Season 8 Episode 7: Stiff Person Syndrome, Cat's Kidneys and Dr. Vikram Baliga on the Wonder of Plants!

A rare autoimmune disorder can feel invisible until it steals someone’s movement, and stiff person syndrome is one of the starkest examples. We break down what’s happening in the nervous system when GABA-driven “calm down” signals get disrupted by autoantibodies, why symptoms can escalate into severe spasms and rigidity, and why the condition has captured public attention through Celine Dion’s story.

Then we shift from symptoms to source: an experimental CAR T-cell therapy designed to eliminate the B cells that produce the harmful antibodies in stiff person syndrome. We walk through what a phase two clinical trial reported, including real-world changes like faster walking and fewer people needing walking aids, plus the caveats that matter for anyone following medical research such as side effects, small sample sizes, and unknown durability.

Pet parents get a deep dive too. Chronic kidney disease in cats is common, progressive, and often detected late, so we cover a promising approach involving AIM protein and recombinant AIM therapy (RAIM) injections, including how researchers tracked toxins like indoxyl sulfate and what survival outcomes looked like over a year. 

Finally, plant scientist Dr. Vikram Baliga joins us to make botany feel urgent and strange in the best way, from ancient bristlecone pine “time capsules” to crown shyness and the science of how plants sense nearby competitors, plus a glimpse at nitrogen-fixing corn research that could reduce fertilizer dependence.

Dr. Vikram's links

All our social links are here!

Transcript

Welcome Back And What’s Ahead

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Um Hello, science enthusiasts. I'm Jason Zakowski.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

And I'm Chris Zakowski.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

We're the pet parents of Bunsen, Beaker, Bernoulli, and Ginger.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

And the science animals on social media. If you love science, and you love pets, you've come to the right spot.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

So put them on your safety glasses.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

And hold on to your tail.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

This is the Science Podcast. Hello and welcome back to the Science Podcast. This is episode seven of season eight. Chris, we're back. It's been uh another week and a half, but I'm glad we're back doing the episode.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Yeah, we've got a lot on the go in our professional and personal lives, and we love to put out the podcast, and that's why we're here.

SPEAKER_03 0:54

Are you happy with the nicer weather?

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Absolutely. So, in case anybody was wondering, we had what was it, fifth or sixth winter, and now it's been beautiful and sunny, and brighter days are ahead.

SPEAKER_03 1:10

Let's talk about what's on the show this week. In Science News, we're gonna be talking about a potential breakthrough in the treatment for stiff person syndrome. It is a relatively rare condition, but it does have a very famous case in Celine Dion, who you and I both really like.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

We very much enjoy Celine Dion.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

And in pet science, we're gonna be looking at a new experimental treatment for cats with chronic kidney disease. Uh, something that a lot of cats do suffer from later in their life. And it's one that you found this study.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

I did, I did. I found it for pet science this week.

SPEAKER_03 1:47

And our guest and ask and expert is Dr. Vikram Baliga, who is a plant scientist. So we're gonna get and talk about plants with Vikram. It's actually a really fascinating discussion. So let's get on with the show because there's no time like science time.

Stiff Person Syndrome Explained

SPEAKER_03 2:04

This week in science news, Chris, we're gonna talk about stiff person syndrome. What the heck is stiff person syndrome?

SPEAKER_01 2:13

As you said, it is rare, but it is an autoimmune neurological disorder that where your immune system mistakenly attacks parts of the brain and your spinal cord. It affects about 5,000 people when the United States. There is a famous case in Celine Dion, and she spoke about it at length in that, I believe it's on Netflix, and we watched that documentary where she discussed what she's been doing and how she's doing. And believe it or not, she's got some concerts in Paris. So I'm so excited to hear more about how she's doing.

SPEAKER_03 2:55

Yeah, it was very emotional documentary. Well done, too. If you like Celine Neon, I think you'd really like that documentary. So just a little bit more driving down into the science. Your body produces these things called auto antibodies. And you're these are immune proteins that attack your own tissue. You do need that if part of your tissue goes rogue. But the problem is these antibodies, these auto antibodies, they target proteins involved in GABA. That's gamma aminobutyric acid. This is a neurotransmitter that inhibits muscle activity. So GABA is a signal to calm down your muscles. And if you're having all of the auto antibodies attack those proteins, you lose that signal. So your body stiffens up. You're constantly in a state of stiffness.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Because the nervous system can't actually turn off the muscle firing.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

No.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

And therefore your muscles will become overactive and rigid. You have severe muscle stiffness and painful muscle spasms, reduced mobility. And in the documentary, we saw Celine Dion going through some of that. In extreme cases, the spasms, the muscle spasms, could be strong enough to break bones. And it's progressive. So many patients eventually require a walker or a wheelchair.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

It's serious because as of right now, there's no cure and there's no government-approved treatment in both Canada or the United States. And mostly it's just symptom management. So you people take muscle relaxants to keep the stiffness at bay. Um, you can take anti-anxiety meds, these boost that GABA activity. These don't fix their root problem, though, and their effectiveness wanes over time. As your body starts to become accustomed to those treatments, they work less over time.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

So the F the efficacy decreases.

SPEAKER_03 4:56

The efficacy of them starts to fail. So that's where the that's where we start. A little bit about stiff person syndrome. But the good news is there's a bit of a breakthrough in this new study.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yeah, you're absolutely right. So let's break down this new study.

