News Bites are monthly episodes where Danielle and Jeff break down important topics surrounding the field of biomedical research (and some unrelated topics).
In this News Bite edition, Jeff and Danielle discuss:
Links to all these stories can be found below
In this episode, we also tackle topics from tornadoes to termites and share our personal experiences with these natural disasters and the chaos that sometimes ensues. Don't miss out on this fascinating and fun-filled conversation!
Sign up for the Lab Rat Chat newsletter!
https://www.amprogress.org/raising-voices/lab-rat-chat/
Purchase Lab Rat Chat merch and help support the podcast and biomedical research!
https://labratchat.myteespring.co/
Resources & Links:
Follow us on Twitter! Facebook! Instagram!
https://twitter.com/thelabratchat
https://www.facebook.com/labratchat
https://www.instagram.com/thelabratchat
All Lab Rat Chat episodes are edited by Audionauts: https://audionauts.pro/
News Bites are monthly episodes where Danielle and Jeff break down important topics surrounding the field of biomedical research (and some unrelated topics).
In this News Bite edition, Jeff and Danielle discuss:
Links to all these stories can be found below
In this episode, we also tackle topics from tornadoes to termites and share our personal experiences with these natural disasters and the chaos that sometimes ensues. Don't miss out on this fascinating and fun-filled conversation!
Sign up for the Lab Rat Chat newsletter!
https://www.amprogress.org/raising-voices/lab-rat-chat/
Purchase Lab Rat Chat merch and help support the podcast and biomedical research!
https://labratchat.myteespring.co/
Resources & Links:
Follow us on Twitter! Facebook! Instagram!
https://twitter.com/thelabratchat
https://www.facebook.com/labratchat
https://www.instagram.com/thelabratchat
All Lab Rat Chat episodes are edited by Audionauts: https://audionauts.pro/
This podcast is supported by Americans for Medical Progress and was founded and created through the Michael D Hare Fellowship, awarded annually to support projects that inform and educate the public about the critical role of animal research in furthering medical progress. The Fellowship honors the late Dr Michael Hare, a renowned board-certified laboratory animal veterinarian who dedicated his career to scientific and medical advancements and who was deeply committed to animal welfare and advocacy. Hey, everyone, welcome into the June edition, the Librat Chat NewsBite episodes. Thank you for joining us. We got some really good content, i think, for you today. I'm going to start off with a somewhat exciting, interesting story for everyone, so stay tuned in a second for that. But just before we get into that, just please go rate review. Follow us on social media. We're basically just on Instagram and Facebook. You can also go follow Danielle's mouse page. What's your mouse page?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh.
Speaker 1:Which has more followers than our podcast.
Speaker 2:all of a sudden, Little Mary, mice Mary, like M-E-R-R-Y.
Speaker 1:Right, and apparently people just love looking at fake mice.
Speaker 2:Hey, they're freaking adorable Okay.
Speaker 1:I mean, you have some pretty good shots, yeah, but it does blow my mind that they're just these little stuffed mice that are living a little fake mouse life And people love it.
Speaker 2:No, it's taken on Like I'm turning into like an influencer, but like a mouse influencer. I'm like, oh, my mice need more things for their kitchen And my mice, like my followers, want to know what my mice are up to. And it's like, oh my God, I need a reality check.
Speaker 1:Right, I mean maybe we should start a podcast about the fake world of mice, a day in the life of the mice, do they have names?
Speaker 2:No no.
Speaker 1:Because you know this whole thing started because, Because that would be crazy.
Speaker 2:No, it wouldn't be crazy. Let me explain. The mouse collection started because when my daughter was born we didn't need like baby stuff, because she's the second kid and we already had all the baby stuff. So people would be like, what do you want me to get? And I'm like, oh, there's these. Really like high quality, adorable mice, like I'd love to have a whole family for her when she's old enough to have a dollhouse, because I don't like dolls. Dolls creep me out.
Speaker 1:But like But fake mice are fine.
