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You know that person who just cut you off on the highway, that one that turd behind the wheel. You know, malicious YouTube commenters, but also Dolly Parton and your ex officemate's patchinchilla. What do all these beings have in common? E f and love carbs man, love them all of us. We're just walking breathing dumpsters of bread and fruit and starch and saccarides. Even if you don't eat many carbs, your cells are still composed of them, and you'd beat
up quite a creek in their absence. Thanks carbs. Hey, Hi, it's me it's Ali Ward. This is ologies Hi. So in this episode we'll talk about what a carb is and why people are in labs studying them, and if they wear lab coats or not, and how Harrison Ford is involved, what kind of diet we should eat to feel less like post holiday marshmallow, and which diets are fads?
How much sugar is bad for you? And why you know what, it's not your fault that you would risk early death to lick brownie batter from a bowl with your fingers, and also why does any of this even matter? Now? I want to say before we get into this episode. One thing I've gotten some tweets about recently is a closure to the Feral Audio network. People are like, Ali, what's happening with Ologies? Heads up? Nothing. Ologies hasn't been on Feral Audio since episode one. I left in September,
so Ologies continues. So thank you to everyone who has merch or is a patron, and to everyone who tells friends or tweets or subscribes or taps the guy next to you on the subway and is on and you should listen to us. Also, thank you to everyone who leaves reviews on iTunes, which helps the podcast stay up in the charts. It's amazing. It's been in like the top fifty or top twenty or top ten even since we started, so that's crazy. Also, I read all your reviews and I love them. Do you want to hear
a few from this week. I'm going to read you one of my favorite I'll read you my favorite one. My favorite one this week was by the joy Sandwich podcast, which is another great podcast I really want to go on. They say, if you want to learn all the things while feeling insignificant and humbled and like a tiny clump of Adams ologies is your jam. It's the greatest, so much learning in silly's and just the best reminder that
we are here together on this pale blue dot. Also, Lyvi eight twenty one says she wishes she was my best friend. Is that possible, because I'd be rad I don't see why not. Libby, consider it done. We do have to get matching tattoos, which we will have to carve with steak knives. So if you're still up for that, holler at me. Okay. I also want to thank everyone for your patients. Of the holidays episodes were a little more sporadic. I just I wanted to get glycobiology up.
Last week I was visiting my parents in the woods, and there was all this cool wood to be chopped, and I got to help fix a furnace which ruled, and there was a friend's marathon on and you know what, it was just really nice, so I took the week off. So thank you for your patients. Okay, so onto our guest, loosen your belts and just unbutton the top one of your pants. No one cares. Get ready to freebase some
pixie sticks because we're diving face first into carbs. When the woman who was a graduate student at the University of Georgia at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, which is a thing please feast on the knowledge of glcobiology, Michelle ducois.
Yeah, yes, so I'm Michelle Ducroix.
Now Michelle is originally from Athens, Georgia, but she did her undergrad in Connecticut, where it is very cold, and she was checking out schools for graduate research and an advisor at the University of Georgia offered to her tour of this really unique, crazy research facility on her campus. She was like, what is this.
Since so you took me on a tour of the building and he's like, we study complex carbohydrates, which is just a very underappreciated macro molecule.
It's the underdog.
It is what a it really is is.
So you know, there's like four macromolecules that make up.
Life.
There's nucleic acids, lipids, proteins, and carbohydrates, really, and people give a lot of attention to the other three obviously, like DNA and RNA are like super hot, and that's totally fine.
They're super important too.
But what a lot of people don't realize is that literally every single cell in the human body, in the animal body, in bodies is covered in a layer of complex carbohydrates. You have to use certain microscopes to really be able to see this very well, but essentially, if you think of a tennis ball and the yellow fuzz on the outside looks a lot like the actual outside of a cell.
These carbohydrate chains are sticking out of a part of your cell membranes called the lipid bilayer. It's called that because it's two sheets of back to back fats that help in controlling what comes in and out of your cells and which other cells your cells hang out with, et cetera. But it's not just like a smooth, glossy surface.
We think of these nice like organized like fluid model of the lipid bilayer, but in the lipid violator BI layer, violator bilayer violator bi layer.