CAR T Cell Therapy Results

SPEAKER_01 5:11

It's something called a MIV cell therapy. And this new cell therapy may treat stiff person syndrome at its source. So instead of looking and treating the symptoms, it targets the immune system itself. So what is MIV cell? It's an experimental CAR T cell therapy, but it was originally developed from cancer treatments and now it's being applied to this other area of health. And the CAR T cells are genetically modified immune cells, and they work in a mysterious way. They target and destroy B cells. And going back to biology, B cells are immune cells that produce antibodies. And because SPS or stiff person syndrome is caused by bad antibodies, removing the B cells may be removing the source. So not just stopping the fire, but shutting down the factory, making that fire.

SPEAKER_03 6:16

Good analogy. So here's the study design. It's a phase two clinical trial, which is exciting. 26 patients with stiff person syndrome. And that's a very small sample size, but remember, this is a very, yeah, there's only 5,000 people in the entire United States. And the goal was to test the effectiveness of this treatment. So after four months of taking this CAR T cell or MIV cell therapy, um, this is what they found. Walking speed improved in all of the participants. And the more exciting point is eight of 12 patients had to use walking aids before, and those eight of 12 no longer needed them. So that's a greater than 50% reduction in the use of walking aids. Before the treatment, people were walking slow and with a walker, and after they were walking quickly. And this is the exciting thing. Some of them even were able to run again. Isn't that insane?

SPEAKER_01 7:11

That's a massive functional change.

SPEAKER_03 7:13

Yeah, huge. So these results are described as remarkable and unprecedented, so it's a big deal. And for the it's the first time there is a treatment that targets the actual cause.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Now there are some side effects to this therapy. The most common is a low white blood cell count, and we still don't know, or scientists don't know how long the effects will last, or repeat treatments will be needed over time.

SPEAKER_03 7:42

So it's exciting because this is a cli this is a phase two clinical trial. The science nerds and the health nerds, they're gonna pick apart the study. They're gonna see, they're gonna look at the efficacy of the study and they're gonna crunch the numbers. We're just communicating the good news. And if if it gets through phase two, then it's on to the next phase. And you this may be a treatment that somebody who suffers from stiff person syndrome near you may be taking in the future. So really exciting. And who knows, it might help Selene Dion sing to her fullest extent again.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

That would be awesome.

SPEAKER_03 8:17

That's science news for this week.

Chronic Kidney Disease In Cats

SPEAKER_03 8:20

This week in Pet Science, we are gonna look at an experimental treatment for cats with chronic kidney disease. Now, I don't know a heck of a lot about cats. I'm learning, and one of the things I'm learning is male cats sure can have trouble real quick peeing.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Yes. Yes, you actually became familiar with that with Duncan's cat, George. He had crystals, and that was my first, I guess, venture, adventure into learning about the urethra being smaller, and then Gord's cats actually also mouse has that same problem. So they're being fed specific urinary tract food just to mitigate any potential for it happening again. That's not always a guarantee. Once it's happened, it could happen again, but we gotta try to do the best things for our cats.

SPEAKER_03 9:17

So we're not necessarily talking about the crystals in their urine, but that can lead to this chronic kidney disease. It's in cats, you have waste buildup, organ failure, and then they do die from it. And cats are very stoic. So a lot of times, what we've read is by the time cat parents realize there's a problem with their pet and they bring it into the vet, it's too late. So it is this progressive, irreversible kidney damage. Um, cats have a really high rate of chronic kidney disease and a much higher mortality. One of the reasons has to do with their AIM protein not activating not activating properly. It has a circulating immune protein and it helps immune cells like macrophages, white blood cells survive, and it promotes the cleanup of cellular waste. So if your AIM is doing a poor job, then you're not removing dead cells and toxic debris, and you know, that just starts to have all of these different waste things bind up, um, and it makes the waste in the body worse. Some cats have a genetic defect too. AIM binds too tightly to this other protein called IgM, and that's what leads to the chronic kidney disease progression.

RAIM Study Design And Survival

SPEAKER_01 10:33

So, what they're looking at is something called RAIM treatment, and it is a recombinant AIM, so RAIM, which is a lab-made version of AIM, and they give it through injection. And the idea is to replace dysfunctional AIM with a functional version of AIM, and that hopefully will restore the waste clearing ability, and your cat will be flushing out their systems in no time soon. The study design included 216 cats that were screened, and the cats that were selected had moderate to advanced kidney disease, so stage three, and the final groups that they selected were 26 cats with severe kidney disease. They were at stage three B. And there were nine cats with a milder kidney stage 3A, and so they were observational.

SPEAKER_03 11:38

Some of the cats they were given mouse R Aim, and some of the cats they were given cat R Aim, and 15 cats were given no treatment. That was the control. So some of the biomarkers they used were some is a biomarker called IS, which is endoxyl sulfate. That's a toxin from kidney dysfunction. So if you have lots of IS, that's a biomarker saying, Oh, it's not super great. Um, and IS was found to be more specific and predictive than many other markers, so that's why they decided to look for this as they did the treatment. The treatment protocol was the RAIM dose. They gave two milligrams per cat every two weeks. The mouse RAIM, there were six doses, the cat RAIM was 12 doses, and the study ran for an entire year. So we have a fairly good sample size, and we do have a long longitudinal study of about a year, which is great.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

So let's get to the results for survival. Without any treatment, the median survival of a cat was 167 days, and after the 360 days, their survival rate was 20%. So that's with no treatment. Oof, I know. But with RAIM, after 180 days, there was 100% survival rate in the cats, and then they looked after 360 days. The cats that received the mouse RAIM had an 83% survival rate, and the cats that were given feline RAIM, it was 80%. So that's a massive improvement in the survival rate of cats.