Speaker 2:Yes, yep, that's exactly right. So I wanted her to have like this really cute, high quality, like collectible type little mice for her dollhouse. And then, like a lot of my family members are like, oh, look at this for your mice. And like my mom like, sew his little outfits for them And like, technically, these are for my daughter. But I will say like I sometimes need a reality check because I am having so much fun with them until she gets old enough to have very, very tiny little miniature things.
Speaker 1:And then I mean okay, have you gotten any? Are you at the point where people are like I don't know any little fake mouse, clothing or item companies, but are they extending you stuff, like hey, here's some stuff?
Speaker 2:for your mouse family and you can promote our brand. There are accounts out there with these same type of mice that have like 13,000 followers And like For mice. That's Yeah.
Speaker 1:Fake mice, sorry. Like real mice, like out wild mice. I get it Like people want to see pictures of dogs.
Speaker 2:No, there is like a whole community of us crazies. No, i'll call myself crazy. I don't know if these other people know that they're crazy but there's a whole bunch of us And, like, some of them have like 13,000 followers And, like, those are the people who get the like ooh, check out these cute. But yes, there are Etsy companies that make clothing for these mice.
Speaker 1:They have like giveaways. Do you need that? Yeah, are you involved in giveaways for your mice?
Speaker 2:I hosted my own giveaway once because it was super fun.
Speaker 1:Would you guys give away the mouse I gave?
Speaker 2:away like miniature kitchen stuff. I'm never giving The mice are family. I'm not giving away the mice.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, they're all right Keeping together, but like little, like kitchen Family first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, miniature cooking stuff for a mouse kitchen, but Do they upgrade their kitchen?
Speaker 1:They did some renovations for you to get rid of it.
Speaker 2:There was some really cool stuff in downtown in my town on Main Street, and there was like a bunch of miniature stuff and I went like a little like buying crazy and I was like I don't need all this, so I gave some away.
Speaker 1:Okay, genius, all right. Well, i'm glad that that's really taken off for you Somehow. Next thing, you know you'll be at the keynote speaker at the next convention that they have, which.
Speaker 2:I'm, and that would be fine with me. I'm sorry to start with that.
Speaker 1:Maybe you'll create the convention.
Speaker 2:Well, they have miniature conventions that I've like, all right, i've looked at them, but they're not local enough for me and they're like Miniature conventions and that everything there is miniature. Yeah, not like just mice, but like dollhouse miniature, like.
Speaker 1:How do you say?
Speaker 2:miniature, miniature, how do you say it?
Speaker 1:I just say miniature, i don't really Miniature. There's an.
Speaker 2:A in there, it's a miniature.
Speaker 1:It's just miniature.
Speaker 2:Now I can't even say it. You just said it. Now I can't say it. You said it the way I say it Miniature. No, it's not miniature. It's not miniature, it's not miniature. Okay, here we go. Listeners, do please comment somewhere on the post when we air this episode. Miniature or miniature, that's right Now. I want to know Miniature because it's mini. Jeff, you also called a sconce a sconce, So I don't know if we can go with your pronunciation. You were like, yeah, the Scalces.
Speaker 1:I believe I was asking you at the time what the proper pronunciation was. I don't remember, but Because Scalces didn't seem right And so I figured it had to be French and that it was Scalces.
Speaker 2:The Scalces, were you like you're upgrading something at your house or something and you're like, oh, look at these Scalces, yeah, we had those lights and I was taking them out. That's right.
Speaker 1:I think that's not it. I've never heard of those before, but now I'll never forget.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:We don't need anybody's input on that one. We know the correct terminology now, all right.
Speaker 2:Well, should we talk about science now? Oh, you have a story. What was your story?
Speaker 1:Well, so okay, well, i guess we'll get into it.
Speaker 2:You said it was you were going to start with this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this we have to. So we're in Louisiana and it's warm and there's lots of bugs in Louisiana, tons of bugs, and they're bigger than anywhere else. Louisiana, i have declared, and maybe not the first to declare, but like it's basically the Australian outback of the United States, okay, okay, we have all the poisonous snakes, all the poisonous spiders.
Speaker 2:Scorpions.