Lipid bilayer is hard to say. It's hard to say, but it's fun to say. When I was in biology, studying bio in high school, I used to get the words lipid bilayer stuck in my head like a song or a grocery list, Like I just be bop around going lip it by layer limpet by, it's so good.
Violator bilayer.
Actually, like proteins and different types of lipids that have complex carbohydrates just jutting off of.
Them, what do they do?
They're really important for cellular communication, really, like for the most part. For instance, two proteins that may have or a protein that may have a carbohydrate motif on the outside.
Is what it would be called.
Fancy, I know I have a carbohydrate motif. Indeed, in my guest bathroom, we've opted for a carbohydrateti.
If as a carbo hydrate motif on the outside it. There could be a neighboring protein that has a carbohydrate binding segment, and so those would be called carbohydrate binding proteins. Okay, So it's a way for two cells to interact with each other.
And why do they want to bind? Why do the cells want to bind?
A lot of times it initiates other signaling in the cell.
Like what so I am just straight up interrogating this poor woman.
For instance, bacteria have a lot of carbohydrates on their cell surface too. This isn't just like a you know, human thing. This is any type cell type, and immune cells will actually bind carbohydrates on the bacteria cell and that's how they recognize.
They're like, oh, wait, this isn't a human.
Carbohydrate because back to you express their own types of complex carbohydrates. It's like, wait, this isn't a human and then they'll initiate the immuneistubponds. Really yeah, So it's a huge it's a huge player in immunology.
There's a lot of studies.
So at the center that I work out, there's actually several immunologists studying these, uh, the carbo hydrate binding interactions between pathogens.
And the host or the human body.
So sticking out of a lipid bilayer of cell membranes are like party streamers, if you will, composed of all of these different sugar molecules, like you know those things in gas stations or oil change places that are like whip around those weird wind socks that dance around they're like that, but they're made out of sugar, and they can be chunkier too, with just a few carbohydrates each. They can be short and squat, or they can form these long chains called sacharite chains. They can be like
one hundred sugars long. So why are all of your cells and animal cell and bacteria cells wearing these extravagant feather boas made of sugars? What is happening? What's going on? What kind of craziness is this? Well, most of the time they think it's for signaling other cells.
Probably, I have to admit a lot of the field of glycobiology is figuring out what these carbohydrates do. We don't one hundred percent, no for every single case.
How do you see them?
Actually, the way I analyze them is using mass spectrometry.
Okay, and shoot light room and check out a rainbow.
Uh, not quite.
I have no idea what I'm talking about here. I got mass spectrometry very confused with spectroscopy, I think, which involves rainbows and light and it looks like the cover of Pink Floid's nineteen seventy three album Dark Side of the Moon, which then set me down a path of why did they use that image? Well, turns out one of the Pink Floyd album designers saw the image of a prism in a physics textbook and was like, dude, that that's dope.
Let's use it.
Now. Remember, light splitting has nothing to do with what Michelle does. She uses mass spectrous No, mass spectrometry, yes, okay, that involves ions. I wanted a visual for mass spectrometry. And the machine just looks like a big xerox machine or a printer that weighs like five hundred pounds. This is how it works.
Nothing to do with rainbows, and it shoots them into the instrument.
And this instrument literally just measures the mass to how much charge sticks to it, So how many like little sodium bits stick to it, and then you can identify and then we can IDENTI them based on their mass to charge ratio.
What was your first day like in the lab?
Oh?
Wow, my first day. So I rotated through a lot of labs before I finally settled on one lab. And my first day I actually knew that this was the lab I was going to join because I just done a rotation in a lab that was filled with guys and as much as I love sports, like, all they did.
Was talk about was football.
It was It drove me crazy and I walked into this new lab.
So on our first day, another grad student walks up and says, oh.
My god, I love your leggings. Where did they come from?
And as much as I hate admitting it, I was just like, this is my home. I knew I needed somewhere that I could be comfortable and just talk about what I felt like talking about most days. And it was great, but my kind of early on in the lab, there were a lot of techniques I needed to learn. I knew nothing about glycobiology, I knew nothing about mass spectrometry,
and so it was a pretty steep learning curve. But there are a lot of grad students in my lab and they were all very very helpful in terms of helping me learn the techniques that I needed. But it was overwhelming for a little bit and it was kind of like, what am I doing here?
