The Science Pawdcast

Season 6 Episode 25: Heat and Drugs, Cats vs Dogs, and the Science of Epigenetics with Melanie Lemaire

• Jason Zackowski • Season 6 • Episode 25

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Have you ever wondered how medications interact with summer heat, or why dog owners might be more resilient than cat owners?

Join us as we uncover these mysteries and more in an episode bursting with heartfelt stories, scientific insights, and thought-provoking discussions.

We kick things off by thanking our wonderful listeners for their support during Bunsen's emergency surgery.

As the mercury rises, we unpack recent studies on the risks certain medications pose during hot summer days and share vital tips on managing them safely. Kris celebrates her love for summer's warmth, even as we dig into the serious side of heat-related illnesses like heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

What kind of pet owner are you? We tackle this age-old debate by examining how our furry friends shape our personalities and stress coping mechanisms. Drawing from an intriguing Australian study, we break down the Big Five personality traits and reveal the surprising differences between cat and dog owners. We share our own pet stories and biases, offering a candid look at how past interactions have shaped our views. This segment challenges our preconceived notions and explores the fascinating ways pets can influence our mental health and resilience.

The science train doesn't stop there; we delve into the complex world of epigenetics with master student Melanie Lemaire. Melanie sheds light on DNA methylation and its impact on pregnancy complications like preeclampsia. We break down the science into digestible analogies, discuss ongoing research, and even touch on the artistic side of science communication.

Whether you're a science enthusiast or a pet lover, this episode offers a blend of knowledge, personal stories, and expert insights to keep you engaged from start to finish.


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Speaker 1:

Before this podcast episode starts, chris and I would like to thank everyone who was in our corner during our difficult time while Bunsen was having emergency surgery. We'll talk about it in the family section, but the outpouring of love from around the world got us through a really tough time. Bunsen made it and, with luck, he'll see another winter. Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zukoski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hi, everybody, welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. We had to take a week off of doing the show. If you follow us on social media, bunsen had a medical emergency on August 15th, which is the day that I cut together the podcast. He wound up having emergency surgery to save his life the following day and he survived and he is resting and recovering with us at home. But it's been a whole month in a matter of a few days and because of that the last thing I was thinking about putting together was a podcast episode, but Bunsen is recovering great Knock on wood he'll have a full recovery. So let's get on with the show.

Speaker 1:

In science news, chris and I are going to break down how some drug interactions with hot weather could put you at risk. In pet science, a fun study from AnthroZoo's looked at the personality differences between those who have cats as a pet and those who have dogs as a pet. It's a fun study, because I'm not really a cat person and Chris is definitely more of a cat person. Our guest in Ask an Expert is master student Melanie Lemaire, who's going to be talking to us about the? Who's going to be talking to us about the genetic components of some pregnancy complications?

Speaker 1:

All right, the bad joke, since we're talking about cats and dogs today, why don't you want to work with a cat on any school project? Well, it's simple they put in the bear munium. That's terrible. Please, please, keep listening. All right, let's get on with the show, because there's no time like science time. This week in science news, chris and I are going to be talking about some recommendations and things to think about if you're on various medications in the heat. Now, this article comes from Science News Science News blog and it pieced together a bunch of different things that have happened, or a bunch of different studies that have occurred over the last five years about different medications and heat. It's the summer of 2024. And, chris, you adore when it gets really hot.

Speaker 2:

Jason, this summer has been my favorite summer so far on record.

Speaker 1:

Why? Because it's been so hot.

Speaker 2:

It has been so hot for an extended period of time, there's been a lack of rain. I know we need the rain, but I really love the hot. So it's a bit of a problem because on one hand I love the heat and on the other hand I love the plants growing. So it's a bit of a conundrum for me, but for the most part I've really enjoyed this weather.

Speaker 1:

And are you affected when it gets hot? Have you ever thought you were getting close to like heat exhaustion or heat stroke?

Speaker 2:

I want to say no, except when we used to go to the fair. There's a fair that comes to town in the summer and there was sometimes, as after we had kids, that I walked around all day in the baking sun and I thought maybe I should have wore a hat, because I just was like thinking maybe I burnt my head or maybe I was a little bit hot, without recognizing that it was potentially heat exhaustion or heat stroke.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I don't know if I've gotten heat stroke before heat exhaustion. For sure, one of my summer jobs I worked at Sunnybrook Farm Museum. You might remember Chris.

Speaker 3:

I sure do.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and a lot of the volunteers were retired farmers and they were quite elderly and we had to really watch. We had to watch out for them when we had big festivals, like what was one of them farmers day, and then there was heritage day, or like they had big celebrations during the summer and and a couple of the older guys they work really hard and they're out in the heat and they're not used to it because they've been retired, but a couple of them passed out and had to go to the hospital. So being in the heat can definitely affect you.

Speaker 2:

Now, as we go through this breakdown of the study, I'm going to say please consult with your doctor, because Jason and I are both not doctors. So it's important to recognize that, despite the risks, there's no solid evidence suggesting that people should stop or reduce their medications during extreme heat, and always consult your doctor about how to stay safe in the heat and learn how to manage heat stress. So that's important before we dive in.

Speaker 1:

And basic first aid tells us that as temperatures rise, your body goes through a bunch of different mechanisms to cool itself off. We can't pant like a dog, but we have increased blood flow to our skin and we also start to sweat.

Speaker 2:

Failure of these cooling mechanisms in your body can lead to heat-related symptoms such as headache, dizziness, confusion and, in severe cases, delirium or organ failure.

Speaker 1:

various chronic health conditions and the medications you may or may not be on, which exasperate your body's ability to regulate temperature. So when it's really hot, if you have a condition, one of these chronic conditions, you're on that medication. You are way more susceptible to heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Also, as you age, you are particularly vulnerable because you have a greater chance of having one of these chronic conditions and also your body just isn't as good at cooling itself down as you were when you were a younger person. So maybe you and I both have that look to look forward to in a bit.

Speaker 2:

That's always something to look forward to. There's challenges when studying medication risks, because it's difficult to distinguish whether the vulnerability is due to the disease or the medication, and ethical concerns also prevent researchers from conducting randomized studies that would involve taking patients off life-sustaining medications.

Speaker 1:

You can't have a double-blind study where you send a bunch of people with chronic conditions out into the heat and you give one group their medication and the other group a placebo, and neither group knows if they are on their medication. That would be unethical and stressful and dangerous.

Speaker 2:

As temperatures rise, there is a growing urgency to understand the interaction between the medication and heat, because of climate change and also the aging global population.

Speaker 1:

If you do have a chronic condition and you are on medication, you could ask your doctor if there's anything that you need to worry about with heat. But we're going to break down kind of the recommendations and the warnings that was in this article and one of them was cardiovascular medications, another one was antipsychotics. These have both been linked to increased hospitalization during heat waves. In general, researchers don't understand if it's the medication risk or something to do with the chronic condition. As you mentioned is interfering with the cooling mechanism, but there is a linkage there.