Speaker 1:I haven't seen scorpions. I haven't looked that up. It wouldn't surprise me. Okay, so we're going to be a little talking in the background for a minute and we're just going to have to deal with that.
Speaker 2:You have a little minion running around.
Speaker 1:There's a pest guy here speaking of bugs, Oh fuck.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Very so that is Different kind.
Speaker 1:Right, so termites are a thing. Do you have to worry about termites? And Virginia, i don't remember. I don't remember getting a termite inspection.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you get a termite inspection, like when you buy your house, but not like an annual thing. Right.
Speaker 1:So they come out every year here.
Speaker 2:You have termites.
Speaker 1:So they came out in March. No, they came out in March. And then the inspection everything looks great. And then the guy said like just wait, like when they swarm you'll know. You know and you'll see that you'll see them out swarming. And so I was like okay, like well, when's that going to happen So I can be prepared. They didn't get a date. Anyways, about two weeks before Mother's Day, i was reading a story to my daughters, putting them down to bed, felt something like crawling on my stomach.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Like it was a low bug. And so when I looked up what the termites are going to look like, so I you know they look like ants, but they have like long wings, and it was crawling on my stomach And I was like, oh man, and then I just kind of knocked it off. You know, like all of our curtains are like pulled back open, like lights are on, we're getting ready for bed, and then the next thing, you know, there's like 10 of them flying around the light, and then there's 30, and then there's a hundred.
Speaker 2:What in your house?
Speaker 1:Yep, And then my we're like we're done reading at this point, because who can focus? And we go out to the hallway, like the hallway lights are on, There's, they're everywhere. My son's out there, Like you know, he's like dad. It feels like we're living outside right now, which it did because they're just everywhere, Like there was probably at the time we noticed the one day to the next Yep.
Speaker 1:So zero in the house to all of a sudden there were a thousand in the house and they started coming out from behind the baseboards like crawling out.
Speaker 2:Oh no.
Speaker 1:And they were in the back. They were there are lights, and so we turned all the lights off.
Speaker 2:It's like a horror movie. See what they say to you. Turn the lights off and be quiet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so my, my coworker, he just moved here from Texas. The next day I was talking to him about it and he was putting his daughter to bed but he was in like a dark room already just like doing whatever, put her to bed and he came out and his wife is from here and he said he came out of the room to his wife like waving her arms, saying turn all the lights off, close the windows. They're coming. And he was like I feel like I need to grab my gun, like you know. And so they're coming, right, they're coming. And so then they came and they got inside everybody's house and apparently it's normal out here and no one told me that this happens.
Speaker 2:No one thought to warn you of this.
Speaker 1:Wait.
Speaker 2:So you actually stayed in your house that night. I would have been like nope hotel, see you.
Speaker 1:So they last. they fly around for a couple hours. They came in, they can't buy it, they can't do anything. When they land, they lose their wings, and then they crawl and then they just die.
Speaker 2:Wait what.
Speaker 1:By the morning time they were all dead.
Speaker 2:That's the stupidest life cycle.
Speaker 1:It was a massacre of termites inside of our house that we then had to vacuum up. and while I vacuum them up, i'm like, was this just going to repeat again tomorrow night? Like I'm wasting all my time, so I just let this, and it didn't happen the next night, and it hasn't happened again.
Speaker 2:But don't you have to worry about termites now, like eating your foundation.
Speaker 1:No, i guess you don't, i don't. Apparently they're not the termite. These aren't. These are termites that, like, try to like, find and establish new colonies, and they try to find a mate, and then they'll bury down in the ground together, do their thing and start a new colony there. So, like they swarm and they go towards light.
Speaker 2:And so they've come out of the ground and by the millions, i guess.
Speaker 1:They come out of the ground and they just find the first light. They can't fly very far, i guess, and we live in like heavily wooded areas, so there's obviously termites, and they come out of the ground once a year and try to set up, stop somewhere else, and that was, and they thought my house would be a good spot. And so now we know, and they've told us since, like starting in like mid-May, every night you just turn all the lights off in the front of your house, inside your house, you close your curtains and you're fine, they won't come in Because the light draws them towards you, yeah, and so they'll find a way, in no matter what, just to come in and fly around and then die.
