Toni Bode

Spectrum

Zoologist Toni Bodi is currently developing a genomic diagnostic screen for Alzheimer’s disease and is a founding member of the Berkeley Bio Labs new bio hacker space. Nature magazine.

Transcript

Speaker 1: Spectrum's next.

Speaker 2: Aw. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible].

Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science [00:00:30] and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news.

Speaker 3: Hi and good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Our guest is Tony Bodhi Hickerson, a zoologist who was part of a cognitive study of howler monkeys in Mexico. Tony is trying to organize a noninvasive [00:01:00] dolphin study in the wild using wireless network technology. She is currently developing a genomic diagnostic screen for Alzheimer's disease and is a founding member of the Berkeley bio labs, a new bio hackerspace. Tony talks about cognition, Alzheimer's disease, and creating a scientific community resource in the bay area. Rick Karnofsky and Renee Rau interview Tony on this edition of spectrum.

Speaker 4: So welcome to spectrum. [00:01:30] I'm Rick Karnofsky here with Brad swift and Renee Rao. Our guest today on spectrum is Tony Bodhi, Hickerson and zoologist. Welcome to spectrum. Thank you for having me. Can you give us a little bit of a description of what you work on? Kind of a brief overview for the audience. That cognition is essentially the ability to receive and process information and the most abstract form. And we kind of think of it as mental processes, which can be both conscious and subconscious. [00:02:00] And so I do research on cognitive abilities of wildlife and at the moment I'm also working on an application in humans. What wildlife do you look at? Um, well I have looked at primates and I've been also involved in a dolphin project. So high functioning mammals. And how do you assess their cognitive abilities? Well, you can do behavioral studies, which is what I primarily do.

Speaker 4: And of course just looking at the anatomy as well. So [00:02:30] I try to be as noninvasive as possible. I don't work in a lab with monkeys in a cage. I actually work in the wilderness and follow monkeys around all day. So where do you do that? I was doing that in Mexico for my last study with seven months and from Sunup I watched the sun come up and uh, the howler monkeys, which is a species that I was working on would call in the morning. That's how we'd find them. So we trek through the jungle and find them and then start our study. And it would usually last, well it would last until sundown. So depending on how many hours a like we had [00:03:00] [inaudible]

Speaker 5: can you just walk us through what the study was and what you looked at in the howler monkeys and how you interpreted it?

Speaker 4: Well, this study, I was a, the head field managers, so it wasn't my particular study, but I was managing all the data collection and uh, we were looking at two different species of Holler monkey. And they're hybrids. So there's hybrid zone in Mexico where both of these species, which we believe based on genetic evidence have been separated for about 3 million [00:03:30] years. They have different number of sex chromosomes. They're very morphologically different, are coming together and meeting successfully. They also have very different social structures and one group tends to be far more aggressive than the other one is much more communal. It has large groups up to 25 30 and the other one usually has three to five. So to see how behaviorly they come together and genetically they come together because in one cross if you have a female of a and a male of B, they can [00:04:00] have an offspring. But if you inverse it they cannot. So it's really interesting also genetically to see how things recombine. What kinds of data did you take? Oh, we took auditory, so we, they're hollow monkeys. So we had all their calls, which it changes from group to group and obviously from species to species. We also took a lot of behavioral information, affiliative, so like affection and aggressive behavior, like attacks and genetic [00:04:30] information through and study captures as well as fecal samples.

Speaker 5: I'm just super curious about what it was like following the Heller monkeys and spending literally all day with them. You,

Speaker 4: I started to go insane. You actually do. Um, no, it was a really profound life experience for sure. And I couldn't have designed a better project to be part of. Like if I had designed my dream project, it would have been this project. When I started this project, I didn't speak Spanish and [00:05:00] every single person in my team only spoke Spanish, so I learned Spanish very fast. But during the process of learning a second language, you have this inability to completely express yourself and it kind of makes you go insane. And then when you couple that with standing in the middle of like a really humid forest, you know, surrounded by mosquitoes and following monkeys running through the canopy. I got you about month five I think, and I realized that I started to go insane. [00:05:30] When I yelled at an ant out loud, I paused and just laughed hysterically to myself and realize that like this is the point where like I've reached my mental break. Then I'm yelling at ants and I need to get to a city as soon as possible.