Speaker 2:

Some drugs do or may disrupt the sweat production and your blood flow and your body's fluid levels, and those are crucial for cooling. Some of those drugs, such as chloropromazine, can suppress sweating and divert blood flow away from the skin and also impair the body's internal thermostat, which raises body temperature. If you're taking heart medications like beta blockers and anti-platelet drugs Heart medications like beta blockers and antiplatelet drugs they can also reduce blood flow to the skin, which hinders heat release.

Speaker 1:

Diuretics can lead to dehydration, which further limits your body to cool itself. I think people are maybe less familiar with chloropromazine that's that antipsychotic you mentioned. Familiar with chloropromazine? That's that antipsychotic you mentioned. It is used in the treatment for different psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or really severe behavior problems in kids. Sometimes people might take it, though and this is very interesting. Totally not related to being an antipsychotic is it may help treat out-of-control nausea and vomiting that people may have before surgery. Some people who suffer from chronic hiccups may take it. One of the reasons why it works is it blocks dopamine in the brain and there may be a linkage between dopamine production and your ability to sweat, which I think you mentioned.

Speaker 2:

The interactions between drugs and the body's response to heat are not fully understood, and particularly for medications used to treat conditions like diabetes and cancer.

Speaker 1:

Don't stop taking your medicine.

Speaker 2:

That's right. Don't stop taking your medication. Like I did say earlier, researchers also must rely on existing knowledge of drug effects, and our bodies have incredibly complex physiology, and relying on the existing knowledge of drug effects only provides partial insight and, additionally, ethical and practical challenges hinder the study of these interactions because you, like we mentioned, we can't run randomized trials and stop treatments for patients that are dependent on their medication.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, they're looking at running more ethical treatments along these lines, where healthy people, who of course agree to be part of a study, will be given those medications to observe if it changes their tolerance to heat. So you know you're not stopping somebody who requires the medication to determine if it's the medication or their condition. You're eliminating that and you're just like these are healthy people, we're giving them a dose of the medication. That's not going to be unethical, where sometimes the danger is giving people medicine that they don't really need. So, coming down the pipe, they're hopeful that research will start to pinpoint is it the drug or is it the condition? So, chris, I don't know if you felt the mornings that are feeling a little bit cooler. In fact, a couple of days ago I thought I felt a little bit of frost in the air or frost in the grass. Summer's coming to a close for us.

Speaker 2:

Those are terrible words, but I have definitely felt that it was cooler in the morning, hence wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and taking Bernoulli to play, and he jumped into the water and I was wearing jeans and a hoodie in 27 degree weather and I had to go in and rescue him.

Speaker 1:

So be careful, you don't need to be rescued yourself. Check yourself before you wreck yourself in hot weather. That's science news for this week. This week in pet science, chris and I are going to break down a study from Anthrozoos which focused on the personality differences between quote unquote dog people and quote unquote cat people. Chris, what are you, dog people or cat people?

Speaker 2:

Why can't I be both?

Speaker 1:

Up until we got Ginger, I would be considered definitely a dog person and not a cat person at all.

Speaker 2:

No, you were very anti-cat.

Speaker 1:

I was, I was and I've wrote about this and talked about this at length probably because I was so allergic I never gave cats a chance. I think I did have some negative views of people that chose to have a cat instead of a dog. I just couldn't understand why you would choose that as a pet.

Speaker 2:

Because dogs are more interactive. Yeah, and you can do things and play, and what you've learned about Ginger is that, although she can definitely be very independent, she does enjoy interacting and she does enjoy playing.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

But not at the same level or capacity that our dogs do. And that could just be her.

Speaker 1:

I was wrong. I just didn't have enough experience to make the like my viewpoints. When you're young, you don't have life experience, and I didn't have that and I was. Of course, I think I was ignorant in that viewpoint. So hopefully people aren't listening, or boy? This guy sounds like a jerk thinking cat people are bad and no, we love our cat Ginger. She's really cool.

Speaker 2:

But your experience, your life experience, was with my cat named Poco, and she bit you. Yes, and she wasn't nice to you. So I can totally see why you were averse and thinking maybe all cats were like that and why would you like that? Why would you like to hang out with a cat that bit you? And uh scratched you, but she didn't do that to me because she loved me I've.

Speaker 1:

I was around other very friendly cats when I was growing up but they made me so sick because I was allergic. Yeah, anyways, let's get into this. It's an Australian study where they controlled for age and gender and they were looking at the big five personality traits in between the cat people and the dog people, and we should do a quick recap of what the big five personality traits are. The first one is openness to experience. So it's how curious you are, how creative you are. I guess you're more outgoing, you have a bigger sense of adventure. So that's one of the personality traits.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And then the second one is conscientiousness, and that relates to a person's degree of organization whether they're dependable or highly dependable. If they're disciplined, how goal oriented and persistent an individual is.

Speaker 1:

Ooh, I am not organized, so I would score lowly on that category.

Speaker 2:

I feel, or I think, that I would score very highly on that category.

Speaker 1:

Number three of the big five is extroversion. That's how outgoing, energetic and sociable you are, where you will seek out the stimulation and company of others. And I am not an extrovert at all. I am good to never see another human besides you for days.

Speaker 2:

I love that Now, within each of these traits, it has the high and then the low. So if you have high extroversion, you're typically very outgoing, talkative and enjoy being in social situations, and then the low would be low extroversion or introversion. So people who are more reserved prefer solitude and then may feel drained by having those social interactions. So, conscientiousness has a high conscientiousness and a low, and then openness to experience. You have a high openness or a low openness.

Speaker 1:

The fourth one I like. It's agreeableness. It's basically how compassionate and cooperative you are. So if you have a high score there, you're probably a nicer person, and if you have low agreeableness you are extremely competitive, skeptical and just not as concerned with what other people's needs are. So I think that one's the meanest one if you're low.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and the final trait is neuroticism. And so what? That is, the tendency to experience negative emotions like anxiety, anger or depression. It also could indicate how emotionally stable or resilient a person is. Oh highly neurotic or pretty stable.

Speaker 1:

I would score really high here because I'm pretty, pretty resilient.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so that means that you would have low neuroticism, that you would tend to be calm and emotionally stable and less easily upset. If you have a high score in neuroticism, you're more prone to stress, emotional instability and mood swings.

Speaker 1:

I do get upset from time to time. So anyways, let's talk about the study. There are 321 Australian adults. They participated. They were recruited by social media. They participated, they were recruited by social media, so probably like Facebook invites and Instagram DMs. So these researchers were sliding into these people's DMs on social media. They were given the big five personality trait and then they were also measured. They measured their overall resiliency using the BRS, which is the brief resiliency scale, and the participants were classified as either a dog owner or a cat owner, based on which pet they felt the closest to or spent the most time with. And this is a tough one because they were not allowed to be both. They had to pick dog or cat. So, chris, I'm going to go one, two, three and when I'm done you have to say cat or dog Ready. One, two, three, both. No, you can't do that. Chris would be kicked out of the study.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a qualitative study because it's based on people's responses and then they through the data collection. There was thematic content analysis, which is one thing that when I did my research, I was shocked that the themes just come out and you read and you do your interviews and you think none of this is going to ever come together. But no, I had to trust my prof and when she said it will and you know what it did it was magical all right, chris.

