Meeting Mr. DNA

most interesting molecule. I mean it depends on if you like yours at your nucleic acids being ribos oriented or de ox. Get that ribos out of my head. This is d n A. It's d n A time. So this is gonna be part one. Uh, and today we're going to mostly be focusing on the history and the current research around using DNA. But please stick with us also for next time when we're going to focus on

some topics aroun using DNA as a technological tool. Yeah, and uh, as we record this, it is April twenty five, which is National DNA Day. Complete coincidence, but a lovely coincidence. Yes, I had no idea. Yeah, we didn't. I just happened to find it while I was doing a search on news about DNA. And the reason it is National DNA Day is that on this day in two thousand three, the Human Genome Project completed its quest to to map out the human genome. So there you go, Happy National

DNA Day. So where's the treasure buried? Sadly, we don't have all the information necessary to find the treasure? Here here's the last part is stored in an our two unit that we came. Yeah, it was not going to go down the force unleashed path of logic. There in lies madness. But I do want to say that I read us an interesting thing from one of the researchers who worked on the genome project, and because they're often asked, well, if you mapped out the genome, why haven't we cured

cancer yet? Right, And they said, well, think of it this way. Imagine that the human genome is really a collection of ancient books written in a language no one speaks or writes in anymore. You have just spent more, you know, a decade or more, collecting all of the books, and now you are absolutely certain that you have all the books that make up the entire collection of this one library, but just still can't read them yet, all

of them, or at least not all of them. And that's what is going to be taking up a lot of time for the next decade or so while we while we learn what these books say and what they mean and how to use them. Yeah. Right now we've got the equivalent of like run spot run yeah, or go spot go. I'm behind on my board book titles. Let's see Dick and Jane is what you're talking about?

That that kind of thing. But uh, but yeah, So so today, in this first episode, we wanted to just talk about what DNA is and what it is being used for currently. Look go into a little bit of the history of of how it was potentially created here on the planet Earth, and also how we discovered it, because you know, it's a relatively resdiscovery in human history, right,

So let's start with the basics at base. DNA is, of course chemistry, but as we all know, it's the basis for all of the stuff we know of in the universe that is definitely in the alive category, though maybe not some things that are just maybe sort of alive, like prions and we're not going to do all the standard stuff you learned in school about what DNA does, but just for a brief refresher, the really simple version,

what does DNA do well. You can think about your body as a type of machine, and that machine is made up of parts, and most of these parts are proteins. Proteins are like tiny, very simple robots that work together to make more complex robots that are your organs, which of course has work together to make the real robot, which is you. But they're all these little robots in your body and their proteins. So what makes these proteins. The answer is d n A. DNA or de oxy

ribonucleic acid, is a long chain molecule. It's one really huge long molecule that contains an ordered sequence of what are called nucleotides. These are the building box of the d n A and the sequence of the nucleotides, what order they come in determines what proteins get made and how they get used. So DNA, you can think of it as like both the code for what your body should be like and also the machine that builds the machines that builds the machines that build your body, one

protein at a time. Now, if you find all that confusing, you can just refer to the helpful educational film Mr DNA at the beginning of Jurassic Park, which is so good is actually, where did you come from? I watched it again before we before we recorded the show. So let's talk about, like, well, where do we think DNA came from? Like where? What? Why? We know that it's it's integral to life here on Earth. How did it

get started? That's a really interesting question, and it's easily a whole episode in itself, So we can't explore that entirely here if we want to get to all the other stuff we were going to talk about today. But the short answer is this is still a really big,

unsettled question in the origins of life in biochemistry. We have some good ideas, but nobody really knows with confidence yet where DNA came from an exactly what role it played in the emergence of life on Earth, for example, one big question, Like we said earlier, DNA is the basis of pretty much all life on Earth today, But which came first? D NA or life? Was there non DNA based life before there was DNA based life? Yeah, it's one of those chicken or the egg kind of

kind of questions. Exactly it really is and uh, it's the There have been plenty of people looking into trying to at least hypothesize where DNA came from, whether or not it was a product of some early form of life, or if in fact it was the thing that allowed life to emerge. Yeah, and one issue here is that DNA is a it's a very complex molecule. It doesn't and so for this reason, people generally don't think it looks like something that would randomly self as symbol without