Speaker 2: Okay. Our guest today on spectrum is Tony Bodhi Hickerson, but she answers to Tony Bodhi in the next, she talks about her idea for a dolphin stone. [00:06:00] This is k a l x Berkeley.

Speaker 4: And what do you do with the dolphins? Uh, the Dolphin project, uh, is not a field project, unfortunately at the moment. It's an education campaign for the international mantle project, which is responsible for all dolphin safe tuna that you've ever seen as well as the documentary, the cove. So they're very avid group on [inaudible]. [00:06:30] And so I was putting together a campaign to try and inspire people that they're really intense creatures and why maybe we should respect them.

Speaker 5: You tell us a little bit about those abilities and why they're so intense.

Speaker 4: There are three groups of mammals that have large brains that's great. Apes, elephants and marine mammals. And the dolphins came from a very different evolutionary path. So they have different [00:07:00] structures, which is also really interesting. They don't have the prefrontal Cortex, which is what we tend to associate with being human, the sort of emotional side of being human. But they have a very intense limbic system, which is also associated with emotions and bonding behavior and sexual behavior. Dolphins have sort of this mixed reputation of being very kind of aggressive and also being really altruistic almost in their actions. [00:07:30] So looking at not only the hard facts of the biological side of things of like what structures they have and what those abilities are, but also case studies of look at these sort of altruistic behaviors. So their ability to perceive the world around them and to react in an emotional state is potentially really profound.

Speaker 5: And um, in your study to sort of understand all the ways that the Dolphin perceives the world and the way that it often feels these things, are you looking at the structures in their brains and seeing [00:08:00] the corresponding place where these thought processes and these perceptions happen? Or are you just observing behavior or are you doing both?

Speaker 4: Well, hopefully both. So I'm currently designing a project, which is hopefully gonna do exactly what you just said. Our tools at the moment are very limited, especially because we want to be as noninvasive as possible. Animals don't react in captivity the way that they react in the wild. And obviously they don't have the same space or social structure to be able to do the same sorts of things. [00:08:30] There is an up and coming technology that I hope to apply to this sort of research which would allow biological data to be recorded in real time and it would be completely noninvasive. It would be almost like a sticker, so there'd be no puncturing. There would be no need for captivity. Hopefully we could even apply it with minimal stress to the animal and with that we could have gps data body, we could potentially record the vibrations from their echolocation [00:09:00] and also neurological data and this would be the first information of its kind to be able to correlate if there's an approach or an affiliative behavior between two individuals, what areas of their brain are actually being, you know, lit up and that could really profoundly affect what we know about their structure.

Speaker 4: Yeah, that that is sounds really exciting. So it would be noninvasive. Do you know how that works? That must be really amazing. The technology that I'm, I'm hoping to work with [00:09:30] is a flexible microchip and I'm hoping to be working with some of the innovators to make it appliable to dolphins and something that would stick for up to a month. They should scan very quickly, so that is a restraint. I don't know as much of the engineering side of it because I'm not as much tech, but from my conversations with the people developing it, it seems like it might not be up to use for a year or two, but hopefully eventually we'll get [00:10:00] there and we'll have a better understanding of how one of the smartest animals on the planet. Thanks. Are other people currently doing anything more invasive? Captivity can be a very invasive process. How animals and captivity get in captivity are often from Dolphin Slaughters, which kill hundreds of their fellow pod mates to get a handful of dolphins because a live dolphin that is pristine, [00:10:30] you know mark free that goes into entertainment or goes into a laboratory studies. They get taken out and they get sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars and the rest of them get slaughtered and sold into the meat markets.

Speaker 6: Mm MM.

Speaker 3: You are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Our guest today is Tony Bow-tie Hickerson. Tony is a zoologist. In the next segment she talks about diagnosing Alzheimer's disease.