Speaker 2:And so he like he'll work here as a guy. Close the windows, Yeah right.
Speaker 1:Like someone's breaking in. It's like what's that movie where there's no law or rules?
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, they can just do it in the purge or whatever The purge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like the purge, except the termite version of the purge, and they're just finding their way in.
Speaker 2:Oh, I think you've just written Disney, their next Pixar movie Storyline.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was just upset that no one decided to tell us about this.
Speaker 2:How did Claire not know, though, because she's from there.
Speaker 1:I don't remember. I don't think she remembers it like that ever.
Speaker 2:Hmm, okay.
Speaker 1:And I think it was a particularly bad year for them this year too. Okay, because everyone was saying how bad they were. It's like, well, that better be for real thing. Ooh, i don't have to go through this again, wow. But to me, as long as they don't actually cause any damage and we get the inspection every year, there's no termites in the house, so Yeah, yeah, whatever. That's just hilarious though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i just thought his story was funny. And then apparently he turned on his gas stove, turned all the lights off, turned the gas stove off and they went to that light and just burned, just hit the flame.
Speaker 2:To the flame And we just started dying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ew, but then they're on your stove, okay, well, i'm going to have to look into this, because that's fascinating and disgusting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so just one more thing that we have to deal with.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And Louisiana.
Speaker 2:Uh, we had to deal with a tornado. Sorry this, we are really off topic here. but yeah, freaking tornado, am I allowed to say freaking Um?
Speaker 1:driving home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were in Carrollton, if you remember this area and like the alarm goes off, like comes over my phone, over the radio, everything, and like my poor son is like mommy, i'm scared, because it's like seek shelter immediately. I couldn't be like me too, buddy. I was like no, we're okay, everything's fine. And so I called my husband and he was like yeah, it's bad because he's like 20 minutes north and it was like already there. He's like I, you guys need to like get somewhere. He's like go to a grocery store, do whatever. And I'm like there's nothing around here, like it's just stretches of nothingness.
Speaker 2:Um, and I said we'll go to the library because that was right around the corner. So we get to the library parking lot and librarians come out and they're like are you returning books? And I'm like no, a tornado warning just came over and I was talking really fast. And they're like okay, okay, get inside. So we like run inside. We were the only people at the library. We were getting ready to lock the doors, to go into lockdown because of the tornado warnings. They're like if you had come a minute later, we would have been in our break room and we wouldn't have heard you at the door and we went into their break room and then the power went out and my poor son is like, mommy, i'm scared, i'm like no, no, no, it's cool, we got flashlights, We're fine, everything's fine. And the two librarians were so sweet and like, played like Simon says, and did shadow puppets with my kids. And like 25 minutes later we emerge And there are just trees down everywhere.
Speaker 1:Like straight up, came right through you.
Speaker 2:Well, you look at the news and it says confirmed tornado in Carrollton. Wow, like, luckily, no, you know, there was no reported like injuries or like issues with human life, but like houses lost, some shingles and siding, and like trees are down And it was like, oh my goodness, like we just drove right into that.
Speaker 1:That's crazy.
Speaker 2:So we have tornadoes and you have termites.
Speaker 1:We get tornadoes too, so yeah, you get everything. But we haven't actually fortunately had to live through one like you have, so that's probably. I mean, it was exciting, it was just you and your son.
Speaker 2:And no, my daughter was with us too, but she thought it was fun, she's too, she don't care. She was like, hmm, snacks, like I'm in a dark room.
Speaker 1:Right Shadow puppets, flashlights.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But, like my son could, like he understood that the alert was saying like a tornado is coming, seek shelter immediately. And he was like right, Right, that's crazy. Yeah, no, i'll send you a picture of the clouds that were rolling through that people were taking, because people go outside when these alarms go off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i just watched the video online of somebody that they were standing on their porch as a techie Why the tornado went by. Yeah, you actually see the tornado, but, like they, the camera drops for a second and then, as it comes back up, like all of the trees are just down in their front yard and they were just standing outside. Yeah, the whole time. Yeah, so that's crazy.