Speaker 1:

People are dying to know. What did this study find?

Speaker 2:

so the predictive power of pet ownership for resilience, that dog ownership was positively associated with higher resilience, suggesting that dog owners might cope better with stress and neuroticism. Cat ownership was positively associated with higher neuroticism, which indicates cat owners may be more susceptible to stress.

Speaker 1:

Which is weird, because John seemed like the most laid back guy ever and it was, and Garfield was always up to no good. Now, delving further into the study, you'll everybody will be either I don't know if you'll be happy to hear this because people want to win sometimes right, like if you're a dog person, you want to win against those cat people and if you're the cat people, you want to win against those stupid dog people. But no other significant differences were found between dog and cat owners in all of the other big five categories extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness or openness.

Speaker 2:

And that's interesting because you were just talking about being competitive some common themes that came out of the study that both dog and cat owners commonly chose their pets based on simply liking the pet, and dog owners valued affection, interaction and companionship, while cat owners often cited their lifestyle factors, because cats can be pretty easy to care for and pretty compatible with different living situations.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, cats are set it and forget it. I guess you have to feed Ginger, but you don't have to take her out. She just uses her litter box. That is a wild thing. I'm going to tell you right now about cats. That is a huge plus for cats that they poop and pee in a little box and you don't have to take them out when it's minus 40.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. Dog owners preferred loyal, social and loving pets and cat owners favored independent pets.

Speaker 1:

Oh okay, there were. There was some interesting other things within the discussion of the paper that the higher neuroticism in cat owners aligns with previous findings linking neuroticism to a preference for cats, and resiliency seemed to increase with age. So the older the people that were in the study, the older the age, the higher they scored on resilience, regardless of the pet they had more identified with, and females versus males scored higher on neuroticism and agreeableness and that was consistent with previous research.

Speaker 2:

And with all research, there are challenges and limitations. So this study had a predominantly female sample and a small number of non-pet owners, which limited the ability to generalize the findings, and this study's design could not allow for conclusions about causality between personality traits and pet ownership.

Speaker 1:

I know that's why I picked it, chris. It was a fun study and the conclusion is basically maybe, but not really, and it's fun to talk about.

Speaker 2:

But when you're looking for a pet, you should be thinking about when looking for a pet or acquiring a pet. That should be a well-considered decision with a focus on long-term commitment and the animal's welfare, rather than just as a means to improve resilience or reduce loneliness.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's true. Your lifestyle plays a big part in the type of pet that you want. If you are not going to be home all the time, a dog is a bad choice. If you can't be home to walk it and take it out, terrible choice. A cat may be a better choice for you, but still play with your cat. I play string with ginger every day. Usually that's a great game, string and you play blanket blob.

Speaker 2:

For newly you have all these blanket games that you play.

Speaker 1:

I love blanket blob.

Speaker 2:

Our pets are very how do I say it? So our pets are very enriched in terms of play.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there should be a big six personality steps. There should be a big six personality traits, and goofball should be six. I'd score pretty high on that.

Speaker 2:

You would score 10 out of 10.

Speaker 1:

That's Pet Science for this week. Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the science podcast free. Number one in our show notes sign up to be a member of our Paw Pack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun. Also, think about checking out our merch store. We've got the Bunsen stuffy, the Beaker stuffy and now the ginger stuffy. That's right, ginger, the science cat, has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen too. Okay, on with the show. Back to the interview. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast and I am thrilled to welcome Melanie Lemire, master's of Medical Science student, with us today. How are you doing, melanie?

Speaker 3:

I am doing. Well, how are you doing?

Speaker 1:

I am great. I am great. Where are you in the world? Where are you calling into the show from?

Speaker 3:

I am calling in from Hamilton Ontario.

Speaker 1:

Okay, okay, like the other side of Canada, from us Alberta, ontario, I've heard that's a heck of a drive.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'm originally from British.

Speaker 1:

Columbia, so I'm normally closer to you. I don't imagine you drive, that you probably fly.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1:

For the Americans listening, it's pretty much the distance from one coast to the other in the United States. Pretty similar distance. And how long have you been in Hamilton for school so far?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I just started my Master's of Medical Science at McMaster University. And I started in September, so I just moved out here beginning of this year and that was after I finished my undergrad, which I did at University of British Columbia in Kelowna in British Columbia.

Speaker 1:

Oh, the Kelowna one.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, the Okanagan campus, which I personally quite loved, very beautiful there.

Speaker 1:

Yes, alberta, close to the mountains is like bc. It's like the off-brand bc version of the oklahoma.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, let's, hey, we got mountains but it's really cold uh yes, it's like you can go outside and you can see a lake, but also you might be chilly, yeah right, yeah, so when you were growing up, were you all in on science.

Speaker 1:

Were you a science kid?

Speaker 3:

Oh, definitely. I grew up on a farm in rural BC, very small town, and from a very young age I was very set on being a paleontologist.

Speaker 3:

I was a dinosaur kid and I'm sure that wasn't great when I was digging in my parents' gardens for dinosaur bones. I'm sure they didn't love that as much as the next parent, but that's how I started out. And then, when I went into high school and kept going on, I found a love for just science in general and I moved away from dinosaurs and more into the human body and how it all worked. I just found it so interesting.

Speaker 1:

So when you were young, you were that kid that was walking around telling everybody dinosaur facts.

Speaker 3:

Oh, absolutely. I remember very vividly at family gatherings there was a bucket of dinosaur figurines that my aunt had and my favorite thing was just to take one out and then go up to anyone who would listen to me and be like, hey, this is what this dinosaur's name is. Can I tell you some info, Just unsolicited.

Speaker 1:

Talk to a few paleontologists before, and some of them do talks with kids and they are always like boy. I think this kid might know more about dinosaurs than me. Young kids just get right into it, right.

Speaker 3:

Oh, for sure. I remember there was one very heated discussion at a Christmas dinner between me and my cousin and he said that's not the real name for that dinosaur and I said get me a computer right now because it is. And yeah, no, I would have gone down for anything for the dinosaur facts, for sure.

Speaker 1:

So into the human body and through your undergrad. Can you talk to us a little bit about your currently studying?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I am currently studying pregnancy complications and maternal health and specifically the genetics side of that and how genetics and epigenetics can impact whether or not you're more likely to develop different pregnancy complications. And also, on the more diagnostic side, can we use genetics and epigenetics to detect different things for pregnancy complications?