Speaker 4: [00:11:00] I actually wanted to ask you a little bit about the work you're doing with Alzheimer's and dice diagnostic work. Could you maybe tell us a little bit about how the process of diagnosing Alzheimer's works currently and what you're hoping to change about that? Well, there really isn't much in terms of diagnosis that's out for the general public. What I'm actually attempting to do, and initially it was for my own curiosity and you know obviously see the potential for other people to use it as [00:11:30] well. I wanted to test myself on this gene. So there is a gene called apoe e and there are three expressions of it and they account for about 95% of all Hymers, one of these types of accounts for 50% of all hammers. I can essentially locate this gene snippet out of the enormous strand of DNA and then look at their two spots where [00:12:00] the nucleotide is a certain sequence that I can tell you.

Speaker 4: If that is type one, two or three of that apathy and off of that, they're very strong statistics that will tell you that you have a very high likelihood or very low likelihood of getting Alzheimer's by a certain age. And it's sort of a spectrum due to the fact that we're deployed. So we have two copies of this gene. So if you have this like really strong negative version and one positive version, you will [00:12:30] have later onset Ohio Hymers. Then if you have two really negative versions, but there are really strong numbers that tell us what your likelihood is. But what I would like to do is to make it something that's very accessible for everyone. I don't want to produce this and market it as some expensive tests that's going to just perpetuate this whole medical debt system. I want this to be something that people can access and know for themselves to be able to plan [00:13:00] for their own future and to be able to take care of themselves and their family members more effectively and responsibly.

Speaker 4: So it's pretty similar to the aggressive cancer testing would you say? Or? Um, yeah, it's fairly similar. I haven't looked exactly at that one to see. I believe it is also a snip, which is like this single nucleotide change. So it should be very similar. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the process of you sort of isolating this gene? Did you go through and read the papers [00:13:30] and see that this gene was associated with it and develop the processes snippet on your own or I'm in the process of developing the process to snippet. So right now I'm troubleshooting the primer. So the, the molecule that you use to actually cut the DNA, what I have is currently binding to itself. So it is also binding to the site that I want it to, but it's also binding to itself. So I'm trying to sort that issue out.

Speaker 4: It's a process that needs to be critiqued a bit before. I'm willing to, you know, expose more [00:14:00] people to the answers cause I want to make sure that it is very accurate before I would to give someone those sorts of answers. You're currently doing some form of genetic screening and you previously did all of these behavioral studies. It's quite a transition. So how, how did you make that transition? Well they're both in principle based on cognition, mental abilities and so all Hymers is the degradation of cognitive abilities, the degradation of being able to recall information as well as [00:14:30] the breakdown of even motor skills and language skills and so that is profoundly interesting to me to to understand where and how cognitive abilities act and then to understand how they're dismantled is the cycle of, of the process of understanding exactly how things work. A lot of times we figure out what parts of the brain do what based on lesion studies, which is causing and disruption.

Speaker 4: The initial draw [00:15:00] to this was for my own curiosity. And that was sparked because my father has severe dementia. So I wanted to know for him, is this all Hymers or is it something environmental? And so I want to develop a test for him, for myself and for the public to know what's their likelihood so that they can plan for the future. Are there other differentiating factors you could look at as well besides this, besides this gene? So the gene is pretty profound and [00:15:30] it's significance in whether or not people get all hammers. But there's, there's also, you know, of course a lot of different factors and I should mention that like echoey is a specific kind of all hammers. It's not early onset and not all dementia is Alzheimer's. There's lots of ways to get dementia in old age. So this isn't like a yes, no test.

Speaker 4: If you have a really great diagnostic and it looks like you're clear for this, it doesn't mean that when you hit 80 that you're not gonna have problems [00:16:00] still. You still have to take care of yourself. And a lot of studies have shown that simple things and everyone says this, but simple things like diet and exercise. If you exercise on a regular basis, you can break down a lot of these corrosive molecules that cause a lot of mental problems, cause a lot of cardiovascular problems and you have to keep your metabolism up to deal with this and your body will also, you know, work to heal itself. It's just really profound what control you have over your future. [00:16:30] Like I don't want to give people this test and say you're doing, I feel that you two have a lot more control than a lot of people want to admit over the future. And so take responsibility for yourself and take care of your body. Go exercise and eat well and have lots of friends and learn new languages and go travel. See the world

Speaker 2: spectrum is a science and technology show on KALX Berkeley. Our guest [00:17:00] today is Tony Bodhi Hickerson in the next segment that Tony talks about, the new Berkeley Bio lab.