What kind of leggings were they? I don't know, I had to ask. They must have been like legit leggings.
They were actually just like black leggings from like old Navy. But she she was just like, oh, they like, don't look like the sad thin kind that when you bend over you've got problems. She was like, oh, they look really good, and I was like cool, Yeah.
So did you have to learn how to pipett things and look at things through a microscope or so?
Pipetting and microscopy were actually things that I knew how to do. I did a lot of research in my undergrad and even some in high school, so I actually those were skills that I was pretty pretty good with. It's a lot of like analytical and chemistry techniques that I didn't really know, and then I do a lot of cell culture.
So for Michelle's thesis project, she is researching the effects of glycolipids on a disease called salt and pepper syndrome. Name such because it causes spots of hyper and hypopigmentation as well as seizures and intellectual disability. So it's rare and it's not good. And if you're curious and want to do just some light reading, you can go this title of a paper. It's called a mutation in gangliocide
biosynthetic enzyme results in salt and pepper syndrome. A New York a neurocutaneous disorder with altered glycolipid and glycoprotein glycolisation glyco glyc Michelle is just like, you know, low key working toward understanding it and finding better therapies for it, just you know, like a boss. What were you like as a kid, Did you have microscopes? Did you like science? Yeah?
I was actually really I guess lucky in that I was exposed to science and I really.
Liked science at a young age.
My dad is a veterinarian and he actually teaches at the EGA Vet School, and he would always let me come like hang out in his lab with him, and so I learned how to use like a microscope at a pretty young age. And I remember like a science or project one time he like, let me take a bunch of like ad our plates and swab bacteria on them and grow bacteria.
And what kind of stuff did you grow? Or what kind of stuff did you swab? Yeah?
It was one of those ones who you like, we the Q tip and swab like the door handle and people's hands.
Honestly, how cute would it be if your veterinarian's daughter asked to swab your hands so she could grow a culture. I would be like, yes, please do and then also take me directly to the hospital because I'm currently in the process of dying because that was fatally adorable. You have killed me with your cuteness. Also, Michelle, thank you for growing up to cure diseases you roll. Do you have any favorite movies that involve glac a biology? Are there any movies?
There is a movie about glycobiology. Yes, it's called Extraordinary Measures. Okay, it came out in twenty ten. I believe I have to admit I haven't seen it. What It's not on any of the streaming services, and I really like, can't find a copy to watch?
Oh have you not heard of this movie? That makes sense? On Rotten Tomatoes, it scored a are you ready for this? A twenty eight percent fresh rating, meaning that seventy two percent of critics would have lobbed decayed food at the screen if they had a chance, despite a whole bunch of movie stars being in it.
Ouch and what's crazy is like it has a Harrison Ford and like Brendan Fraser.
It's like and it's about glycobiology, and it's about glycobiology.
It's about this, like a businessman I believe, whose two kids are diagnosed with a disorder, a rare disorder, and it turns out it is what's called a congenital disorder of glycostelation. So any disorder that's caused by problems in making glycoproteins or glycolipids is just called a congenital disorder of glycostelation. Okay, so it just means a gene involved in glycobiology or glycosylation has been messed up.
Glycosylation sounds like I want to drop an album called I Know.
So it's a cool word.
Yeah, I no, I agree with that.
So in the movie, Brendan Fraser and Carrie Russell's two kids have a disease called Pompey's disease, which is a real disease. This is based on a real family. He's a pharmaceutical executive. He wants to find out more about it. He wants to find a treatment, and so he drops everything and he and this one scientist played by Harrison Ford go on a mad race to study this disorder and try to find a cure for it. In the trailer, which is like three minutes long, someone says it different
parts are you crazy? And then later are you insane? So they were really they were like, you know, once isn't enough, let's put it in there again.
But yeah, there's this one phrase that like Harrison Ford says and he's like, this is just what I've heard from other people.
He's like, don't you know about glycobiology?
And it's like the answer to that for most people is no, No, I don't know about glcobiology, like very much negative. No the majority of the population unfortunately. But it is really really important.
So sometimes what makes a good article doesn't always make a good movie. That's okay. You try things, you try it.
Maybe we need to get that movie out there more.