Speaker 1:

Now we've talked before to scientists on our show about epigenetics or epigenetics. It's epigenetics, epigenetics. It's epigenetics with the E. Okay, because sometimes I get that wrong. What could you give us a refresher? Refresher about that. What is that?

Speaker 3:

Epigenetics are heritable changes that we can get on our DNA that don't actually affect the structure of the DNA or the order of what our genes say, and so the analogy I always like to give is that DNA is like an instruction manual and our cells can read through the pages and find blueprints that they need to build proteins and everything like that. So DNA methylation, which is a type of epigenetic mechanism, or other epigenetic mechanisms, are like bookmarks or different little things that you might, or highlights white out, that you might add to that book to change the blueprints and to change how our cells look at those blueprints. So, as I said, dna methylation is one of those epigenetic things, and I specifically look at DNA methylation because it can change how much gene expression we have.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so like the, your DNA reads it and you're like it's a two bedroom house and your epigenetics is like it's a two bedroom house with an en suite, Like it just changes a little bit. Okay.

Speaker 3:

Yeah so. So think about if you had a gene and the contractor is like, okay, I want way more copies of that gene. Then your DNA methylation might highlight a bunch of stuff and say, hey, we need to make more copies of this. And then the fine tuning on the other end would be doing some whiteout and saying we need less copies of this. So the DNA methylation just acts as a way to fine tune when we're using those blueprints.

Speaker 1:

And all of this is mixed together with pregnancy complications that you mentioned. Could you elaborate just on that? What are some of them? Where it relates to for folks that maybe they're expecting they've gone through having kids. They're never going to have them ever.

Speaker 3:

Maybe they're expecting they've gone through having kids they're never going to have them ever, but they're interested, yeah, yeah. One of the ones that is really common that we talk about in the lab is preeclampsia. Preeclampsia is when you have hypertension or high blood pressure that develops during your pregnancy and that can be really dangerous, obviously, for your mom and baby. So one thing that they found is that in the placentas and in some of the blood components that people that have preeclampsia develop actually have differences in their methylation. So think of this. Okay. So now this cell has blueprints being running amok, going and doing things that they shouldn't be doing, because of these DNA methylation patterns, potentially. So we're studying to see if we can track those DNA methylation changes. If we can see, we can use them to figure out what genes are being impacted by preeclampsia all that kind of stuff now forgive my ignorance.

Speaker 1:

I sorry, this is not an area I know much about. In the. When preeclampsia happens, does this methylation or change occur, or does the change cause preeclampsia? And I think that is the fun question in the field that is still remaining unanswered.

Speaker 3:

Oh okay, pregnampsia is very we know that it happens and we know that the reason that it happens is because the placenta isn't forming properly. And then there's lots of different hypotheses on what genes are impacting that and what signaling molecules are causing this problem to occur. So all we really know is there's something going wrong, the placenta isn't forming properly and then, as a result of that, we're getting high blood pressure that could be dangerous in pregnancy. So what we're doing on the epigenetic side of things is looking at is DNA methylation? Looking at is DNA methylation changing before?

Speaker 3:

Maybe in like the early embryo, because the embryo itself has cells that develop into the placenta. So maybe if you impact that early embryo and you have DNA methylation differences really early on, maybe those transpire as the placenta grows to being full on gene expression differences. That then could change the function of the placenta grows to being full on gene expression differences. That then could change the function of the placenta which causes preeclampsia. But it's still very new research. Lots of the platforms that explore DNA methylation are becoming more robust and this research, with the new advance in technology, is becoming more possible. So it's very cool.

Speaker 1:

Now, when you say DNA methylation, like my strength is chemistry. A methyl group to me is a carbon with three hydrogens. Yes, that's what you're talking about, Is that correct?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so it's actually just exactly like you said. It's the addition. So DNA methylation is the addition of that carbon group with the three hydrogens onto different cytosines which are the building blocks of our DNA, and so it gets added directly on there and it blocks up your DNA in that region. Because if you think about sticking on all of these different carbon groups onto an area of DNA, then that's going to make it harder for the cell machinery to read that section. So as a interference. So usually when you add more DNA methylation, you're going to get more of that interference and therefore less of that DNA being looked at, those blueprints being looked at.

Speaker 1:

And then that messes up the protein or the RNA that is made from it. Am I on the right track?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, even less of messing it up, but just so much as it's not even going to be able to get read.

Speaker 1:

Oh nothing at all. Oh interesting.

Speaker 3:

And like we use that in regions like maybe there's a lot of times things like transposable elements or things that like are a mistake, or the very classic cases, the X chromosome in XX individuals, or typically female, biologically female individuals is that you have to turn one of those X chromosomes off because you have two copies of it, whereas XY individuals just have one X and one Y. And that's what we want just one of each of those chromosomes. But in females we have two copies of it, so we need to turn one of those off completely, and the way we do that is we just put so much DNA methylation on one of them and then basically that just means that none of the transcription mechanisms can bind to it and then basically makes it silent.

Speaker 1:

That is okay. I've never had somebody explain that to me before and I appreciate that. I have a vivid memory of all of these. Like carbon hydrogen groups is blocking the cell machinery like it's hey, can we read? And it's just like a bunch of people standing in the way and it can't get by. You've probably been somewhere crowded. I teach high school. They're usually the grade nines that come and they don't know they should move out of the way for the grade twelves. And the grade twelves are like get out of the way, you stupid. Grade nines. And the grade nines are like the methyl groups.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, the grade nines are the DNA methylation of high school.

Speaker 1:

For the Americans listening.

Speaker 3:

grade nines, I think, are freshmen for you guys, and grade twelves are seniors, so yeah, I think that the better way that I've previously explained DNA methylation that's not that is with that same idea where you say DNA is the instruction manual for the cells and then if making RNA is making photocopies of that instruction manual, you can think of DNA methylation like a paper jam in the photocopy machine.

Speaker 3:

So, if you have a ton of DNA methylation on a region, then your photocopier. You might get a couple copies through right, but For the most part is it worth it, you know you are working on your master's.

Speaker 1:

Have you started? Usually, you have to do some teaching. Have you started doing any of that, or is that in the future for you?

Speaker 3:

I actually have TA'd one course so far. It was intro to cell biology, inquiry course.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So I was responsible for a group of students and they work together to investigate a topic that they were interested in, so I facilitated discussions and conversations about their topic.

Speaker 1:

I only bring that up because my day job as a chemistry teacher high school chemistry teacher that is the bane of my existence paper jams. I sometimes just want to throw the photocopier into the sun. Some kid lost the thing and they're like, hey, it's a Koski, I need a copy. I lost it, or my dog ate it, or something. And you go up there and just you just want to make one copy and the paper machine has every single blinking light. That possibly.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I don't know if that's happened to you, but you have error messages on parts of the equipment that you didn't even know existed in the first place.