some sort of precursor. Uh. And so a lot of the question that allow the investigations on where did DNA come from? Or looking at like well, what could a chemical precursor be? What could there have been that facilitated the creation of this really complex molecule. And one very popular theory, though we don't know it's the answer yet, it's a strong hypothesis, is the so called RNA world So ribonucleic acid. Yeah, this is a somewhat simpler molecule

than dnah. Yeah, Yeah, let's clarify the difference there between the two. All right, So they're both nuke aic acids. Uh, First of all, the sugar element of the nucleic acids that they're composed of a sugar element as well some other pieces, But the sugar element is different from both. You have de oxy ribos for DNA and just ribos for RNA. That's that's a major difference right there. Who

who Who gets out of bed for ribos? Really, you got to hold out for that d oxy ribos if you if you're lacking DNA, you're not kicking out of bed. DNA is double stranded. You always think of that that classic, uh, double helix twisted ladder we'll talk about in a minute. RNA is a single strand molecule. DNA stores and transfers genetic information and humans. RNA codes for amino acids and acts kind of like a messenger between DNA and ribosomes

to make proteins. So those are the differences. So let's talk about some of the research. In two thousand nine, a group of scientists successfully synthesized two of the four nucleotides that make up RNA using chemicals that we believe we're present on primordial Earth. So this does not necessarily mean that the hypothesis is true. It just means it makes it sort of plausible, at least for urna right, that RNA could spontaneously form based upon some conditions on Earth.

And again, it's only the proof of two of those four nucleotides. They're still working on the other two to see if there's a way that the chemicals that we think we're around in primordial Earth could have developed into these building blocks for RNA. Um Now, one of those scientists have since has since gone on to see if he can do the same thing with DNA nucleotides using a similar approach to that RNA experiment. Uh, but sugars in DNA nucleotides are harder to work with in RNA

counterparts before you actually assemble into DNA. Once it's assembled in DNA, it's really stable. Yeah, but before then it's just tough to work with. So ultimately, we still don't know if RNA and so DNA preceded life, but at least the work that we've seen so far suggests that it's still plausible. It's it's not necessarily um a dead end yet until we get to a point that we have to say, well, we've tried everything. We can't get any of these chemicals to work out the way we

thought it would back on the primordial Earth conditions. Maybe there's an alternative answer to this question. Yeah, it's a fascinating question, absolutely crazy that we don't know the answer to this, and so it's so exciting to read about, you know, what we're learning. Yeah, so it's so big and basic. Other research that I've read indicated that another factor, meteor impacts in primordial Earth, might have been the key

to putting all of this together. Um and Okay. One of the theories about how DNA and life in general arose on Earth is that amino acids and nucleotides hitched a ride here on meteors and other bodies that you know, we're from elsewhere, and that's how they got here. Now, of course that doesn't answer the question of how they were assembled, but that's how they arrived on this planet. Sure, which is you know, yeah, it's it's a it's a

set of questions that also go together. Clearly, the lizard people put it together, right, and they put it on rocks and pushed them to Earth. Well, absolutely, is that what you call those naked dudes in prometheus lizard people

I call them frequently. Go ahead, Lauren, excellent. So there has been though skepticism in the research community about whether that the breadth of amino acids and nucleotides that we see here on Earth could have possibly arrived intact, or even could have formed from things that might have arrived intact.

But so there was the study that was published back in August by team out of Japan, and they simulated a meteorite hitting an ancient ocean, and they found that the energy from the impact, together with the raw physical materials that the inorganic compounds that were likely to have been present, could indeed have formed armed nucleo nucleotides and

amino acids. They they found when they when they studied their post impact stuff, they found nine amino acids that are all involved with the formation of proteins and also to nucleotides. So that's that's pretty fascinating. That's really an interesting idea. And obviously, if we were to study this further and and conclude that in fact these molecules were extraterrestrial in nature, as Joe was pointing out, that then leads to a whole new series of questions. Which or

maybe even more interesting. Yeah, yeah, the and it may be that perhaps these are questions that are are ultimately unknowable to us. We don't know, maybe that that we will have a certain percentage of certainty for one versus another, but uh, I'm not entirely certain short of time travel, how we would ever get to the very bottom of this, like, what would be the the conclusive proof that would uh

make one hypothesis stand well over the other. It seems like probably the best we could hope to do is if we could offer a lot of hypotheses and note that eventually one of them works under lab conditions and the others don't, which gives you some degree of confidence that that's probably the right answer. But we'll never really know,