Speaker 2:We should probably talk about science, though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's do that.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:That's a nice little pageant that we went on The I have. so I have two stories. You have two minor about, hopefully not the same. I have one about wound healing and then a new method to sterilize cats, if you will.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I've been there. I'm like why are we cleaning the cats?
Speaker 1:But then I remember what we're talking about. Yeah, so they can't reproduce Spain cats.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, i have one. We're talking about COVID again, but some research about kind of looking into the chronic pain for long COVID, which is probably good to get some information on, and then another study just about moving kind of more into like a natural, natural environment for animals to like look at how their brain works. That's a really bad explanation. It'll make more sense when I start talking about it.
Speaker 1:Will it? No, we'll try. Okay, all right. So this article just came out, the one that I'm going to talk about, the new birth control for cats first, and the way that they present it is that there's no surgery necessary. Once, i guess it's true and I guess the benefit is they don't have to undergo surgery. And so for everybody out there asking the benefit, besides surgery, there's also over like 600 million feral cats in the United States, and that's a lot. Oh no, i'm sorry. The world cat population is 600 million, and then they say 80% of those are actually just free roaming like feral cats, and then, as everyone has heard, that these feral cats go out and they kill up to like 4 billion birds every year And that's just in the United States in a total of like 22 billion mammals every year.
Speaker 2:We have cats on our property that keep taking out birds nests And I'm getting real mad at them because I like my little birds nests and they go in our like landscaping And I would like to protect them. But these cats at 3 am brutal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I don't know how to get rid of those cats, but we can hopefully at least prevent them from breeding and then having, and then keeping this cycle Right.
Speaker 1:Going And so there's lots of like spay neuter programs out there. You know, through vet school We basically participated in that just to get spay like surgery practice and put the new way is basically just to try to end the surgery process of having to capture them. You still have to capture them. Obviously you can't like shoot a dart at them like you would like cows out in the field.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which that would be a fun job If you could just dart them, just go out And anyways. Sorry, i was talking on the road. So it's just an injection, that this is one single injection. It doesn't even say what exactly they're they're injecting, but it takes out the need to capture and bring them into a clinic, undergo surgery, recover them and then bring them basically back out to where you found them.
Speaker 2:How often do they need the injection?
Speaker 1:Just once.
Speaker 2:What happens if you inject the same cat multiple times?
Speaker 1:They turn into a mutant. Yeah, i don't know.
Speaker 2:But like how would you know which I think they inject?
Speaker 1:Well, probably the same way that you do, like spays and neuters, you, you, you snip them. So, if you so, when we, when we catch a, when a feral cat gets caught, they spay and neuter programs, or they're getting neutered at a humane society or shelter. After you spay them, you snip the tip of the ear.
Speaker 2:Like an ear punch for like a mouse, so it's not rounded anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's straight across And that's like the universal sign that this cat has already been fixed, and same for me. So you do that for males and females, because I mean, obviously there's a way to tell if a male still intact, but you're not getting that close to him, so you just snip it, okay, and so they use like anti Malarian hormone, which I guess they have found that it will protect, like ovarian reserves and women undergoing chemotherapy. And then researchers at Harvard and some hospital like Massachusetts General Hospital, they did some research and started using this, this AMH product, and felines, or this hormone and felines, and they showed that they do gene therapy with it and all this like technical stuff that we don't need to get into, but they just have to do it one time And it doesn't. I don't think they've studied them out long enough to know like how long it would last or if it lasts you know, the entire life of the cat.
Speaker 2:But for now, it's a non surgical sterilant. Is this for females or males? Just females.
Speaker 1:Just females, but they just females. They brought a male cat into a female colony for like four month long mating trials And then those females did not get pregnant.
Speaker 2:But you also can't snip a cat's ear unless it's like under anesthesia. Can you Like? if you catch this cat, it's like another conversation Like if you just do the tip of the ear. Is that okay?
Speaker 1:I guess we have to find out how painful that is, But also how.
Speaker 2:who's gonna hold that wild cat when that procedure happens?