Speaker 1:

You open it up and there's a grilled cheese sandwich in it and you're like oh obviously the previous teacher has had it with this machine also. Yeah, exactly. So the ongoing research is that the more we understand about this, perhaps there could be a treatment for this potentially dangerous condition in pregnancy.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think what our lab is more focused in is, let's say, hypothetically we think about this. Back to the printer analogy. And like you said, you get that random error message and you're like where that? Why is this happening? Can I trace?

Speaker 1:

it. Can I trace it back?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, Can I trace it back? Can I get back to it? So if you think about that, in preeclampsia we're getting this error message and we're getting this thing that's saying we have hypertension, and we're getting an error message that's saying maybe there's DNA methylation changes, maybe we're having paper jams. Can we trace back why these paper jams are happening? Can we trace back where the paper jams are happening? Can we trace back where the paper jams are happening and could we create something to detect the paper jams super, super early on so we can prevent the whole machine from breaking down, right? So I think for us it's definitely.

Speaker 3:

I want to lean more towards the diagnostic side where, if we can catch this early enough, before it's this huge issue can we help more people out, because a lot of times preeclampsia is it's known as a two-stage model where basically the first stage things are going wrong and you can't tell because no symptoms have happened, and then by the time you have symptoms it means that you've already had so much going wrong that it's gone to be this big elevated blood pressure. So trying to work backwards and see if you can catch that weight earlier and then have preventative, then work through the preventative treatments based on what you found for the diagnostic side, that give or take relationship.

Speaker 1:

Right. And then, as the disorder progresses, you have, if I'm remembering right, very weak human reproductive biology that I used to teach decades ago Anything from bed rest to immediate C-section, to potential loss of life for mother and child.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah. So for, yeah, preeclampsia is, it can have lots of really negative side effects, of really negative side effects, and it can even be involved with, like with preeclampsia. If you develop preeclampsia, it puts the mother and the child a lot of the times at a higher risk of cardiovascular problems even later into life. Like it's not just a lot of times people think of pregnancy complications as only happening, only affecting the individual during the pregnancy, whereas with a lot of them, like it's following you, it's following your health throughout life. So it's really important that we're catching that early and then having some way to to combat it.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's, yeah, there's. I'm just so thankful folks like you are working on stuff like this. Everything from human biology to the cosmos. There's scientists poking away at the, at everything around us and say, hey, let's do, let's figure out this thing. So I love it Along the lines of sorry. Let me start that again. Besides this area, is there anything else you've you've come across that would be interesting or wild or even spooky, that you'd like to tell us about?

Speaker 3:

So I if we're doing this in multiple takes, but I had considered telling you about what I did in my undergrad because I think it's cool. It's so irrelevant to what I do now, but I worked in a lab and I dissected fruit flies.

Speaker 3:

That's cool, yeah, and so I worked in a genetics lab that did insect toxicology, which was where I really learned that I love doing research, because I from at the beginning of my undergrad I didn't think I wanted to do research. It wasn't something that I'd ever been exposed to. And then in my third year I started at an insect toxicology lab that looked at fruit flies and started learning about fruit fly genetics and I actually would dissect fruit flies and take out their kidney structures, which you can imagine involves very small tweezers. So that was something really cool. That's outside of the scope of pregnancy research that I did it like completely out of the scope of it. But then pregnancy related things that I've found are within more within my scope of fun facts. I don't know when do you want the conversation to go for this.

Speaker 1:

Anything like I. Just you're in the middle of a very cool journey in your in your education, and I wanted you to feel comfortable to talk about anything extra. That's all. So you can just you take it wherever you want it to go.

Speaker 3:

Okay, cool. I feel like.

Speaker 1:

I'll interject on the fruit flies maybe. So it's interesting you bring that up because fruit flies research is the reason why I didn't go past an undergrad in science.

Speaker 3:

Really.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I found out pretty quickly Like maybe I love science growing up and I was like, hey, I'll get my doctorate, maybe no. I found out I was terrible at research. I didn't have the patience for it. I had to gas fruit flies because we were breeding them and then figuring out eye color with genetics. Yeah, and they kept waking up because I didn't gas them enough with whatever it was that we're putting them to sleep. I forget those as many years ago. So I was like this is dumb and I just like killed them all. I just gave them way too much gas so they wouldn't wake up. And then I got in trouble because then they couldn't breed further.

Speaker 3:

And that's so funny. It is so funny to me that your experience with fruit flies was I'm never touching research again. And then my experience with fruit flies was oh wow, I'm gonna make a career out of this.

Speaker 1:

It did set me on a. Really I'm very thankful for the path that I've taken. I did a second degree in education and became a high school teacher and I've said this story lots before where I was the presenter guy, I was the talkie guy Take the data and talk guy on group projects and stuff like that, which makes sense why I'm a presenter and teacher. I have so much respect for people who get by their undergrad, because research requires tenacity. You have to be stubborn, you have to have attention to detail, you have to have all of these personality traits or you have to be forged in the crucible of them to get past your undergrad. So I love that you had some of that intrinsic within you and that's very cool.

Speaker 3:

Oh, thanks, yeah, no, I found very quickly with fruit flies that if you don't, if you don't have that desire to keep going intrinsically, it's it's hard because we were getting tissue samples and to do that you had to dissect about 200 fruit flies to get one tissue sample. And I remember for my thesis I had this list because I needed 18 samples to be able to do all of the statistical tests. How did you?

Speaker 1:

not lose your mind.

Speaker 3:

I had a little tally sheet and every time I dissected a fruit fly I would go tally one and I was like I am a prison inmate, Scratching my days, worked onto the wall, and I think after that I realized that if I can do that, I can do any research.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's what broke me. So it was stuff that you have to like for people that haven't taken a science degree and started doing research like that. Like there's parts of that that is, I think, glossed over, that you have to be, you have to have attention to detail and you have to be tenacious. So I'm just so happy for you that you had that skill set, because I did Thank you so much because I did not Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:

Literally. Yesterday I was talking to a shark scientist and it was the same tenacity that they needed because they were putting these trackers on hammerhead sharks in Florida and they crowed and fall off the shark and then, once the thing gets to the surface, it sends a ping to their cell phone and then Team Shark has to mobilize to go find this thing the size of a Coke bottle in the freaking Gulf of Mexico. And each of these things is very expensive and the chance of finding them is very low. So it's just like how are you not like a ball of anxiety and the doctor's like I am?

Speaker 3:

We just are really good at hiding it. That's the key. That's right, yeah. And it's always funny because when you read papers and things like that, I find in the methods section it'll say, oh, and then I tracked, exactly like you said, I had to track that thing to the middle of the ocean. And as a reader you're like, oh, yeah, and then they track that thing to the middle of the ocean and as a reader you're like, oh, yeah, and then they track that thing to the middle of the ocean and then you try to actually put that into vision and you realize, wow, these people are really committed to their science.