right right, it's not really approvable hypothesis. Um but but hey, okay, so, speaking of time travel, we have here in the studio with us today the way back machine from tech stuff, Yeah, tech stuff and stuff you should know. I mean, it's been a long time since I've seen this baby, and I gotta tell you it's a little worse for wear. I'm pretty sure the stuff you should know, guys have been going back to the sixties for some fun. But yeah, let's us and chalk. Let's put it to use and

really find out. Like, let's let's talk about the actual discovery of d n A, not not when it was potentially first formed on Earth, but when we humans first became aware of it. Okay, well, you may have heard this story before. Of course. The answer is that Watson and Crick discovered DNA in the nineteen fifties. Except that's not true. But the book told me, no, this is the thing for some reason, even my I've read about this before, and even my brain goes to this place. Yeah,

Watson and Crick discovered DNA. That's not true. Uh so who really did discover d NA? What is it that Watson and Crick supposedly discovered or or contributed to our understanding of DNA. One interesting fact to point out, people knew about heredity before they knew about DNA, and this is a thing that can easily be lost because we now equate to DNA in standard conversation with the idea

of heritable and information. So you get stuff from your parents, people just say, oh, it's in your d n A. But that that is a relatively recent thing to enter the common parlance, and so people knew about inheriting traits from parents long before they knew what the molecule was in the body that conveyed that information. Right, right, So in order to get to the bottom of this question, we're going to go back in our way back machine to eighteen sixty nine. Oh, that's why the numbers are.

I was wondering. I just thought that was just randomly put there when I was saying sixties, I actually did me the eighteen sixties. Well, what were there good party times there too? I just assumed if Josh and Chuck were doing it. But now I know that nine was set for us. You ever seen Gone with the Wind, there's lots of parties. Yeah right, let's just don't look like a lot of fun. Let's just get in the way back machine and go check out where we're going. Okay,

we're here, and there's so much pus. So in eighteen sixty nine, there's this Swiss biochemist at the University of tubing In and his name is Johann Friedrich Mescher, and he was studying puss. That explains this then, no joke. Yeah, so there's plus everywhere. Mitscher had a. He had an arrangement, you might say, with a nearby surgical clinic that would send him filthy used bandages that were dripping with pus.

And you know, when you think about filthy used bandages dripping with pus, most people you wouldn't want to handle them, you know, do things with them, spend your Saturday on them. Not not way up on my list of things to do. But in fact, these pus soaked bandages turned out to be a scientific gold mine because of the following reason. So plus contains mostly dead lucacites, which are white blood cells. He was studying these white blood cells to understand the

proteins in them. But Mescher also discovered in the course of his research that in the nucleus of each of the white blood cells there was a common substance that had nitrogen and phosphorus atoms in it and which was chemically distinct from the protein. So it's this stuff there in the cell nucleus. It's not a protein. It's got nitrogen and phosphorus. It is it. And he called this

stuff nucleon, which later became known as nucleic acid. And once it was totally isolated from the surrounding proteins and all the other stuff. The pure molecule got the name we know today de oxy ribonucleic acid or d n A. Well, this is fascinating, Joe, but I would like us all to take a pledge that none of us will utter the word PUS again in the rest of this episode. I will with with one small exception, and that is,

can we get out of this PUS party? I would I would like, do you have any parties to take us to that aren't made of pus? Well, let's see where we could go on the quickly summarized scientific research bandwagon party. Well, luckily there's a montage button inside the

way back machines and just hit that. Yeah, now we gotta go on the montage because there are actually a bunch of scientists over the ensuing decades that contributed a lot more to the study of heredity and d n A, And we don't have time to go into all of their research. But but so after me share at this point, you know that there are genes that convey traits from parents to offspring, and we know about DNA, but we hadn't put them together. We didn't know that one was

the DNA was the agent of heredity. And so in nineteen forty four group of scientists Avery, McLeod and McCarty showed that DNA conveys hereditary traits, that DNA is the agent of mendalian genetics. And finally, in nineteen fifty three, you finally got to Krick and Watson, plus a couple others, Actually, Francis Crick, James Watson, Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin demonstrated the structure of DNA. So they put together the model of the double helix molecule of DNA, the one we've

all seen now. It looks like a ladder that you twisted up like a spring or like a like a like a spiral staircase. Yeah, yeah, spiral ladder, I guess, yeah. Uh. And so it's got two spiraling parallel pull ales that are connected by rungs of nucleo basis. And the important thing about discovering the double helix shape of the molecule was that this showed how the DNA molecule was capable

