it has a follicle attached to it is dead and has no DNA. Red blood cells don’t even have DNA.
(Dr. Regina) Wow, I didn’t know that.
(Dr. Fullerton) So you can get DNA from blood but it’s from white blood cells.
(Dr. Regina) Oh! Unless it has a follicle. Oh so unless you have some like, blood or something on the nail.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah. Like, skin cells totally have DNA.
(Dr. Regina) OK got it. So if it’s like a skin flake on the nail. OK got it. But not the nail itself.
(Dr. Fullerton) Most of the hair on your hairbrush doesn’t have a follicle, which means it doesn’t have DNA. But you know, CSI, they’ll find one single hair and they’ll be like, “We know who this person is now.”
(Dr. Regina) It can’t be like cat hair right? To even think that you would get the exact hair from the person you’re looking for is just ridiculous.
(Jordan) This is all awesome. For later crimes that I will commit. [Laughing.]
(Dr. Regina) [Laughing.]
(Dr. Fullerton) [Laughing.]
(Dr. Regina) You’re on the air now.
(Dr. Fullerton) But you’ll leave your skin cells.
(Jordan) I don’t know, I’ll wear a Tyvek suit.
(Dr. Fullerton) Ew.
(Dr. Regina) There’s like Gattaca right? That movie Gattaca where he scrubs himself and he tries to get all of the flaky skin cells off.
(Dr. Fullerton) Because that will totally work.
(Dr. Regina) Right right. He’s like placing, you know, hair.
(Dr. Fullerton) I think they also get DNA from hair, skin and urine in that. And again, urine is not really going to have DNA in it because, unless there are skin cells coming off as you’re peeing.
(Jordan) That’s weird.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah. That’s weird. That’s going to be like, a very small portion of the total volume.
(Dr. Regina) You’d have to be the person to sift through the pee to get that. You were saying that one of the TV shows that was actually good was Bones.
(Dr. Fullerton) Bones does good things every once and a while.
(Jordan) So, they’re decent.
(Dr. Fullerton) There’s multiple people working on the same thing. Like, the computer chick, she’s a little overboard. I mean, maybe it works but I don’t think so.
(Jordan) Like the focal reconstruction lady?
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah. She’s like, “Done.?
(Dr. Regina) An hour and done. I know who she is.
(Dr. Fullerton) She’s like, “I wrote this new program.”
(Dr. Regina) In an hour.
(Dr. Fullerton) Yeah. [Laughing.] Some of the stuff that they do is pretty accurate. There was one episode that I liked where they found, there’s a type of tubeworms that degrades bones, and they found it on a body at the bottom of the ocean.
(Dr. Regina) That’s awesome.
(Dr. Fullerton) So those tubeworms were really cool. They degrade like, whale bones, because whales die a lot.
(Jordan) [Laughing.]
(Dr. Regina) Well, they die.
(Dr. Fullerton) When they die, they fall to the bottom of the ocean and then there’s lots of things that are like, “Oh, free meal.”
(Dr. Regina) Right. And that was accurate you were saying, the tubeworms.
(Dr. Fullerton) The tubeworms. Like, they’re pretty recently discovered class of tubeworms. They’re related to the ones that are related to the hydrothermal vents.
(Dr. Regina) You’d said that you’d learned about those tubeworms from Bones.
(Dr. Fullerton) I was like, “What? Are those real?” Of course I looked it up and Wikipedia was like, “Yeah, totally, those are real.”
(Dr. Regina) Actually, Bones is the only crime show that I’ve ever watched. We’re going to come back to this hopefully when we can get a medical anthropologist on here, and we’ll talk about Bones again. Is there any other?
(Dr. Fullerton) I was supposed to say Star Trek is really bad, just for you.
(Jordan) Yeah, yeah, it’s not good at all.
(Dr. Fullerton) No, bad biology, it’s a great show.
(Jordan) [Laughing.]