Speaker 1:

That's true, and then, along the lines of pregnancy, like, within the scope of what you're currently studying, anything from that you'd like to tell us?

Speaker 3:

I think one of the cool things that I've come across in the research that I've done is how much is unknown and how much is just a giant question mark a lot of the times when it comes to women's health. And that can be in pregnancy, but it can be in other things. And not to say that other areas of health also don't have these pregnancy, but it can be in other things, and not to say that other areas of health also don't have these things. But I've noticed since getting into the field that I just want to keep unveiling all of these different things that a lot of the times have just been stamped with. We don't know how it happens and so that's what it's going to be.

Speaker 3:

With the preeclampsia, I remember when I first started my master's I was like here I am ready to change the medical field, and every paper I read was like and we don't know? Moving on, and I was like what do you mean? You don't know, please. And I think that's also fueled my passion is just since coming into science whether that be medicine, whether that be the fruit flies, and just realizing that there's so much more that we can learn, and then having that be such a huge passion for me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. Like medicine and human health, like it, it's progressing and there are wild breakthroughs all the time, like the HPV vaccine, for example. Didn't that just eradicate a form of cancer?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I haven't read anything about it yet, but yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about and it's just popping up these brand new things and it's just so exciting, especially in the field of genetics, with some of the new things that are coming out and the new ways that we can research and things that wouldn't have even been possible 20 years ago and now of a sudden we're doing it on our home computers right.

Speaker 3:

Like I do most of my research from my small little apartment, and this is things that people were not even thinking could be possible, so it's pretty crazy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's wild. You go back 50 years.

Speaker 3:

people will be like what the vision of the university would need to do what you're doing in your apartment yeah, I think, because I think it was 2001, 2001 that the human genome project right got the first even idea of what our genetic landscape looks like. And now I pull up my little data file and I'm comparing all of these different samples so easily and I just I don't even, I can't even comprehend how when I was born, right, that wasn't even a possibility.

Speaker 1:

Very cool. I'm very inspired talking to scientists. It's a very good professional development, professional development for me as a science teacher. So thank you, melanie. I wanted to ask you like switching gears a bit about art and science in, like science communication or just general communication. That's something that you're passionate about. I was wondering if you could speak to us about that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I have been painting and drawing since before. I could, you know, even do anything else. I feel like when I was very young, I started having a really big passion for art and I'd done it throughout my whole life. And when I was young, I remember lots of people asking me oh, are you going to have a career in art, do you want to go do something with your art? And especially in a small town, there's always those people that are like what are you going to do with this? And I didn't go down that road. I wanted to go down the science route and now that I'm in my master's, I found that art plays such a huge role in how we can communicate science.

Speaker 3:

I think something where the science community often lacks is its ability to reach all audiences, of all skill levels, of all backgrounds.

Speaker 3:

Right, and a lot of times when we think of science, it's this very closed door of statistics and jargon and kind of being very inaccessible, whereas when you put these things into images and you can make these really cool analogies, like talking about DNA methylation as a paper jam, which is something way more relatable than a carbon group with some hydrogens, it starts making it a conversation that more people can have, and I absolutely love creating those conversations and spaces where more people can feel like they have a voice in science. And, yeah, I think that art is the cornerstone of that because, visually, art over language I think it just speaks for itself. You can trace through these different patterns, you can look at these really cool microscope images or tissue images and actually see what people are talking about and see those changes, and I just think that it's so much more impactful than saying a p-value or statistic value less than 0.05. So I've been very passionate about my art science communication throughout my degree, for sure.

Speaker 1:

What do you paint and draw within your scope of research, or is it everything like nature, scenes and people and objects?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I paint in my personal time.

Speaker 3:

It's lots of landscapes and portraits.

Speaker 3:

I do acrylic painting and I've been in a couple of different art galleries and I've sold a bunch of different paintings and it's something that I just love doing. And then when I was in my master's, my supervisor, we were working on this publication and she said there's just no good diagrams for DNA methylation and pregnancy. And I said what if I drew one? And then we crafted up this graphical art abstract to include with the publication, so that when you open up the publication to read it, you're first greeted with this big art panel that explains everything that we're talking about in a nice visual way. So that was my first step into doing more of the science, art, art. And then from there I've been drawing lots of digital pieces that we use for promoting our Instagram and to explain placental development and how we do blood processing and all that kind of stuff, and I'll draw the graphical images that you'd see as like the cartoon images from the internet. Instead of doing, instead of taking them from those public databases, I just create them myself.

Speaker 1:

I think what you're on right now is so important because you're right, like a science paper is, you have to be literally trained in statistics and science to really understand what's going on in those papers. And when I read some physics ones, I'm like I don't even. I don't even know what this is talking about. But if you can turn what's happening into something visual for everybody who's sighted on earth, you don't need a lot of science knowledge to get the beauty and the contours, the shapes and colors of stuff. I don't know if you know this. She she does planetary science, but she's also an artist. Her name is Dr Lacey Brock. Her tag is oh, you're still there, sorry. Yeah, yeah, dr Lacey Brock at Stellar Arts. So she started studying planetary science and, like yourself, she was an exceptionally good painter and now she's just full on. She just paints the universe.

Speaker 3:

Oh, that's so cool.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so that she used to her. She's got her chops, she's a doc, she's a doctorate and she uses her artistic ability to communicate science through art and I think that's just she's so happy to and like she's doing something that she loves, but also within the field that she loves. I don't know if you remember the field that she loves. I don't know if you remember it was a viral video of, like that meteorite that streaked across the night sky about three months ago and then some geese looked at it. There was like a doorbell camera caught them looking at this thing. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 3:

I think I have seen exactly what you're talking about.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So she painted a little picture of it that went mega viral. And then that, of course, when people are very, they're like oh, and they're like what is that? So then she talked about the science. So it's the hook to education hook to education, which is so important.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and I think that also on the other side of things, to have scientists that are creative is so important, because so much of again, we think of science as this very left-brained, math and statistics oriented thing. But you have to. If you're doing research, you have to be able to think outside of the box and have innovative ways to get around these problems that we're constantly faced with. There's always going to be something that's going to go wrong, and having that ability to be creative in the way that you produce solutions is also super important. So I feel like it's beneficial for the audience that's receiving your science, but also as a scientist, to think more creatively is also going to help your science in the long run as well.

Speaker 1:

And art requires tenacity and stubbornness.

Speaker 3:

And a fine hand and attention to detail right. Exactly. There's so many parallels, so many scientists that I know are artists, are musicians, are people that do these creative things that require all of that precision and detail, and then you think about it and you think that makes so much sense. Of course those two things would go hand in hand.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love it Very cool. Do you have any of your stuff on the internet? People could check out?