Speaker 4: So you're involved in a biohacker space. Uh, yes. So actually as of last weekend we moved into a space in Valeho which is my n when the other core members lab on the, hopefully we will be also opening a space [00:17:30] in Berkeley eventually, but for now we're in relay hope and it's essentially like a hacker space, but it's in biotech in general and you pay a membership and you have access to the lab and the materials to do your own research, detached from corporate biases and the strains of academia. So we provide a space in the community to kind of teach each other and [00:18:00] to work in and we allow real hard science to take place and sort of a pioneer setting. What's the name of it and how does it compare it to bio curious and some of the other spaces in the bay area?

Speaker 4: Sure. The name of the lab is going to be Berkeley bio labs. Some of the other entities that will be occurring within this lab is a June cell technologies. We're trying to be much more accessible in that our membership [00:18:30] is only going to be $100 a month, whereas a lot of other bio spaces are $2,000 and up a month. I think that having more spaces isn't necessarily a bad thing. We tend to be a little bit more focused on regenerative medicine and stem cell research, so people who are more focused along that lines might be more attracted to work with us, but certainly weren't. We're not discriminating against people who aren't in stem cell research or regenerative medicine. That's just what we tend to do. I shouldn't ask you if you could [00:19:00] tell us a little bit more about the projects that are happening in the space now.

Speaker 4: At the moment, we haven't even opened up yet. We were literally still moving all of the giant centrifuges and automated robots. And so right now I'm is my project as well as John's London, which is one of the founding members of the biohacker lab and he works in regenerative medicine and stem cells. [00:19:30] And once we kind of get settled and open our doors, we'll hopefully be screening lots of potential innovators to come and join our project and not necessarily his project but you know, whatever inspires them to try and you know, make a difference. And what will that screening process look like? It'll honestly be very personal. We're going to just meet with people one on one and see what they're interested in doing, what they have done and what they want to see in the future. It's much more about the people and [00:20:00] their drive to do something than the letters after their name.

Speaker 4: We all feel that someone who's really driven to take the four or five years after a bachelor's and do their own research potentially has a lot more to offer than someone who might not know what they want to do in his just signing up for pastry. Cause they feel like it's the next step. So we're definitely open to pioneers, innovators and people who are willing to scrap to make a change. How are you getting the word out about the a space? [00:20:30] Well, actually the, the first thing that has happened so far on the 24th I believe it was, we had a paper written about us in nature. And so that was the first real publicity, and this is the second. So the article was called biotechnology independent streak. If anyone cares to look it up in the July 24th issue, it's gotta be super expensive to have all of the high mated robots and the giant centrifuge.

Speaker 4: How are you financing [00:21:00] the space? All of the equipment is already owned by John. He's been working in biotech for quite some time and it has accumulated a very impressive stock of machinery and equipment and he's more than happy to share, to enable other people. He's been really phenomenal and assisting me and getting into a lab space, she's really enabled me to be able to do research that I would never be able to do on my own. And he's doing that for hopefully a lot of other people and so [00:21:30] I would hope to perpetuate that and help people get into it and start making a difference. What do you anticipate the future of the hackerspace pain? Well, we hope that we find lots of driven people who want to come and we are overflowing with scientists until we need to open up another space. I would love to see this be a scientific movement.

Speaker 4: Science is all about curiosity. It's about having a question and figuring out how to find the answer and I think that that's [00:22:00] something in our education system that a lot of times is not really taught. People are taught facts, they're not taught. How do you figure facts out? You know? It's not about memorization. It's about teaching yourself how to think. How did you get into science? I have always been profoundly curious, but actually I started out as an art major and about two and a half years in I got called into my advisor's [00:22:30] office and I said, you can't take any more science classes. Told me you filled up all your electives and another semester. And if you take another science class, then we're going to kick you out of the fine arts school. So I said, okay. And I put in an application at another university and switched into science because I thought it was completely absurd that they would hinder me from taking science classes, but it was just a curiosity to understand how [00:23:00] the molecular and biological world works. Understand, you know, how life happens and how stars are born. It's something that I don't understand why every single person doesn't have this profound emotional response to understanding all Tony, thanks for joining. Yes, thank you.