SPEAKER_03 13:26

That's that's amazing. And without treatment, all of the different biomarkers for terrible progression of the disease went up, like the endoxyl sulfate. But with AIM, the disease progression slowed or stopped, and all of those biomarkers remained stable, which is cool. It didn't seem to reverse the damage, they just stabilized it. So I just want everybody to know that's what the biomarker seemed to show. Whatever they were before, they remained that after. But that's good. You don't want the kit the kidney disease to reach a point where the cat dies.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Additionally, and interestingly, some cats did develop antibodies to RAIM. So that was an immune response in cats to the treatment, but there were no allergic reactions and no loss of effectiveness for the cats.

SPEAKER_03 14:22

Now you mentioned this was preliminary, Chris. That was a good ob that was a good way to sum it up. It's a small sample size and it wasn't fully standardized, means all these, meaning all these cats didn't have the same diet or medications or clinical care. It was like whoever they could get. There was some Knox of the study of not having blood pressure and regular urine tests. Um, and it maybe perhaps wasn't randomized perfectly. But in the end, the revolt results are very promising, and it will lead to further avenues of research with this R AIM or RAIM type of treatment. So I'm hopeful that in a year or two we might see larger studies that look at bigger groups of cats that are hopefully showing that 80% survival at the one-year mark. That'd be great for cats.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

And then they could live longer with us.

SPEAKER_03 15:13

Yeah, cats are cool.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Cats are cool.

SPEAKER_03 15:17

All right, that's pet science for this week.

Meet Plant Scientist Vikram Baliga

SPEAKER_03 15:21

It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I have Dr. Vikram Baliga with us today, horticultural professor. Doc, how are you doing this evening?

SPEAKER_00 15:31

I am so good, and I'm so excited to be with you. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_03 15:35

Yeah, I'm excited as well. It is not every day that we get a plant person on the show. So thank you for agreeing to come on the show.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Yeah, absolutely. Again, I love the stuff you put online and your animal family is so cool. And so yeah, I was thrilled to be asked. I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_03 15:55

Well, thanks. Just real quick, where are you calling into the show from? Where are you in the world?

SPEAKER_00 15:59

I am in Lubbock, Texas, which is in the middle of nowhere.

SPEAKER_03 16:03

I had a friendly disagreement with one of our amazing community members last night. They had thought they think where I'm from, Alberta, Canada is bigger than Texas, um, the state of Texas. And Texas is, I knew this to be true. Texas is a teeny tiny bigger, teeny, teeny tiny bigger than Alberta, Canada. Just by smidgen.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

That's pretty crazy because just to think about, because Texas is quite large for it to be one state that big. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

Yeah. I was wondering if you could talk to us about your training in science. What's going on with your science background?

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Yeah, I have studied plants for a long time in a lot of different avenues. I actually started when I got into college, I was studying biomedical engineering.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

And that was not for me. That we I like to say that the College of Engineering and I came to a mutual understanding where they we both decided that was not for me. And then I grew up gardening with my granddad. And that like I'd always loved plants. And so I had an advisor that was like, What do you like? And I was like, I've always liked nature and gardening. And he said, Oh, maybe horticulture. I did my undergrad at Texas AM University. I actually have a Bachelor of Arts in horticulture. I studied landscape design, took lots of science and stuff too, but ultimately we were focused more on the design and the art side of it. And then I jumped to a Master of Science at Texas Tech University and I studied olive trees for olive oil production. It was pretty cool. That's cool. It was one of those things that like I didn't know I was interested in, but there was funding, and so I did it. And ended up loving it. It was really an interesting field. Nice. Were you a sorry go ahead?

SPEAKER_03 17:56

No, keep going, Doc. All good. Yeah, keep going.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Oh, I was just gonna say, and then I finished, I took a couple years off, worked, and did a couple other things, and then did my PhD also in horticulture, but focused on urban water conservation and landscape use.

SPEAKER_03 18:11

Nice. That's fat, that's fascinating. I love your your training. Um I've never spoken to somebody who's ever researched olive trees, so that that's pretty cool. Were you a science kid growing up? I always asked this of scientists like were you the a science kid or did you fall into it later?

SPEAKER_00 18:32

I was always a science kid. It was always my thing. I always science and engineering, engineering from the standpoint of tinkering with stuff. I loved taking stuff apart and figuring, trying to figure out how it worked and put it back together, but then grew up on Bill Nye and science shows and read all I could about science. And so it's always been something I've been passionate about.

SPEAKER_03 18:56

Nice. In Alberta, the Science 10 curriculum. So that's our grade 10s. I'm not sure what that is in American because you guys have like juniors and seniors. I'm not we're no I'm not familiar with those. But, anyways, one of the science units we teach is plants, and it's always a really hard sell to these grade 10 kids because they are that is the last thing uh they care about learning. They're like, Can we please learn about giraffes? I'm like, nope, we're gonna learn about the spongy mesophil today, so let's go.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

You know what's funny is my college students are largely the same a lot of times. Can we learn about something with a face? Nope, sorry. Well you said this is for you.