Speaker 3:

I do have an Instagram.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and what's your handle? And again, we'll do this again at the end of the show too. This has been educational and inspiring. We do have a couple standard questions that we ask all of our guests about. One is the pet story. I was wondering if you could share a pet story from your life.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, okay. So I have chosen this pet story because it was the first one that really stood out in my mind when you asked this question. So I grew up on a farm, as I said, in rural British Columbia, and we had horses and I had this little pony named Spring and she was the first horse that I learned to ride on Okay is the first horse that I learned to ride on and we learned very early on in owning her that she is incredibly food motivated and that because of this, she became very good at problem solving, how to open gates and how to get through basically any obstacle between her and a food source, which meant that we had to become very creative in how we latched all of our gates and kept everything closed. And this was just an ongoing joke that we had when we got her and we were like this pony is so intelligent and so funny. And then I started doing little riding club competitions locally, where we would go and do your little showmanship class or your Western riding, and at the end of every single meet and every single day of the riding competition, there would be a trail riding competition, and in a trail riding competition you have to ride your horse through obstacles that they've set up that mimic things that you would have to do around a farm, and one of those things was to open and go through a gate, which was the kind of most disliked obstacle among most of the horses, because it was this gross white gate that was super loud and super hard to undo and heavy. And when me and Spring went up to it, I unlatched the gate and I went to push it to go through, and I was seven years old at the time, with very short arms, and so I couldn't reach the gate to push us through.

Speaker 3:

And so Spring's looking at the gate, watching me try to reach over and push it open in front of all of these people, and I'm getting embarrassed because I can't do it, and she looks at me. She looks at the gate and she goes okay, I'll do it. And then she pushes the gate open and goes through and then the whole everyone that was watching was kind of everyone goes, oh, okay, and then we go through the gate and then she goes ahead and she closes it and relatches the gate and I'll never forget that kind of moment of that look on her face when she was like her arms are too short. This is a waste of my time, I'm going to open the gate for her.

Speaker 3:

And so we went through the gate and then every single kind of monthly little competition that we did, every single time she would open the gate, we'd go through the gate and she'd close the gate behind us, and it just became this little party trick that we did all the time and I just I'll never forget it, just because of how much of her personality she's like people don't realize, like how much of a personality horses have but she, yeah, no, she knew what was going on and, yeah, it's something that's always stood out to me.

Speaker 1:

Horses are so cool. They are very neat creatures.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

They're not the thing that a lot of people have an experience with, more than seeing them once or twice a year.

Speaker 3:

Exactly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you're correct, they do have personalities, for sure.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and I think that was the first moment that I realized how much they did, because we had other horses on the farm. But I interacted with them a lot less and, like you said, if you're only seeing them a couple of times you're not going to really see their personality, but when you spend all that time with them, there's just they have little mannerisms they have. It's just so fun, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I love horses noses I've said this before, but like their face is so cute.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, oh my goodness. And when they'll smile. Sometimes, when you get that kind of big, like toothy, they'll open it up and it's just, oh, it's so funny yeah, there's some that look as happy as a golden retriever when they're doing some stuff yeah that's a sweet story.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for sharing. Of course, as we're wrapping things up, one of the last things that I get our guests to do is leave us with a super fact. It's something that that blows our mind, and we've done a. We've done a great job so far. I don't know if you've got one in the tank, but we do. You have one for us?

Speaker 3:

I do. I have two that I wrote down just in case I forgot them. But I have have two. I have one that's pet related and then one that's just a random one. So I thought I'd give you both and you can pick or choose.

Speaker 1:

Both are good, go for it.

Speaker 3:

Okay, so my pet related fun fact is to do with calico or tortoise shell haired cats, so those very distinct black and orange cats. The fun fact is that basically every single calico cat is female, because only one in every 3 000 calico cats are male. And the reason for that, when we go back to our dna methylation and that conversation we had, was that the gene that encodes for if you have black fur or orange fur is on the X chromosome. So male cats have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome and so they only have one X and then female cats have an X chromosome and another X chromosome. In males they only have one shot. They're going to either be black or orange depending on which X chromosome they have. But a lot of the times females get one black chromosome and one orange chromosome.

Speaker 3:

And, like I said early on we use DNA methylation to turn off our X chromosomes. But this happens super randomly and really early on in development. So randomly one of those X chromosomes gets turned off in those cells and so when we look at a calico cat, the different areas of orange and black are because in one area the orange X chromosome has been turned off, and so then you have black fur there, and then in other areas you'll have the black fur because the orange chromosome has been turned off, and what's really cool about that is that means if you had genetically identical twin cats that have the exact same genetic makeup, they'll never have the same fur pattern, because it's completely random at development. It's completely random which ones are going to get turned off with this chromosome or this chromosome, and so that's why we have calico cats.

Speaker 1:

I love that, and calico cats are super cute too.

Speaker 3:

So adorable, so adorable. And then my other fun fact is completely unrelated but and again, you can choose if you want to keep this in or not, but it's just the one. I learned this fun fact I think on the second day of university and it has stuck with me since then, and it's about the researcher that discovered how stomach ulcers happen. There was a researcher named Barry Marshall and he was doing a bunch of research about stomach ulcers and why we get stomach ulcers, and he identified in a bunch of patients that had stomach ulcers that there was this bacteria called H pylori that kept showing up in the patients and this bacteria was treatable with antibiotics. But for kind of the entirety of the history of ulcer research, all of the scientists basically said it's due to stress. There's no other cause for stomach ulcers, it's just people that are anxious and that's why they happen.

Speaker 3:

And Marshall was like I think that it's H pylori. And so then he goes to try to test this in mice. You can't use H pylori in mice because it only affects primates. So, getting really frustrated, he goes. I know that it's H pylori. So he drinks a drink of broth and H pylori bacteria and gives himself stomach ulcers. So after about a couple of days he starts getting this really bad stomach pain, he starts getting ulcers, and then he just takes the antibiotic and he goes ta-da. And then that's how we know that H pylori is what causes ulcers, and he actually won a Nobel Prize for that.

Speaker 1:

That is a hardcore decision to do as a scientist.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, imagine being so committed to your science. No one's going to take me seriously, but I know it's this and yeah, and I remember hearing that on the second day of my biology 100. And I was like, okay, scientists are super hardcore. This is awesome.

Speaker 1:

Going full circle. That takes some tenacity to stick to it.

Speaker 3:

To drink the, the juice that contains bacteria yep, yep, and the creativity bringing it back, the creativity to try to think outside the box and use yourself as your test subject which today probably is unethical everybody listening at home.

Speaker 1:

Do not self-test yourself with bacteria yes, yes, please don't do that.

Speaker 3:

This was not a try it at home thing.

Speaker 1:

Great super facts, Melanie. Thank you.

Speaker 3:

Thanks.

Speaker 1:

We're at the end of our discussion, melanie. Thank you so much for being our guest today on the Science Podcast. One more time, your social handle on Instagram is I believe I've got it right here Mel underscore the artist under Mel underscore the underscore artist or Mel dot the dot artist.

Speaker 3:

Oh yeah, it's periods, not underscores.