Speaker 2: Oh, [inaudible]. If you can not always catch spectrum broadcasts, know that shows are archived [00:23:30] on iTunes university, we have created a simple link to the archive just for you. The link is tiny url.com/calyx spectrum. No, a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky and I present the calendar.

Speaker 3: Tuesday. August 27th the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens [00:24:00] will host a guided butterfly walk. Join Sally Levinson, the gardens resident caterpillar lady on a walk through the amazing collections of the botanical garden in search of butterflies to register for a butterfly walk, which is free with admission email [e-mail] the butterfly walk will be held from three to 4:00 PM on Tuesday, August 27th at the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens. At this month, [00:24:30] actual science, you can learn how the properties of diamonds are uniquely suited for scientific research. Christine beavers is a research scientist based at the advanced light source at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Her specialty is crystallography, which is the determination of 3d structures of molecules from crystals using x-rays. Actual science will be on Thursday, August 29th at 6:00 PM [00:25:00] at actual cafe six three three four San Pablo Avenue in Oakland and mission is free. UC Berkeley is holding its first monthly blood drive of the school year on August 29th you can make an appointment online, but walk-ins are also welcome.

Speaker 3: You are eligible to donate if you are in good health way, at least 110 pounds and are 17 years or older. The blood drive will be on Thursday, August 29th in the Anna had [00:25:30] alumni house on the UC Berkeley campus. It will last from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM you can make an appointment or find more information at the website. Red cross.org using the sponsor code you see be wonder fest and ask a scientist present the neuroscience of magic on Wednesday, September 4th at the [inaudible] street food park, 48 [00:26:00] 11th street in San Francisco. You CSF professor of neuroscience, Adam Gazzaley and the comedy magician, Robert Strong. We'll lead discussions from ancient conjurers t quick handed con artists, two big ticket Las Vegas illusionists magicians. Throughout the ages, I've been expertly manipulating human at attention and perception to dazzle and delight us. [00:26:30] Of course, you know that the phenomenon of cognitive and sensory illusions are responsible for the magic, but you've got to admit it still kind of freaks you out when some guy in a top hat defies the of nature right in front of your eyes. The event is free. Now, two news stories.

Speaker 3: Berkeley News Center reports a new theory by fluid dynamics experts at the University of California Berkeley shows how Zombie vorticies [00:27:00] help lead to the birth of a new star reporting in the journal Physical Review Letters, a team led by computational physicist Philip Marcus shows how variations in gas density led to instability, which generates the whirlpool like vorticies needed for stars to form. The Zombie reference is an astronomical nod to pop culture and because of the so called dead zones in which these vorticies exist, this new model has caught the [00:27:30] attention of Marcus's colleagues at UC Berkeley, including Richard Klein, adjunct professor of astronomy and fellow star formation expert, Christopher McKee, UC Berkeley professor of physics and astronomy. They were not part of the work described in physical review letters but are collaborating with Marcus to put the Zombie vorticies through more tests. Science daily reports the identification of what may be the earliest known [00:28:00] biomarker associated with the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.

Speaker 3: The results suggest that this novel potential biomarker is present in cerebral spinal fluid at least a decade before signs of dementia manifest. If our initial findings can be replicated by other laboratories, the results will change the way we currently think about the causes of Alzheimer's Disease said Dr Ramon true? Yes. Research professor [00:28:30] at the CSIC Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona and lead author of the study that was published in annals of neurology. This discovery may enable us to search for more effective treatments that can be administered during the preclinical stage. These C S I c researchers demonstrated that a decrease in the content of micro chondrial DNA in cerebral spinal fluid may be a preclinical indicator [00:29:00] for Alzheimer's disease. Furthermore, there may be a direct causal relationship

Speaker 6: [inaudible].

Speaker 1: The music hub during this show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Address [00:29:30] is spectrum dot k. Alright. yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible].

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