SPEAKER_03 19:37

I just watched a movie this week about an alien life form without a face, and they are just as personal as personable as one with a face. That's from Project Hail Mary, everybody. Go see it.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Oh, I cannot wait to see that, by the way. I'm so excited.

SPEAKER_03 19:50

So you teach horticulture currently, right? I'd imagine do you as I said it's a bit of a hard sell, though. Mark Watney did give botanists a big boost from the Martian. Um what makes you so passionate about teaching plants? Because it's your whole life. Um, I love plants, but I'd love to hear your perspective.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Excuse me. Yeah, that's such a good question because I think that's that that's an important piece of education is being passionate about what you talk about, right? And loving what you talk about. I have always just thought of the world around us and the plant world around us as something that feels so alien in a lot of ways when you really start diving into it. It's so different, but we're so dependent on them, right? Like they are the these incredible engines that turn solar radiation into houses and watermelons and uh hamburgers and everything else, right? They're the processors that turn light energy, heat energy into chemical energy in the form of food and everything else. And it's this incredible, complex, interconnected system that we're wholly dependent on, but that fades into the background. Like you were talking about. A lot of times it's like the last thing people want to talk about, the last thing people think about. And so for me, I am passionate about giving people a better understanding of it, of finding ways to just really connect with nature. We're a species that grew up in the forests and in the jungle and in the prairie and breathe the life that these plants put out. And then we've moved away from that. And I feel like it gets me up in the morning to be able to go out and give people small bits of that appreciation back.

SPEAKER_03 21:45

Yeah. Isn't that the truth? That I I teach inside all day. I imagine you might be out in the field sometimes, but you're probably teaching in a you're constructing in a classroom. But like one of the best parts of my day is I get home and then I take the dogs. I'm very Fortunate I live on a farm. Um, so I take them for a walk down through a creek, and uh in the spring and the summer when all the trees are it it just it it's so I don't know what it's you have such a connection with the world when you're around plant life like that. I was wondering if you could share some fun facts that make would make the average person care a little bit more about plants, if you could.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Oh gosh, there's so many. And I was thinking about this question, and I'm trying to narrow it down to just one.

Ancient Bristlecone Pines As Climate Records

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Let me talk about a specific plant that I really like that I think is really cool. We're in this place where we're trying to figure out where our where nature is headed, where our climate is headed, where all of these things are super pressing for us as humans going forward. And I like to think of some really old trees as really cool historical records of where we're been, we where we've been and where we're going. So there's this tree called the Bristle Cone Pine Tree. And they grow at least in in North America, maybe up into parts of Canada, but through parts of the Rockies. You can find them in the Great Basin near California, parts of Yellowstone. There's lots of different places. And the oldest one that we know about is about 5,000 years old. Whoa, what? The oldest single plant, right, that that we know of is about 5,000 years old, but we actually don't know the upper limit of how old these plants can get. And so you can go in and take cores out of these trees, just like you would take like geological cores or ice cores, and you can know what years, like you can count back and say, okay, 3,500 years ago, there was a fire in this part of the forest. This year we had more carbon in the atmosphere. It rained more, it was warmer, the climate was better, there was pest pressure. So we can look at these ancient plants and get tell the story of the world around us. And just to put that in context, 5,000 years ago when this tree germinated, we were figuring out written language. We were trying to figure out how to write things down, and this tree was already growing. It's just it they're incredible.

SPEAKER_03 24:09

That's bananas. Like what's what civilizations were around there besides just roaming bands of humans?

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Like um through North America, we there were uh some actually lots of indigenous populations through. That that's putting us back into on sort of the world stage Egypt, like ancient Egypt, building pyramids and figuring those things out as this tree was growing.

SPEAKER_03 24:36

That's wild. Tree was around when we're being constructed.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

And you think about it, like there there have been what maybe four generations of this since the last ice age. And it's interesting because there's a pest, a pine tree pest called the pine bark beetle. Oh, yeah. That as glaciers descended into North America and carved out parts of the Rockies, this beetle was pushed south and east where it was warmer. And over the past few thousand years and now more and more due to climate change, they're getting pushed back into that old range. And a lot of the shorter lived pines that live two, three, four hundred years are getting devastated by them because there have been so many generations since this beetle moved away. But we see almost no damage on bristle cones and other long-lived pines because there have been so few generations of them, so few individuals that they still remember that pest. They still have the chemical defenses and all of those things. When we think about conservation, like all these old plants matter. It matters that they're still here and the stories that they can tell and all of that.

SPEAKER_03 25:46

It remembers the beetle. He's like, the beetle. Oh, I remember that a couple thousand years ago. We had it out and I kicked its butt. Um that's hilarious. Wow. It puts it into perspective because in Canada we have long-lived trees. Nothing like that, I don't think. Um, I just did a quick Google search of this bristle cone pine, and I don't think it gets up into Canada. It's more California, Nevada. What does it look like, Doc? What does this tree look like? Is it big or is it small?

SPEAKER_00 26:19

They're not super big, they're gnarled and twisted, they've got these intricate, like swirling bark patterns. They almost look like art pieces. And they I don't know, they're just built and evolved to live a long time and take whatever the environment has to throw at them.

unknown 26:40

Hmm.

SPEAKER_03 26:41

I like that. You can make people way more interested with like awe, right? I think not to knock any horticultural science, but the astrophysicists usually have that in spades. They're very good at the awe factor. But if you can, I I obviously don't teach astrophysics, so you always have to storytell and find other really kind cool, awe-inspiring facts and figures. So that's that's a really fun one.