I don't know.
Maybe Netflix should stream it now.
I think we should put out a call if anyone has a copy of this, they need to reach out to you.
That would be awesome.
Come on, I wanted to see just how elusive this film is. And it turns out you can totally rent it and stream it for like four dollars on Amazon, where it enjoys a healthy four point five stars. It is undetermined if glycobiologists are are the only ones watching the movie. When you tell people you're a glycobiologist. What's the first question they usually ask you?
What is glycobiology?
Which I try to give just a succinct It's the study of complex carbohydrates, but not like the ones. I don't study bread. A lot of people are like, oh, like, so should I eat white bread? And I'm like, I don't know, sure if you like it?
Okay. Number one, live your life. Number two, if your life confuses you as mine does, there's a reason now. For years, people have been saying that white bread and refined flowers are the food stuffs of satan because there's not enough fiber in them to slow down digestion. You get too much sugar into your blood at once, thus taxing your pancreas and leading to type two diabetes. But a study came out in June twenty seventeen that said quote.
Researchers found no overall differences in glycemic control when people ate white bread compared to whole meal sourdough bread. They apparently found that some people responded better to whitebread, others responded better to whole meal sourdough bread, and the response could be predicted by the types of bacteria living in your gut. Now, hold up. So this was only a
week long study with only twenty volunteers. This is essentially like if at a family reunion you are like, hey, half of you guys eat white bread, half you eat wheat. Tell me how you feel. Also, two of the researchers involved in the study work for a company that quote offers to balance your blood sugar with personalized nutrition with
dietary advice based on the results of stool tests. So a couple of the researchers are directly making money off of finding out if gut bacteria helps balance your blood sugar. So if you're confused, that's because sometimes scientific studies can be stretched and interpreted by like us Weekly to mean what you want to hear, which is it whatever you want? Okay, back to how Michelle handles glycobiology cocktail party talk.
And then I just I just always have to.
Do a quick answer that like, it's on all of your cells and it's really important for cell signaling and your immune system.
Does your business card take glcobiologist? Should? Now you're you met your husband through glycobiology.
No, actually, so we both study glicobiology. My husband and I actually met in high school in Athens. Oh yeah. We started dating our senior year of high school, and then we both went away for college. I was at Yale in Connecticut.
Meanwhile her high school sweetheart and future husband was at Northeastern in Boston, which is about two hours away from each other. Did that suck?
It was manageable in the end.
When it came to picking at grad school, they both liked Georgia. They both happened to pick Lico biology, although his main focus isn't on animal cell walls, it's researching and generating better plants for biofuels. Can you imagine anything more trendy than a car that runs on avocado? It would be amazing. Do you guys talk about gcobiology a lot? So we do.
We talked through each other's problems a lot, although I have to admit, like I don't know tons about plants and he doesn't know tons about like neurological disorders.
So do she and her husband ever cut carbs? Gasp, pearl clutch smelling salts.
So we never do, like the low carb, high fat kind of set up like the Keto diet and the Atkins.
Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of that.
You may have heard a lot about the keto diet lately, as this little family, little family and billionaires called the Kardashians, and also this lady named Beyonce and all these tech ceo air quote biohackers have been swearing by it, especially the last few months. So is it new. No, It was developed in the nineteen twenties as a remedy for epilepsy and it's still used today to control seizures. So what is the ketogenic diet? How is it different from
low carb and atkins? And what is the deal? What is the deal? Okay? So keto is very low carb, less than fifty grams of carbs a day, sometimes lower than twenty grams of carbs a day, not just sugar, just carbs in general. So your body stores carbohydrates in the form of glycogen for fuel, and we take that we squirrel it away in the liver and your muscle tissue. And when you cut carbs and don't replace those backup stores, you run out of glycochen and your body goes into ketosis.
So that is when you are out of glycogen. So you break down fats into fatty acids and ketone bodies that are used for fuel for the body and for the brain, so you kind of switch over to a
different fuel system. Now a few things. Each gram of glycogen in your body stores is bound to some experts say three to four grams of water, So when you use up those stores, you lose a bit of water weight super fast, which is partly why if you've ever been on a low carb diet, for like, I don't know, a television job, and then once it's wrapped, you've, like I don't know, gone to Little Italy and eaten a trough of nyaki, two baskets of bread and tiramisu alone,
such as the waiter seems to want to ask if you've just gotten out of prison. The next day or so, you'll be like ten pounds heavier on the scale and your denim skirt won't zip. In two thousand and three, I'm just saying, each glycogen shows up to your mud party with an entourage of like three or four water molecules.