Speaker 1:Not me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm not a fan of cat restraint.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that doesn't really work very well.
Speaker 1:I mean they can. Just they're so wiggly They can get out of everything, and then the second they get out, their teeth are buried in your skin.
Speaker 2:They're coming for you, yeah.
Speaker 1:So looks they actually. I'm sorry, just say that the treatment of that hormone after the one injection maintained high levels for two years, for over two years, and during that time period it suppresses that ovarian follicle development and they can't ovulate. So at least for two years.
Speaker 2:Why can't we get that?
Speaker 1:like It's not longer.
Speaker 2:For people.
Speaker 1:You wanna sterilize people?
Speaker 2:No, but like a birth control injection that you get once every two years, like that sounds great.
Speaker 1:What? if you want? it has to be a reversal. I feel like.
Speaker 2:True.
Speaker 1:You know it's gotta be some way to But like if you know you're done having kids. Correct. Yeah, you know, like myself, right, i mean there are ways, you know, i guess you can get the injection. That'd be easier. There's a lot less painful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah, so I don't know. It's like obviously we have a way already to prevent cats from breeding. This I think, just kind of hopefully, could make it more practical that we could actually reduce the numbers of cats, cause I feel like for those shelter veterinarians out there that are just spaying and neutering cats all day long, i mean you gotta feel helpless sometimes. Yeah, every day Here's another truckload of them, yeah, and it just never stops. So anyways, this cool little like gene therapy thing that they've done in cats And I'm not sure if they tested it previously in mice or anything, but I think cats count as animals on this podcast, right, so it's animal related.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah. So my first article is about the roots of chronic pain in long COVID Cause. Chances are you probably know someone, or at least know someone who knows someone who is dealing with long COVID. Covid is a total jerk. I think we've beaten that subject to a pulp.
Speaker 2:But so they started looking at this in hamsters, giving them COVID And the ones that were having like the prolonged issues. It reveals that the virus left residual genetic material in the touch sensing neurons And so that was triggering the long lasting changes that were leaving the rodents like sensitive to pain. And so they were kind of looking at the neurons themselves and what can be done for it and blocking proteins and longterm treatments. And this article goes into a lot of detail on the different ideas. But they're saying it's kind of hard to translate into testing on humans cause. You can't easily go in and get nerves out and neurons out.
Speaker 2:But this is just the first step in looking towards finally easing the pain, maybe finding a way to get out that remaining genetic material that COVID's leaving behind And maybe there's an end in sight for some of these people that are suffering from it. But they were saying a potential target for the treatments is the protein ILF3. And they found that an experimental cancer drug, ym155, inhibited that protein and relieved the pain sensitivity in a mouse model of the same issue. So they're kind of looking at different treatments, different drugs to kind of figure out that touch sensing neurons to kind of ease up that longterm pain. So again, hopefully that moves forward and those people who are definitely suffering from that get some good news soon, cause that's COVID sucks.
Speaker 1:How many people like is it? do I give you numbers Like how many people do they think are suffering It might have? let me breeze through here.
Speaker 2:Payne, WHO sites research suggesting that as many as 17 million people are living with long COVID in Europe in 2021. Another study suggests it might be impacting 65 million people worldwide, So ouch.
Speaker 1:And that all of those people have. They think all those people have chronic pain. Yeah, long COVID.
Speaker 2:I guess they're saying if your symptoms or new pain begins after three months after you had COVID, that's sort of what puts you in that long haul COVID versus if you just had a short term three months or less then you're not of the yeah.
Speaker 1:And if it was just okay, all right. Yeah, interesting, what are the so like? any symptom you get after having COVID is then classified as long COVID.
Speaker 2:Chronic fatigue, pain, shortness of breath and persistent brain fog are some of the although it says encompasses more than 200 reported.
Speaker 1:I had brain fog before COVID.
Speaker 2:I had brain fog as soon as I had kids. It's still there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, long COVID symptoms, yeah I mean obviously you were Difficulty thinking or concentrating, headache, sleep problems, dizziness when you stand up I mean, i've had that since I was a kid. Stand up too quick, pins and needles, change of smell or taste, depression or anxiety very general.