Spotting Viral Plant Video Nonsense

SPEAKER_03 27:09

As I was going through your social media, it's got a lot of really fun content. Uh, I think my favorite series is where you react to um like goobers on the internet planting things. And I love it when the experts do that. Like they're my favorite types of videos where for context, you'll have some health influencer saying something crazy and then an actual expert say, Yeah, what they just said was nonsense. Do you have a favorite one that was just wildly incorrect of these goobers planting stuff that that that is wrong or weird, or they got it the clickbait was obviously good, but the technique was wrong?

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Gosh, there's honestly, there's so many. It's hard to choose one. But I'll tell you my favorite like type of video. It's hard to pin it down to just one, but the one that first got me into doing this is somebody had sent me a video, this was years ago, of uh five minute crafts or one of these groups or pages taking like half a kiwi and half a banana and gluing them together and planting it. No way, no way. And then getting this like weird hybrid banana kiwi tree. Oh, if only. And it's just oh my gosh, oh my god, but people believe it. It's wild that people believe it, but people believe it. And that has evolved in all these other things. I saw one where some guy did the same thing with an apple and an orange and zip tied them together and then planted them, and you get this like goofy, crappy AI tree that grows and has both on it. I saw one with a watermelon and a pineapple and all this stuff. It's just it makes good television. It's wild and it's wacky, but it's there's not rooted in any type of reality.

SPEAKER_03 28:56

How can we like okay? So obviously, I think I'm fairly good at spotting like the weird videos like that, but they get millions of views. And if you look at the comments, it destroys your faith in humanity sometimes. Because people are like, I'm gonna try that. What a great idea. Like the comp maybe they're bots, I don't know. Um, do you have any tips for people? If you see a video like that, what can we watch out for? Or is it just like a general sense of we shouldn't be zip tying fruit together?

SPEAKER_00 29:23

That's a good tip just to begin with. There's like there that's not the right way to do it, just to begin with. But I think if they're using so there are some videos I'll say that are really cool time-lapse kind of things where you see like a seed germinate and grow into a bean and all that, those are great. But if they're using like uh what looks like TV magic to plant something and then it like grows quickly into something else, like it's either CGI or AI, because one, it doesn't work, but a lot of these things, it's the I think the too good to be true factor really plays here. It's just like using a little bit of critical thinking. And if we as horticulturists, like who or botanists or scientists who could make if we if I could make a tree that would give me bananas and kiwis, I absolutely would have done it. Right? We would have these trees that have 20 different species of fruit on them, and we would sell them to everyone and we all be rich, but like we don't because it's not real. So there's this big like it if it's too good to be true, it definitely is not true.

SPEAKER_03 30:32

Man, my my two favorite fruits, my and this is you could judge me all you could judge me because you're the horticulturist, you're the plant expert, is blueberries and blackberries. I I love blueberries and blackberries. And like where I live in the great white north in Alberta, Canada, they are expansive. Um I would love a blueberry and blackberry tree, but they don't I I know on the west coast of Canada, blackberries are a weed and they grow out of control, but they do not grow where I live, and I love them. Yeah, I think if somebody had figured it out, they'd have some black a blueberry tree at the very least, because those things are crazy expensive.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

And yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And it's like there's this whole class of scientists don't want you to know whatever. It's like you've never met a scientist. Have you ever met a group of people more exciting or more excited to tell you about stuff? If I if we could do it, we would you would know about it. We would be screaming it from the rooftops. We want you to know things. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 31:38

I there was a couple chemistry ones that my students, when they came out, it was like all they wanted to talk about, and I had to explain to all my classes, it was nonsense. There's one somebody put like peanut butter on a piece of coal, and then they microwaved it and turned into a diamond. And then the kids were like, I tried it at home and it started on fire. And I'm like, first off, where did you get a piece of coal from? That is not something you have in your house. And second of all, are you okay? And then there was another one where if you mix Mountain Dew with baking soda, it glows, and it's clearly like they cut away and it was luminal or something like that. So I had to explain it. That doesn't work at all. So yeah, but it tricks, it's so good to be true, people just fall into the fantasy of it.

SPEAKER_02 32:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:29

Thanks for sharing your opinion on that. And folks, we'll have a link to Vikram's Instagram. Go check out some of the videos. I just love your face when you're like watching these crazy setup videos.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

Just see my faith in humanity die a little bit more each time.

SPEAKER_03 32:43

Yeah, it's good. Speaking of things that are wild, is that do you have do you have a crazy plant in your back pocket story that does wild stuff that you're just you just love and you're fascinated with? I know that uh Punchry that we had just talked about is like very old. I don't know if it do does crazy stuff. We don't really have a lot of plants up here in Canada that do crazy stuff. Probably the craziest one we have is the dogwood, because the moose top of it. And if you are around dogwood at the wrong time, a moose will just be standing in there and they could murder you. So I don't know if that's wild. It's a wild time. But, anyways, I was wondering if you have a plant, a crazy plant that you could tell us about, because I love those stories.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

So there's a few good ones. Let's talk about again, it's not maybe one specific plant, but it's like a group of plants.