So when you get rid of the luggage and you get rid of some water too, low carb diets are helpful for quickly losing water weight for sure, and then from there eating for Keto is about sixty five percent fat, thirty five percent protein, and five percent carbs. That is said to keep your body burning your fat stores and also promoting something called atophagy, which is Greek for eating yourself.
Your body just casually eating itself like a hungry goat, going around scanning the cupboards, gobbling up screwed up cells and weird bits of scar tissue and extra cancer mess ups, and recycling the parts. So that's another reason why people like the keto diet is you burn fat really quickly when you switch to fat burning ketosis, and possibly it can be healthier in other ways. Now there's some controversy
about atophagy and its role in cancer. On one hand, grab tumors and nip them in the bud, but in later stages it could promote tumors spreading. I do not have the answers for you here, but doctor Yoshinori Oshumi is on the case. He just won the Nobel Prize in twenty sixteen for his work on atophagy. Google that.
So you thought you're just gonna learn about carbohydrates and how to make your pants button, and now you have all kinds of dirt on glycogen and fatty acids and cancer and rare diseases, and how much in yaki I
can eat in a sitting, which is a lot. By the way, if you're like, where is the Atkins diet and all this the low carbon one where I just eat bacon sandwiches with slabs of cheese as the bread, and then I eat a mayonnaise milkshake that promotes ketosis too, But it's got some stages in terms of carbohydrate levels, and the Keto diet is a little more exact and
less like go forth and drink Keeso my children. I will say I have friends on the Keto diet who absolutely love it and say they've never felt better and have at a ton of weight. So your mileage may vary. Do your research ahead of time. Side note, if you're trying to get healthier in the new year and lose weight and opt for low carbs, it is best to do it with whole foods, cut out the diet drinks and diet foods which can mess with your insulin levels
and make you hungrier. Also, now, if you see sugar alcohols on a label, the best way to consume that is by building a large bonfire, throwing the item onto the bonfire, and then running very far in the other direction, unless you're okay passing undigestible molecules into your large intestine to ferment and cause gastroonetestinal distress on parallel with drinking from a puddle in Calcutta, which is what some sugar free diet foods that have sugar alcohols like Manaitol can do.
So google sugar free gummy bears plus Amazon reviews, settle in for what sounds like war journalism from the front line of a toilet. I'll give you an example quote, don't eat more than fifteen in a sitting unless you are trying to powerwash your intestines. The reviews are so good, please find them. If you're thinking of going low carb,
you're now armed with some vital information. I'm very very much not a doctor, but as a person who eats desserts for work and has to wear an elastic girdle under some of my clothes, I can tell you in a literal pinch, I just eat protein and vegetables. I skip the grains, drink a lil of water, say no to diet sodas, no sugar that usually helps when I start to look like a walking cautionary tail or like a nineteen nineties rocker mug shot. So anyway, that's my advice. Also, don't sue me anyway.
It's really we've just found like cutting out certain carbs can really help manage calories. Well, So instead of doing a sandwich for lunch, if you do a salad, like you've saved.
Two hundred calories because you don't eat the bread. So we'll do stuff like that a lot.
And yeah, my family teases me all the time about it, and it's like, I know, I study carbs, but I'm also trying to stay in shape in grad school.
You get a lot of weight, but there's also like an upper limit of how many carbs is a good amount of carbs? Probably right?
Yes, of course I.
Get carbs from things other than bread.
Yeah, And while you know, being a glcobiologist, I can say, like you need carbohydrates to survive, Obviously you don't. It doesn't mean you have to eat like sixteen pieces of bread you're getting. I mean, like I said, plants are made up of carbs, So I mean, eat a vegetable and you'll be fine.