(Dr. Regina) I win again. So what bad biology happens in, you’re talking Star Trek Next Generation I’m guessing?
(Dr. Fullerton) All of them actually fail at this.
(Jordan) Yeah!
(Dr. Regina) The morals are good.
(Dr. Fullerton) The story lines are pretty good too. One of the things that they really fail at is you have Vulcans and humans completely different planets, completely different organisms and then they can still breathe.
(Dr. Regina) I think about that all of the time. But actually, Star Trek came back and acknowledged that.
(Dr. Fullerton) That was a very, very bad episode.
(Dr. Regina) I agree. I agree.
(Dr. Fullerton) Then there was a Next Generation episode, actually one of my favorite episodes.
(Dr. Regina) Tell me all about it because I know it.
(Dr. Fullerton) Do you remember Barkley?
(Dr. Regina) Oh Barclay! Reginald Barclay, they used to call him broccoli because he was so boring, go on.
(Dr. Fullerton) There’s a episode where he’s like, “I think I have a cold.” Because he’s a total hypochondriac and he goes to the doctor and the doctor is like, “I engineered this virus thing for you to reactivate your latent T-cells.” Or something like that. It mutates and all of the crew starts devolving.
(Dr. Regina) Yes! I love that episode, it’s so bad.
(Dr. Fullerton) And Barclay, I think, turns into this giant humanoid spider type thing.
(Dr. Regina) Yes, correct.
(Dr. Fullerton) Which, there’s so many things wrong with that happening.
(Dr. Regina) Well, everyone was devolving and things made no sense.
(Dr. Fullerton) The evolutionary history of humans and spiders.
(Dr. Regina) So different.
(Dr. Fullerton) For one, we’re vertebrates, spiders are invertebrates, like we split forever ago. And if you activate latent genes in a genome, again you’re probably just going to get cancer.
(Dr. Regina) Thank you so much, Dr. Heather Fullerton. Congratulations on getting that space grant finished last week. I hope the rest of the summer goes good and you get a lot of data from your last science cruise.
(Dr. Fullerton) Thank you.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take me back to Wondaland
? Me thinks she left her underpants
(Jordan) Thank you for joining us, we just spoke with Dr. Heather Fullerton about life in volcanic vents. If you missed any of this show, go to our website, KMRE.org and click on the podcast link.
(Dr. Regina) This is spark science and I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff.
(Jordan) And I’m Jordan Baker. We’ll be back again next week. Listen to us Sunday at 5 o’clock, Wednesday at 9 o’clock, and Saturday at noon.
(Dr. Regina) If there’s a science idea that you are curious about, send us an email or post a message on our Facebook page, Spark Science. If you like this show and would like to help us out, go to KMRE.org and click on the button “Donate.”
(Jordan) Today’s episode, Life at Valcanic Vents, was produced at the KMRE Spark Radio Studios located in the Spark Museum on Bay Street in Bellingham. Our producer and engineer for the day is Katie Knutzen our music is Chemical Calisthenics by Blackalicious and Wondaland by Jenelle Monea.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take me back to Wondaland
? Me thinks she left her underpants
?You know I love ya babe, yes I do
[? Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ?]
? Neutron, proton, mass defect, lyrical oxidation, yo irrelevant
? Mass spectrograph, pure electron volt, atomic energy erupting
? As I get all open on betatron, gamma rays thermo cracking
? Cyclotron and any and every mic
? You’re on trans iridium, if you’re always uranium
? Molecules, spontaneous combustion, pow
? Law of de-fi-nite pro-por-tion, gain-ing weight
? I’m every element around
? Lead, gold, tin, iron, platinum, zinc, when I rap you think
? Iodine nitrate activate
? Red geranium, the only difference is I transmit sound
? Balance was unbalanced then you add a little talent in
? Careful, careful with those ingredients
? They could explode and blow up if you drop them
? And they hit the ground
[End of podcast.]