How Trees Sense Neighbors

SPEAKER_00 33:35

And I again, if you want one specific one, I can probably give you one. But I think there's an interesting thing about how plants communicate with the world around them. Okay. And this could be true of a lot of different ones, but there's something called crown shyness in deciduous trees, especially in like deciduous forests. So again, these are trees where the leaves fall off at some point of the year. Gotcha. And if you stand like in a deciduous forest, a tempered forest, and you look up, you'll notice that the canopies of the trees don't really touch each other. There are these intricate patterns. And if you Google crown shyness, there's just the cool pictures that come up. But there's like all these intricate patterns and spaces between them where it looks like they're staying away from each other. And the fact is they are, because these trees can see each other.

unknown 34:24

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Uh and it turns out that plants can actually detect where other plants are around.

SPEAKER_03 34:32

Oh, okay. I thought you were gonna say like they can see because I've peed on many trees, and that's embarrassing if they could see that.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

No, they weren't watching you do that. They continue. Yeah, no, yeah, no, they're not like necessarily watching you. They probably know you're there on some in some context of knowing that is outside of our understanding, but they're probably not this guy again. Photosynthesis, as we were joking about earlier, talking about earlier, is light coming into the plant, absorbing it through a pigment, converting it to stored chemical energy. But because of that, they can detect all different wavelengths and bands of visible and invisible light, though most of the active stuff is in is in the visible spectrum. So it turns out that plants will, I don't want to use the word purposefully. I'm trying not to anthropomorphize them too much, but they will grow in different directions so as to not compete with the plants around them because they want to get all the sunlight they can, all the resources, and growing up under another tree or into another tree causes damage and competition. Right. So there's evidence that one of the reasons for crown shyness and that we can see up through them is that as the wind blows, they knock into each other and it breaks off growing tips and things like that. But there's also pretty good evidence that as plants absorb red light and reflect infrared light in different wavelengths, phytochrome and different receptors in the leaves can detect light coming off of other plants and can tell that it's from those other plants. So they will, it causes chemical signaling, which makes the plants grow in different directions, so they grow away from competition. And there's actually across species really good evidence of this where plants that are normally understory plants, if a taller plant detects them based on the wavelengths and things like that, instead of growing in different directions, they'll try to just grow taller to outcompete them. And there's all this intricate chemical signaling through organic compounds in the air, through light reflection, through stuff coming out of the roots, that they can sense the world around them and interact with it actively. And again, like you were saying earlier, we just think of plants as these weird background things that are around us, and we don't think about them, we don't care about them, but they're intricate complex organisms that are actually interacting and communicating with the world around them. And I just think that's the coolest thing.

SPEAKER_03 36:59

It goes in the face of or maybe it doesn't. Like it's they're not cooperating, but they're actively not competing. Does that make sense where this is going?

SPEAKER_00 37:09

Yep. I think it does.

SPEAKER_03 37:12

So like competition and natural selection is what causes change and evolution, and this seems to go in the face of that is they're not actively competing for resources, they're just choosing not to compete because it's better. I guess that helps them survive.

SPEAKER_00 37:29

It does, and I think these are largely evolutionary adaptations where over time, as these plants grew into each other, and the ones that competed less effectively or ended up having more damage because they ran into another tree or grew into another tree, like they their genetic lines died off. So the ones that could avoid that direct competition in some way, and they still compete, sometimes antagonistically, but a lot of times just because that's the resources are there, maybe the ones that could grow in a different direction and the signaling was right, they were the ones that reproduced. And so we have these trees that now, millions of years down the line, look like they're avoiding competition. It's just they're competing in a different way and using their resources a little more wisely.

SPEAKER_03 38:20

If only humans can learn from plants like that, I know we don't have to compete with each other. Just make sure everybody has enough. And if you're over there, I'll be over here and we'll just be okay with each other.

SPEAKER_00 38:32

Yeah, just get along, do our best.

SPEAKER_03 38:36

I will stand in our we, if folks watch our social media, a big part of our social media is taking our dogs and now the cat because he comes in his cat backpack down into the creek. So there's a couple really thick forests of deciduous trees, poplar. And I'll take a look. It'd be really interesting to see what that looks like in the middle of the summer when everything's leaved out.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

It's really cool looking.

SPEAKER_03 39:00

I've I look up all the time because there's birds and owls and stuff up there, but I've never looked at the pattern before. That's it's gonna blow my mind if I've missed that all of these years. But thanks to our ch our talk, I'll see it all the time now. What's the name of that again? Crown something? Sorry, Doc. Crown Shyness. Crown shyness. Oh. Oh, they're so bashful. I like that.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

Yeah, yep. They don't want to, they don't want to see anyone else. They don't want to be close to anyone else.

SPEAKER_03 39:28

The do you ever get students that are obsessed with the predatory plants, like the Venus flytrap and those things? That's all they want to, because that's what sometimes some kids, when we do plants, are like, can we learn about the Venus flytrap? I just want to learn about the Venus because it eats.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

Yeah, no, for sure. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 39:46

Canadian Tire was selling them one year, and we got two or three of them, and they all died immediately. So I don't think they're built for Canada.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

They are tough to they can be tough to keep for sure.

SPEAKER_03 39:56

Yeah, I was shocked how small they were. I was thinking like little shop of horror size, and they were like the size of my pinky. I was a little underwhelmed. They're tiny. Yeah, yeah. I was pretty underwhelmed with how big they were. I was like, I've been sold a lie by Rick Moranus and the Audrey.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Yeah. In some ways, we're probably fortunate they're not bigger.

SPEAKER_03 40:17

Can you imagine? Eat a person. Yeah, that's there. You go.