Eat a vegetable. I have questions, yes, from our listeners, But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners, we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of the show. Sponsors. Why sponsors? You know what they do? They help us give money to different charities every week. So if you want to know where Ologies gives our money, you can go to alleyword dot com and look for
the tab all Jeez gives back. There's like one hundred and fifty different charities that we've given to already, with more every single week. So if you need a place to go, donate a little bit of money but you're not sure where to go. Those are all picked biologists who work in those fields, and this ad break allows us to give a ton of money to them. So thanks for listening and thank sponsors.
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Okay, your questions Hell, Laura wants to know what your favorite sugary snack is.
My favorite sugary snack ooh that's our cupcakes are kind of the top two for me.
And those have complex and simple car riders.
So those are mostly simples.
And what is the difference between your complex and a simple carbohydrate?
So a simple sugar a little bit complicated? Explain, So like glucose you know of in like sugar, it makes up like it's a part of sucrose.
It's the sugar that we eat.
And it also all that means is it's a single sugar molecule, like glucose is a single sugar molecule. Well, there's different types of sugar molecules. There's also one called galactose and fucose. When those connect together, they make multiple sugar chains, and that's when they get complex, is when you get multiples of them.
This is a really dumb question, but why are simple carbohydrates sweet and complex carbohydrates with more sugar in them are less sweet?
Oh so that's just like a characteristic of like the sugar. So like glucose itself is sweet, but then there's another sugar called manose that's like bitter.
So the taste is just a characteristic of different types of sugars. I tried to look this up and explain it, and I found a sentence that says, step wise modification at each center around the sugar ring allows the sapid functions in these molecule I eat anyway, some sugars are bitter, summer sweet. That's all I got for you. I'm sure that to our body is like more sugar means more fat means I live through the winter.
Yeah, I'm sure there's evolutionary aspects of it.
Yeah, Okay, carbs in the winter, why do we eat them? Well, some people think that when the days start getting shorter and there's less light, we know winter is coming and to survive the cold, you need feasts and meat and biscuits and cookies your neighbor made now. Other behavioral psychologists say it's just crimes of opportunity. The holidays mean more gatherings. Gatherings mean cheese platters and crackers and a bunch of caramel corn that you're going to crack your teeth on,
but you don't even care. I like the theory that everyone gets a case of the sads seasonal effective disorder, a mild form of depression that your grandma probably calls the winter blues. Depression can cause carbohydrate cravings because carbohydrates promote the production of serotonin, which is a buzzy, happy, warm, feel good chemical in your brains. Either way, let's jock it up to good old fashioned, messed up self medication
that brings us temporary joy and future misery. I don't know how to end this aside, I don't, oh you know what, I'm just going to tell you that the largest loaf of bread ever made was baked by a Brazilian man in two thousand and eight, and it weighed thirty four hundred pounds or fifteen hundred kilograms. It's one of long ass loaf pan it winds back and forth. In the photos of its production before they cooked, it look like an albino and a conda waiting in line at Disneyland.
It's huge.
Moving on, Lucy wants to know our carbohydrates your favorite organic compound.
Yeah, yeah.
Angela wants to know will there ever be a cure for type one diabetes.
I'm optimistic about that one, and that actually that is a disease that a lab at the c c r C and it actually in general within glycobiology, there's a lot of focus on it. Actually, yeah, I'm pretty optimistic about a treatment for that. There's a lot of labs focusing on that, and they make a lot of progress. I think it's just in the world of research, things take time, unfortunately.
She also wants to know what impact of sugars and glic hands have on gut bacteria if any.
Ooh a lot, yes, actually, so your gut bacteria so like I said, bacteria express their own types of sugars too, and they'll have a different combination of complex sugars on their surface compared to our surface, our cell surfaces, our cell's surface. Sorry, say that ten times fast. And the sugars that we that that our body makes interact with the bacteria, like the bacteria will have their own carbohydrate binding proteins. And so that's actually a really hot area of research right now.
Is that gut biome? Oh yeah, so you have these kind of glycan streamers. Yeah, we're jutting off of a cell service, and those are interacting with your good and bad gut bacteria to be like who are you? What are you doing here?
What are you lackly?
Oh so you're you are kind of or some glycobiologists are studying how your cells interact with all.