of conveying genetic information. Well, let's let's go ahead and pop on back over into a modern day and back into our studio and and and just concentrate more about uh little other stuff we've learned about this amazing molecule. Okay, yes, this is better for reasons that I've promised not to mention again. Um okay, Joe, you are so lucky the the Acts of Mysticism is not currently in the podcast studio. Not the Mystical Acts. You never used the Mystical Acts

as a weapon. I'm sorely tempted. Okay. So, despite this rich history of research into into DNA, there's still so much that is going on in the field, all these studies being conducted, questions being answered, new questions that we never even conceived of being posed. And so so we wanted to give y'all a quick sample of some of the stuff we've seen recently, just to give you an idea of of what kind of things are going on. Yeah. So, first of all, we were talking about that double helix shape.

One of the interesting bits of research that we encountered while looking into the topic was that some scientists have shown that DNA doesn't just hold that double helix shape. Yeah, it actually comes in lots of fun shapes. Yeah. So I as I as I said, is it kind of boogies. It moves around a lot. And actually, when you think about get stars, moons and balloons and clovers, it's not the Lucky Charm shapes, although some of them are similar to them. All right, So what's the deal here. We've

been told about this double helix shape forever. Why are we suddenly seeing different shapes? Well, part of what I've read is that when Watson and Crick were really described the structure of DNA, they were looking at a length of DNA that was about twelve base pairs long, something like that, like one turn of DNA. But DNA has to turn many, many, many times. It has to be

super coiled because DNA is a very long molecule. But it has to fit within the nucleus of a cell, right, And most nucleus nucleus is nuclei of cells are not a few meters long. It really the length of a DNA chain, right, So to fit that inside a cell's nucleus, you have to coil and coil and coil and coil. This this shape. And if you've ever dealt with any kind of like cable or anything, any real long length of of something that's got lots of kinks, and then

you can see all sorts of weird shapes. And also as you uncoil it, it can spring in ways that are terrifying. Uh So the DNA molecule ends up creating these, uh these other odd shapes that that the scientists were able to observe. Um it was kind of interesting how they did it. They used a method called cryo electron tomography uh to study the the actual shapes, and they observed all sorts of interesting ones, like figure eights or coiled so tightly that look like it was a rod,

not even two separate strands anymore. Also, according to one of the scientists, some of them look like rackets or handcuffs. So maybe maybe if your molecules are being naughty in your cells nucleus, the DNA will just go ahead and slap the cuffs on. I don't know how that works at any rate. No clovers though, no clovers that I saw. I mean, it's entirely possible that it just was not

included on the list. Probably probably horseshoes, though if you crossed a couple of pairs of handcuffs, you'd essentially have a clover. Yeah, I would allow for the possibility that a clover could in fact be one of the many

shapes that DNA could take, but depending on the coiling. Uh. The important thing here, though, is that understanding the shape of the molecules can help doctors developed better medicines and scientists helped develop better medicines because the the drugs we take, typically what does It releases some molecules into our system, and those molecules are looking for other molecules of a

specific shape. So knowing more about the shape of DNA can make more effective medicines that are specifically looking for those shapes. So it does have a practical application. It's not just the idea of we just want to learn more, although, as we say on the show all the time, that then itself is a worthy endeavor most of the time. Okay,

how about one other really interesting fact about DNA. We mentioned earlier, how there was the discovery over time that DNA is the gene, that DNA is the molecule in the body that conveys genetic information from parent to offspring. But one of the weird facts that we're discovering we actually started discovering in the twentieth century, but that we're learning more about all the time. Is something called horizontal gene transfer, which is where you can get a gene

in your genome that doesn't come from your parents. Doesn't happen very often with humans, happens all the time with single celled organisms like bacteria, where where they can trade genes. It's almost like a way for bacteria to sort of have sex. They don't really, but they can exchange genetic information back and forth between their genomes and UH. And it turns out that there appears to be DNA within the genomes of larger organisms that looks like it probably

came from organisms other than this organism's direct ancestors. Yeah. Yeah, and you might wonder how could something like that happen uh, And in fact, it can happen through something that's called the endogenous retrovirus or e r V s UM. These are retroviruses that once infected UH some sort of organism in the past, and they're really really really replicating themselves, at least for a few generations until mutations make that