SPEAKER_00 40:21

Well, and there's a lot of weird predatory plants or carnivorous plants, but there's some that so there's one called a bladder wart, and it's an aquatic one. And essentially they have these little underground pods with a door on them, like a hydraulically locked trap door. And when a little fish or an insect or whatever swims by them, they snap the door and it creates negative pressure into this little pod, and it'll suck in the fish or the insect, and then that door swings shut and traps them in there. So they're like active traps.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

And then they just digest them alive, which is also crazy.

SPEAKER_03 41:05

But it's like the sarlac from Yep.

unknown 41:11

Jeez.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

Again, we're lucky some of these things aren't bigger. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 41:16

I appreciate that the fact story about crown shinus. That's very cool. I didn't know what you're gonna say, and I was that one. I I feel it goes back to your uh not to recap what we already talked about, but I think it it goes back to how you talked about how your love of plants is like a togetherness with everything on earth. And this is like a very like more holistic fun fact, I think, about the plants. Then uh so I appreciate that. That's very cool.

Nitrogen Fixing Corn And Climate Solutions

SPEAKER_03 41:43

I was wondering if there's anything count coming down the pipe in botany that you're getting excited about. I listened to another podcast called The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, and one of the stories they did was about this thing in uh enzyme called Rubisco and some plant enzyme, and they're all getting excited about Rubisco, and it's gonna become they're trying to engineer it to be more powerful. And I was like, you lost me. So I'm gonna have to listen to that episode again. But I was wondering if, for your opinion, is there anything coming down the pipe in botany that gets you really excited?

SPEAKER_00 42:16

I think a lot of the work being done right now in botany, in terms of how do we address climate change, how do we address some of those big challenges we're facing as a planet, but as a species over the next, I don't know how long. It's it seems imminent now, right? Like it's here. But there's some such cool work in plants that are more heat tolerant, that can take different environments better. Even one, so there is this land race of corn of maize that was I'm gonna use the word discovered in big air quotes here, because I should say discovered by Western science, because there were indigenous Mexican people that had been maintaining this land race for thousands of years. They've worked with this plant for a long time, but it was recently quote unquote discovered, because that's how it's written about. We talk a lot in, I guess, the field, how legumes, so peas and beans and things like that, can pull nitrogen out of the air, make their own fertilizer, and then as they decompose, provide fertilizer to other plants. These corn plants actually produce aerial roots. So they're these little, and they're weird, they kind of look like hot dogs. I don't know why, but they're these little weird, like clubby, weirdly meaty hot dog-looking roots that come off this plant. Okay. And they I yeah, bear with me. And they actually form a relationship with something called a nitrifying bacteria. So it's a bacteria that that forms like slime molds, colonies on top of these roots. And these nitrifying bacteria are pulling nitrogen out of the air and feeding the corn. Plant above ground, something that we thought for a while only legumes could do and select others. The corn plants have been doing it. And those types of relationships, those types of genetic traits are things that could potentially be bred into other crops, especially other grain crops. And if we could do that, we could really reduce the like manufactured fertilizer dependence of entire industries. And so when we think about the energy cost and the fuel costs and the carbon cost to make a lot of our fertilizers to run our ag systems, if we could breed and develop plants that can do that on their own and produce the same, we can really start to reduce some of our dependence on fossil fuels. And those types of research and figuring out how things that are already happening and happening in nature can be taken and implemented in different ways to make us more efficient and more eco-conscious and all of that. That gets me excited. I think that's so cool.

SPEAKER_03 45:06

So the idea like grain and uh barley and wheat, potentially, those grain crops, that's cool.

SPEAKER_00 45:12

Possibly. Corn is physiologically a little bit different, but there's some similarities between a lot of our grains, a lot of our grass type crops that could potentially be used and developed. But a lot of corn is grown globally. And so even if it was quote unquote just corn that we were able to put some of these technologies or some of these traits into, that would be huge.

SPEAKER_03 45:38

Yeah. And that doesn't there's uh we're talking here in the middle of March 2026 for people that might be listening to this later. There's strife going on right now, like there's wars, and some countries produce the fertilizer substrates. Yeah. And if you don't get those substrates, you don't have fertilizer anyways, no matter if it costs money or produces carbon to get it. That's another thing that would be helpful, I think, with this technology. That's great. Absolutely. All right. I had a student about five years ago that was obsessed with slime molds. So when you said slime molds, I had a little chuckle because I remember remembering the student that just knew everything about slime mold. That was their whole thing with slime molds. It was, I think it was right after COVID and during COVID, kids were making slime. Uh there you go. You were stuck at home and you're making slime, and one thing led to the another, and then you Wikipedia slime mold, and then that was your whole personality for a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 46:34

I think I I still have a sourdough starter that happened pretty much the same way. I was like, how do I make sourdough? And then it was my whole personality for a while.

SPEAKER_03 46:42

That's that's the it's cool to have your whole personality be something that you're fascinated and interesting with. I could listen to this kid talk about slime mold all day long. I was I didn't know anything about slime mold, so there you go. That's awesome.

A Rescue Dog Named Brodo Waggons

SPEAKER_03 46:55

As we get close to the end of our talk here, Vikram, I was wondering if you could share a pet story from your life with us. We like to have scientists share their stories about their science, but also pets because we have that's our cross-section. We have people that love pets and love science and they listen to our show.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

Yeah, absolutely. This one's actually fairly recent. So we lost our dog of oh, 13 years, 12 years last summer. Oh no, thank you. I appreciate that. It was unexpected, and she was getting older, but still it was a sad deal. And so, yeah, we lost Jesse last June, I believe. And we were talking about my son's 10. He was nine at the time, and so this that was his first and this is I'm sorry, this is a sad story. Like it gets better, I promise.