The teria or bad bacteria exactly, and even understanding, I mean even just the basic understanding of like why a bad bacteria is bad, Like how come your cell? How come the bad bacteria like infects your cell and the good bacteria don't necessarily And that communication could be facilitated
through glycans. It could be that the good bacteria have certain glycans that the cell recognized and it's like, oh, never mind, this is okay, and then the bad bacteria express a different combination of glycans and your cell is like, whoa, no, you don't belong here, Like I'm calling in backup pretty much.
Yeah.
I wonder if there's any just like kind of medium bacteria that they're like, I'm not really a dick, and I'm not that nice either, I'm just kind of a medium.
Maybe there could be some that definitely are like a milder, just like I'm gonna chill here, and you're a nice dark environment.
It's a nice, dark, stinky environment.
Yeah.
I promise you that one day I will have a microbiologist on to talk about the importance of the gut biome. It is. It's all I want. If you are one of those, just slide in my DMS. I would love to talk about our stinky guts. Jen wants to know what is the most interesting thing about sugar on a molecular level. What does it look like?
Ooh, So they're all like these little six or five membered rings. So if you think back to like chemistry class, they're like little rings of carbon. So a sugar is
a glycan. Oh okay, just that's aw synonymous. Yeah, And it's really interesting how just like a very small change means it's a different sugar and therefore it has a different property, like everything from glugo's being sweet to mannos being bitter, Like those two structures are actually really similar, but like one little change gives it a whole different characteristic.
And that's kind of like the beauty of anything on a molecular level is just that, like all the diversity, all the different cell type, like everything that makes the world that we see it is like just small molecular changes that add up, if that makes sense.
I know that sounds really dumb.
No, does that ever? Does that ever trip you out from a from like a what is life standpoint?
All the time?
Really?
Yeah?
Do you think about chemistry just when you're driving around, when you're just eating, when you're watching.
Moving No, I'm definitely I like thinking about science, but I can also very easily turn that off and move on with my life.
You're like, I can conform rightalize. Sarah wants to know, is it frustrating that our society has demonized sugar since glycans are so important to everything.
Yeah, that's it.
It's actually a really interesting way to think about it because as like a glcobiologist, I definitely differentiate like the sugar we eat from the sugar on our cell surfaces. So I see that distinction, but I totally realize that like nobody else would see that distinction, and so they're like, ooh, sugar's bad, when really it's pretty important.
How much sugar should we eat? This is a good question, I asked the American Heart Association. They recommend no more than around thirty grams of sugar a day, particularly sugar. If you're like, do I even eat that? Probably not? Well. Uh, the average American consumes eighty two grams of sugar every day. That's roughly sixty six pounds of added sugar consumed each year per person. That's so much sugar. So I found a site run by UCSF Med School. It's called sugar Science,
they say quote. Using brain scanning technology, scientists at the US National Institute on Drug Abuse were among the first to show that sugar causes changes in people's brains similar to those in people addicted to drugs such as cocaine and alcohol. These changes are linked to a heightened craving for more sugar. Now, UCSF has this incredible team of scientists. They study sugar in the diet, its role in human health,
and they have a meat the scientist page. It lists epidemiologists, psychiatrists, endochronologists, nutritional biologists, but no glycobiologists because us the glycobiologists are really doing work at the cellular level with sugars and saccharides to find how cells use them to communicate to help find cures for rare diseases, which is why Michelle doesn't have a ton of interest in fad diets. And I was up googling before and after Picks Kardashian Keto
longer than I really needed to be. Let's be honest, I really completed my research and then I just kept looking. Well, Allison wanted to know how is glycobiology helping with developments of the skin and aging, and she also notes got this from Wikipedia.
Yes, okay, so there is a particular complex carbohydrate chain called hyaluronic acid, and you will see that on a lot of your beauty products.
Yes, I think I've said moisture.
Yes indeed.
So essentially it is a long chain of sugars, a particular combination of sugars that retains water really well, so like it attracts water and water molecule stick to it and it plumps up with like I think it can like one chain, like can hold like one hundred times its own volume, its own mass and water.
Oh wow, yeah, So what is your least favorite thing about glycobiology? Do you what really traps your hide?