Speaker 1:

Periods, not underscores. Okay.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

And then we also have the our lab Instagram, If anyone wants to follow on our pregnancy research journey, and that's WilsonPregnancyLab all one word lowercase.

Speaker 1:

Okay, all right, we'll make sure. We'll have a link in the show notes for that. You bet Okay, yeah, perfect, all right. I wish you the best of luck with your education, moving through your master's and the future. So thank you and best wishes in the future.

Speaker 4:

Okay, it is time for story time with me, adam. If you don't know what story time is, story time is when we talk about stories that have happened within the past one or two weeks. I actually have a few stories. We haven't done story time in a while.

Speaker 1:

No, we didn't have a podcast last week because of the the near death of bunsen yeah, that's, that's a crazy story.

Speaker 4:

Uh, I'll let either you or mom do that story, but I have some funny stories. Before that happens, a few mini, some observations that I've made is observation time with me. One thing is all the dogs really like it when you pet their ears and you pet and scratch their ears and they like it when I they like. The technique that I've developed is you put, is you put your knuckle in their ear and then you you scratch their ear with your knuckle. Um, and and Beaker and Bunsen really liked that. They made like noises when you do that.

Speaker 4:

Bunsen really like that. They mean like noises when you do that. And one thing I've noticed with Beaker is if you scratch her ears and you don't do a good enough job for what she likes, she goes a little crazy and then she rubs her ears on like a fabric material. So like the floor in in mom's, in the, in the, in the office or downstairs or the couch, she'll rub her face on it and she'll rub it very aggressively because she's not content with how you scratched her ears pretty much. Oh, sorry, beaker, I pet her ears a little bit too hard. And then Bernoulli one thing I've noticed is Bernoulli now makes the Bunsen sound. Bunsen, when you pet his ears, would always go, because he really likes it beaker does that, but not as loud, and now bernoulli's doing it too. So all the dogs make weird sounds when you pet their ears. Another observation I made is bernoulli runs funny. He makes a really funny sound when he's running his. His footsteps are really funny.

Speaker 1:

It goes and it's different than the other dogs because he kind of glops, he doesn't run.

Speaker 4:

I don't know. He's a funny guy and he's a little bitey guy. He's, he's bitey, but that's just because he's a puppy. But I found out that if you do something that he likes, pet him really good, or he's happy to see you, he doesn't bite you. So sometimes I'll grab him and then I'll flip him up like a little baby and that's when he gets bitey, because I don't want to do this. But then I pet his stomach or I pet his ears and he really likes it, so he stops biting. Or if he's super tired, if he's super tired he's just like, which reminds me a lot of Beaker. Beaker was like that when she was super tired. She let you pick her up and hug her, and she still does. But she doesn't super like getting close to people just because she doesn't like hugs or stuff like that.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, she really likes getting pets, but not hugged.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, that's Yep. My cat doesn't like thunderstorms and it's thunderstormy, so that's. Another observation is Ginger gets scared of thunderstorms or just storms in general, and she likes to run out the door a lot more. Anyway, that's my story, that's my. Those are my observations. Thank you for tuning into Observation Time. We'll go back to story time with mom and dad. Dad, do you have a story?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, if you follow Bunsen, beaker and Bernoulli on social media, we've had quite the week. Early Thursday, thursday morning, bunsen started to vomit Not out of the realm of things he doesn't. Not out of the realm of normalcy for Bunsen, because he does throw up from time to time. But it quickly became apparent that he was in distress. He was very, very uncomfortable. He was like uncontrollably vomiting. Something was really wrong with him and we rushed him to the pet hospital and over the next three days I can't really describe it it was a roller coaster. We did a whole live show about it. I've written numerous blog posts, but the long and short of it is he presented with symptoms of bloat at Emerge. They thought he did have bloat. They were prepping him for surgery to treat bloat and that's when they started to get all these puzzling results. It wasn't bloat, his stomach was fine and what they thought was his stomach on ultrasound was an absolutely massive growth inside his body Huge.

Speaker 1:

That night we got to see Bunsen and Chris and I talked about this again, like I said on the live show, and it was because the surgery was scheduled for the next day to remove it. It was a very dicey surgery. They were going in blind, the surgical team of Dr Keyes at Cedarwood and we wished him luck, and it was a mixture of wishing him luck and possibly saying goodbye to him. It was rough. Surgery came the next day and he survived and he's doing fine. You might hear him barking. He is recovering right now.

Speaker 1:

That is paraphrasing a huge amount of emotions and stress over bunsen, but we're just so thrilled that he's alive and that he's recovering and we are gonna get the results of the biopsy of the growth. There's two growths actually inside him. There's a treatment plan like if one of them's cancerous or both of them. But, yeah, you could call it a miracle, you could call it the skill of the surgical team, you could call it the grace of the universe, maybe all three. Yeah, that's the story of, that's the story of bunsen, and it became a massive story on social media, especially on twitter. Bunsen was trending and thousands of people were reaching out about their concern for him. It was a nice feeling knowing that the whole community of people were pulling for him. I could talk about this for more length, but that's my story of the week. Mom, do you have a story?

Speaker 2:

I sure do have a story, Boy oh boy. It has been a very heart-wrenching week because of Bunsen and I know Jason told that story. But we've also had just a lot of energy that's happening in the house with the changes, with Bunsen on house arrest, I guess in confinement arrest and taking care of the other dogs and making sure that we're honoring them. Bernoulli's been going to doggy daycare to allow him to play with friends and Beaker. I'm not sure that we'll be getting back into dock diving by the end of the summer because we've put so much focus in on Bunsen, but maybe we'll be able to make that happen. Other than that, I've been hanging out every day with Bunsen and Beaker and Bernoulli just so he can get better and heal up really, really nicely. And that's my story.

Speaker 4:

Oh, my section of the podcast. Thank you for sticking around to the end and I hope to see everyone on the next podcast episode. Maybe we can do something special like mailbag. We haven't done that in a long time. But yeah, I hope to see you all on the next podcast episode. Bye-bye.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's it for this week's show. Thank you so much for coming back to listen to the Science Podcast and for supporting us through our tough time with Bunsen surgery. Our Paw Pack, which is our community, like Patreon, has been a real rock in supporting Chris throughout the years, and one of the perks of joining the Paw Pack is you get your name read at the end. Take it away, chris.

Speaker 2:

Bianca Hyde, mary Ryder, tracy Domingue, susan Wagner, andrew Lin, helen Chin, Tracy Halberg, amy C, jennifer Smathers. Thank you. Marianne McNally Fun, lisa Shelley Smith, julie Smith, diane Allen, brianne Haas, linda Sherry, carol McDonald, catherine Jordan, courtney Proven, Donna Craig, wendy, diane Mason and Luke Liz Button, kathy Zerker and Ben Rathart.

Speaker 1:

For science, empathy and cuteness. Ben Rathart for science, empathy and cuteness.