a non factor. So the way this works as a retrovirus can replicate self by infiltrating a cell a host cell and inserts some of its own viral genome into the nuclear genome of the host cell. So it's sort of, you know, hacking into the mainframe, putting a copy of itself into the host cell. Now this you this can include doesn't normally include it usually, but it can include a germline cells. Those are the cells that produce egg

and sperm cells. And once in a while, even more rarely and infected germline cell will go on to develop into a viable organism. And so then you'll have this viral genome become part of the genome of the overall organism. And that's where you get this this mysterious DNA that would not have been part of a typical individual of

that organism species. It's actually been introduced through this virus. Yeah, and these strains of the genome, the viral genome can remain in the organism's genome over the course of numerous generations, over millions of years in fact. But because organisms undergo mutation, typically uh, one mutation or another is going to render the the viral genomes ability to replicate the actual virus

null and void. So you'll you'll eventually get to a point where the organisms have the viral genome as part of their d N A, but they're not making the virus anymore because of other unrelated mutations that that organism species has undergone over multiple generations. Uh yeah, And and no one's really sure how much of our DNA could have possibly been influenced by this kind of process. Some estimates have it as high as like eight percent, which is crazy. Yeah, now, one that is amazing. But one

thing to clarify is that you shouldn't misunderstand. You shouldn't think it. Oh, if I have eight percent of my genome from bacteria or viruses or some of their organisms on Earth, it's not like that happened since you were born then like over the generations this many horizontal gene transfer events have accumulated into the genome that created you

when you were born, right right, um. And but part of the reason that it's difficult to suss out how this happens is that it's really hard to get direct

observational evidence of it. And one what one bit of research that that we ran across was this this study into a transfer between pine trees and insects that happened millions of years ago and basically has made pine trees what they are today and just and you know, it's the first time that we've it's one of the few times rather that we have directly observed being able to directly trace that kind of data. So cool stuff. It's

really interesting. If you all don't mind me plugging on the other podcast that I do Steff to blow your mind, Robert Lamb and I did an episode on horizontal gene transfer back in December, I think, so if you want to check that out, there's a whole episode on that awesome. Yeah. Uh well. One of the other questions that has been kind of roiling around in the scientific community is how

cells protect their DNA m M with extreme prejudice. It's yes, I mean, and that is the answer really because okay, so, so the inner cell mechanics involving DNA are are complex because DNA is stored in its cells nucleus um. The nucleus is surrounded by this complex structure called the nuclear envelope, which contains a series of gates that lead in and out of it, which is called the nuclear poor complex.

And you know, molecules have to get in and out of the nucleus so that cell could like create proteins and do stuff, but the envelope also has to be vigilant because if a virus can penetrate it, then it'll hijack the cells DNA to do its bidding bad times. Um. And there are even some diseases that specifically weaken the envelope and make your cell nuclei more suceptible to viral infection.

But it's difficult to study because because in terms of cell proportion, the envelope is huge and and the poor complex is constantly shifting. Researchers the research that I read referred to it like as like jiggling, like like gelatine, like a big old bowl or jelly. Um. So, so it's been really hard to to get it to get

a handle on. And this team out of cal Tech has been working on it for like a decade and finally uh in in in this year in ten started to publish results that explain exactly how molecules get transferred uh or transported rather like like lead into and out of the pores, and how data is moved from DNA to r n A to ribosomes, which, as we said earlier, do that actual work of some the sizing proteins within cells.

So so so learning about all of this is is just really cool and could help us suss out how to protect ourselves against viral infections. Well, that's obviously a good thing because of how dependent we are on our DNA. Isn't it kind of annoying that we've got a cow to out to this tiny little molecule. Why can't we be the boss? Why can't we make DNA do what we wanted to do? Well, we're getting there. Uh, it's

it's it's complicated, but we're getting there. What's really cool is that we've actually seen some some scientists work with DNA as if it were a programming language, right, Like it is essentially a set of instructions. So if you were able to write a specific set of instructions, you could in theory make some sort of cell do something that you wanted to do. Um. So, some synthetic biologists have been working with DNA to find ways to manipulate

it and program it in this way. So some m I T developed a software CELLO C E L l O. That's essentially because of the way I'm I'm talking right now, it sounds like I'm saying jello. Uh. No, It makes me wonder why didn't they just go ahead and stick an H in there. Yeah, it would have been funny. Cello. Uh. That's essentially a programming language for DNA. I'm sure it stands for something, and I just didn't see what it stood for. Wait a minute, a programming language for DNA.