It's weird because it's a combination of like a thing I like about it and a thing I don't like about it. Like it's it's a it's a growing field, but it's still a fairly small field, and so kind
of everybody knows everybody and everybody knows everybody's research. It has its pluses because, for instance, there's really only like one real textbook, like really good textbook for glycobiology, called The Essentials of Glycobiology, And so it's a it's a very close like knit community, which is nice, but it does mean any like two professors have like a beef or something, you know, like you're a professor might be like, no, don't go post stock in that person's.
Lab because they suck.
And so it's got the same issue of any close knit community is that any of the problems kind of get exacerbated. It also means, like our professional society meetings, for instance, when you know you go to like these big conferences, ours this pretty small. It's like four hundred people compared to like Society for Neuroscience it's like forty thousand people.
You know, Society for Glycobiology is tiny.
Does that make you feel elite though? Do you feel like you're a member of a small cool club. I never really thought of it that way.
I'm not really into elitism, so I don't really know.
Like no, it gives it a nice like family aspect, but it just doesn't give quite as much room for like networking and branching out.
There may not be many glyco biologists, but Michelle says it's a really good skill set. It's starting to get some tension. The pharmaceutical industry is really picking up on it, and there's a lot of room for using carbohydrates and their role in cell signaling for vaccine development. But still, I mean, I had to admit that I was stoked.
I kind of fangirled when I met her and she said she's a glycobiologist, I know when I met you, I was like, I'm not going to encounter another glycobiologist for it probably ever, So I was like, can I hold you into this room?
Yeah?
So what is her very very very favorite thing? Like what gives you butterflies? Makes you like get excited about getting into the lab or just doing the work you do? What do you love?
Oh?
For me personally, it's it's it's thinking about it in a way to understand like how this is going to benefit the communities and in particular these communities that are suffering from like really rare congenital disorders of glycostellations.
And that makes me really excited.
Do you want glcobiology to become a bigger thing?
I do, as much as I say, like the close knit family, Like I still want to see it become a common I want, you know, undergraduates to learn about it in science classes. I want pharmaceutical industries to like realize it's important and importance and like hire more and do more of its own research in glycobiology.
Have you considered shirts that say glycobiology is pretty sweet? She had not. She did get memed by a friend, and it's just a photo of her and glasses in the lab with the all caps proclamation glycobiology is cool. I will post this on the ologies Instagram because I feel it needs to be seen. Do you have to wear lab coats?
I do not, and like, nothing's gonna like infect me in my lab so I don't worry.
Too much about it.
But you could probably get so much respect at Starbucks if you waltzed in with a lab coat.
Just consider they're really like they're kind of hot though they're like not a very breathable material.
Oh I thought you meant like the people look hot in them. I'm like, yeah, people look great.
At a lab coat, you get at like hot, uncomfortable. It's only nice because it has pockets. And if you're not wearing like if you're in leggings and a T shirt and you don't have pockets, like, the lab coat is clutch.
The lab coat is clutch. Words to live by with Michelle Ducua also, please someone start that as a meme. Thank you very much, Thank you so so much for coming on. I'm so glad. I feel like I am walking away with so with a good grip on what glycobiology has. I had no idea what it was yesterday.
I'm glad actually makes me really happy. Hey good, Hey science communication.
Who did it? So next time you stare lovingly into a pita pocket, or or you banish your cereal to a locked file cabinet in the basement, just remember that your cells are like cousheballs. It's all crazy with carbs on their surface, and they're all talking to each other and waging wars on invaders, and you're just like eating an apple on a bench, wondering if you should get an asymmetrical haircut this year. I say go for it. To follow Michelle Ducua, She's at mt Ducua on Twitter
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I'm a creep. I read every one of them, and when I'm tired or having a hard time uploading something, or run into a research called a sac it keeps me going so much to know that you guys are out there listening to the show, because other than that, it's it's just me and my closet recording this, which is literally what's happening right now. Oh and as for this week's end of show secret. Right before I started recording this, I ate a slice of apple and I
realized I'm currently digesting half of the sticker. I ate the slice of apple. I looked, and I realized the other half of the sticker was still on the part of the apple. I had not i ate the sticker, so if I die, it's because of my addiction to freaknose in my absence. Please ask smart people dumb questions because they love it. Oh keyberbye, pacodermatology, biology, crypto zoology, lithology, zechonology, meteorologyologynathology, seriality.
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