SPEAKER_03 47:41

It's okay. No, it's all that's part of the life of a pet. They don't live forever. It's okay.

SPEAKER_00 47:45

And I think for a lot of us, pets are and losing a pet is our first run-in. For those of us that are fortunate, I guess, one of our big first run-ins with loss and grief and those kinds of things. And so it's hard, but it's a learning thing. So that was in June. Her we adopted her when we bought our first house in 2013 in November. And almost to the day of like her gotcha day or whatever, when we adopted her, we had a big cold front blowing in the town, which I'm gonna say a big cold front in northwest Texas is a lot different than a big cold front where you are.

SPEAKER_03 48:19

It's all good. It's just relative. It's good.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

It's relative, but it was gonna be freezing, it was gonna be cold, right? A friend of ours called and said, It was actually right after Thanksgiving, and our friend of ours called and was like, I've had this dog hanging around near my house. My dog made friends with them, but I can't keep them. Would you be interested? I know you lost your dog and you might be interested looking. And so we said, sure, we'll try it. So this dog has been living on the street for I don't know how long, some amount of time.

SPEAKER_03 48:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:50

And so he brings this dog over, and this conversation happened with my wife, and I was not home. And so she's telling me this, and I'm like, Oh, okay, whatever. I we'll see how it goes. And literally an hour after this dog like got to our house, I was laying on the ground, like just on the floor in front of the fireplace. We had a fire going, and he just comes and curls up next to me and watches the fire, and I'm like, Oh, I'm a goner. Like you're toast. Well, I'm toast. And he is actually so we ended up checking to make sure he didn't have an owner. He already knew some commands, so he had been someone's dog, and we think he got dumped, which is just the saddest thing.

SPEAKER_03 49:28

Yeah, but he's not his family know.

SPEAKER_00 49:31

And he's such a good dog. We named him, it sounds like you're into like nerdy stuff, so we named him Brodo Waggons. I love it. And his collar kind of looks like the inscription of the on the one ring with Broto Waggins in the middle. And uh he's been just the best little dog. And we were we weren't joking around and not joking that it's okay. Jesse knew that we needed a new friend, and so on her birthday, so to speak, she sent us a new friend, and it was really cool.

SPEAKER_03 50:00

Aw. That is sweet. Broto wagons. That I've never heard that name before. That is great. So it's a smaller dog. How many pounds big is this dog?

SPEAKER_00 50:13

Uh he's probably about 26 pounds. So he's not tiny, but he's not real big. He's dense. Don't really know what he is. He's this weird mix of several things. We think maybe some healer and maybe some corgi. Oh. And uh, but his head's too big a little bit. Uh he's built weirdly, but he's such a fun dog.

SPEAKER_03 50:35

That's amazing. Some sometimes it's a sad start to great stories. So I do appreciate your sharing your pet story with us. You might inspire somebody out there to another uh Hobbit or Lord of the Rings fan to take some punage with their next dog's name. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 50:55

I think you absolutely should. Yeah, I think anyone out there listening should. There you go.

SPEAKER_03 51:00

Vikram, we're at the end of our chat. Thank you so much for being a guest today. You're on the social medias. I only know you're on Instagram. Are you anywhere else people can connect with?

SPEAKER_00 51:11

Yeah, I'm on most of the socials. I'm probably most Instagram, I'm probably most active on Instagram and threads. I do have a TikTok and a YouTube and a Facebook, all under the same name, the Plant Prof. I also have my own podcast called Planthropology.

SPEAKER_03 51:25

We'll have a link to that as well. I'll make sure there's a link to the planthropology. That's cool. Yep. So I had a kid, you might get a kick out of this. Maybe we'll just maybe I'll get your opinion on it. When we talk about the cell, the kids are always like the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. And then this kid said, because the next unit is the plant, he's he's just a light bulb king of mine. He's like, oh my god, if the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, the plant is the powerhouse of the planet. And I thought that was just a sweet way to sum up just how important plants are.

SPEAKER_00 52:02

I I think they nailed it. Yeah, absolutely.

Patreon Thanks And Sign Off

SPEAKER_03 52:06

That's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the Science Podcast. And a shout out to all the top dogs. That's the top tier of our Patreon community, the Pop Pack. You can sign up in our show notes. All right, Chris, let's hear those names that are part of the top dogs.

SPEAKER_01 52:23

Amelia Fete, Re Oda, Carol Hano, Jennifer Challenge, Linnea Janet, Karen Cronister, Vicky Otero, Christy Walker, Sarah Bram, Wendy, Diane, Mason and Lou, Helen Chin, Elizabeth Bourgeois, Marianne McNally, Katherine Jordan, Shelly Smith, Laura Steffenson, Tracy Leinbach, Anne Uchita, Heather Burbach, Kelly, Tracy Halbert, Ben Rather, Debbie Anderson, Sandy Brimer, Mary Rader, Bianca Hyde, Andrew Lynn, Brenda Clark, Brianne Hawes, Peggy McGeal, Holly Birch, Kathy Zirker, Susan Wagner, and Liz Button.

SPEAKER_02 53:12

Let's go adventure in the deep blue sea.