Now that's interesting because often oftentimes people use the analogy of a programming language to describe DNA. Right, So this approach, what does It allows people who are not advanced synthetic biologists to come up with ways of programming a strand of DNA to execute a specific type of instruction under a specific circumstances. So, in classic computing terms, you can think of it as an if then if sell encounters X,

then do action Y like that sort of thing. You can actually prob ramm it to do that sort of stuff. That's fascinating. It's pretty cool. So one of the examples that I read about in Nature that was that where this article was published, said, imagine that you you create a strand of DNA that tells the cell to produce a certain drug whenever the cell detects a particular set

of metabolic conditions. So, in other words, if that those metabolic conditions are present, the cell goes into production mode and starts producing this drug, you could easily see how something like that could be incredible for different medicinal purposes. Yeah, hypothetically. I mean, I'm not sure if this is something that

would be possibly on the table. But if if your if your body starts producing histamines in response to some kind of allergen that it's just freaking out about, then your cells could detect those histamines and create antihistamines to calm everything down. I would like that because I miss shrimp. Yeah, that's all right, that's all right. I've got other things

I can eat. I don't really mind. Well, maybe maybe that's coming in the future, I should hope so, because a friend of mine was shared a picture of shrimp and grits on Facebook, and now that's all I can think about all that terrible human You listeners out there should know that Jonathan and I were sitting in the studio before recording and he was just mourning the fact that he couldn't meet this shrimp. It was pretty rough, but but it's all right. There are bigger problems in

the world than my allergy to shellfish. One of those problems actually is how do we produce synthetic DNA in a way that is uh cost effective and and is relatively simple, because, as it turns out, making DNA in the lab is expensive, it's complicated, takes a lot of energy. Oh yeah, I didn't even think about that part. So

we're talking about having a programming language for DNA. But what good is that If you can write a program but you can't turn it into physical molecules, It's it's tough, right. So one of the things that we read about that I thought was so interesting was, um, some scientists were looking at the possibility of using different kim micle's while working with DNA and seeing how that would affect the process. And one person in this uh this group of researchers

said we should really try cyanuric acid. And I knew him. Her issue ye a fellow of infinite jest. He used to clean my pool. The reason I say that is cyanuric acid is actually used by by people to to as a treatment for pools. Actually, yeah, it's a stabilizer. So you know you've heard about adding chlorine to pools so that you can make sure your your pool is

not infest about it. I felt it in my eyeball. Well, cyanuric acid, what does It binds with chlorine and allows for a more controlled release of chlorine so that you don't just end up like deep shocking your pool and then you know, thirty minutes later it just becomes a bacterious cesspit that you don't want that to happen. But cian uric acid also has an effect on d N a uh. It actually can cause DNA to form into

triple helix formations. The sin uric acid ends up becoming essentially a third rail of that ladder, and it then ends up having the other two sides bind with it. And this allows for the potential new use of DNA in various nanotechnology applications. At the moment, it's really early right now we know that this is the effect it can have on DNA. Where we can actually apply that

knowledge remains to be seen. There are a lot of hopes that we can use this in multiple ways, but we're still kind of in the earliest days right now, so it's not like I have a practical application I can just spring out there. So that's sort of our our our kind of d N A one oh one, which has lots of open questions in it that are are currently being studied by people who are dedicating their

lives to that kind of research. In our next episode, we're really going to look at how are we using DNA in practical applications today and how do we hope to use it in the future. Some of the ways apart from just using it to make our bodies right right, I mean we'll still be doing that fingers crossed. I'm not talking about like using it unconsciously. I mean, like consciously making use of as a technology, right, using DNA as a technology. So we're gonna really focus on that

in our next episode. Guys. Remember if you have any suggestions for future episodes, we have questions or comments on things we've said, get in touch with us. Let us know. We love to hear from you. Guys. The address you can use if you want to use email is f W thinking at how Stuff Works dot com. Or you can drop us a line on social networks. We are on Facebook and Twitter. Twitter. We are FW thinking just search f W thinking on Facebook our profile pop up.

You can leave us a message there, and we will talk to you again about DNA really soon. For more on this topic in the Future of technology visits Forward Thinking dot Com Problem brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,