Speaker 2:I mean, obviously you have to work with your doctor to get your diagnosis, but I'm just saying that I definitely think sciences weren't going in the right direction to help the people who definitely have that pain from COVID.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I wonder if it will work for like other things, or specifically like for COVID, like what if you?
Speaker 2:have I mean, i guess, whatever, i guess What if you have the same?
Speaker 1:symptoms, but you never had COVID, or you have pain or-. Yeah, i can just help for other-. Maybe, Chronic types of pain or conditions? I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Cool Well progress, right Yeah.
Speaker 1:Progress. All right, my next story Were you done, sorry.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, i don't know if you have No, i don't know if you have a whole analysis after that. My next story is kind of cool. It came out June 1st So, and it's from the American Chemical Society And what this team of researchers developed is like a wound healing ink that they can paint onto cuts, and they paint it on with a 3D printed pen. So that's pretty cool. So basically like when you get a cut on your skin or you have some sort of abrasion or wound, you know, typically it's either bandage, say, if it's small, just with a bandaid, or you have to get like a big bandage, or you have to get sutures or staples or whatever you know, and then you get antibiotics to help prevent complications from things getting in it and potential infections.
Speaker 1:And what they found out was they could create this gel basically, which is the paint, which helps secrete, which helps like promote white blood cells and extracellular vesicles and probably like fibroblasts and all this stuff to the site. And they create a 3D pen, they put this hydrogel based wound healing ink inside of it And then they can just basically paint it on And the paint stands for portable bioactive ink for tissue healing And so, and it uses those extracellular vesicles and it has like macrophages in it. They paint it on the wound And they showed that in mice that had they were, obviously a little wound was created. They put the paint solution on there and they were almost completely healed from a large wound. It doesn't say what that is or have pictures in just 12 days And it says compared to mice that didn't receive the treatment. It doesn't say how far along they were in the healing process but it says they were not nearly as far as long in the healing process as the ones that received this gel.
Speaker 2:I'm drawing a blank right now, but I'm trying to think of the product name that you put on chickens when they have a cut or a wound or whatever. We just call it the blue dye, or it's kind of purple-y, but I can't think. What is it called? The blue stuff that you put on chickens. Did you learn about the blue stuff that you put on chickens in vet school?
Speaker 2:We probably had a slide on it, but I don't recall To me that's what I'm picturing, because it's like blue and if you get it on your own skin, you're going to be blue for like two weeks.
Speaker 1:I hear you typing away over there. You're trying to look it up. No, I'm not typing.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's rain on the window.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:But now I'm going to type, hold on.
Speaker 1:Watch out for those tornadoes. There's the type and it's started paling.
Speaker 2:It's called blue coat. Blue coat for chicken wounds. So this paint for wound healing, It's been invented for chickens. I'm just saying.
Speaker 1:Does it actually promote wound healing or is it just prevent it from getting infected?
Speaker 2:Well, i think it just prevents it from getting infected. But because chickens are attracted to blood, it turns the chicken, like the red, part blue, so that the chickens don't see it anymore and they stop picking at their fellow chickens. So it's a two for one with the-.
Speaker 1:Because they have for large animals and stuff. They have that like aluminum spray, alu-sheel or Alu-spray. And it's the same kind of thing. You spray it on there. Basically, you don't want flies to get in it and everything out there.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 1:And then you turn them into like a little robot, like they look like they have like a metal on them. It's like this looks like aluminum when you spray it on, and same kind of thing. But I think this one is just a little different in the fact that it helps, like activate all of those wound healing processes, which is a lot, you know, complex and not worth the time to get into. And this since we've already ranted quite a bit on this episode, right, right right.
Speaker 1:But anyways, just any way to help. you know, especially somebody, wounds just won't heal or they get infected, and people deal with chronic wound wounds that never heal and get infected. So this is one way to hopefully avoid all of that And maybe also at the same time, if you can get it on there fast enough, hopefully avoid the use of antibiotics and then, if we're using, less antibiotics less resistance.
Speaker 2:that's good Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's that.
Speaker 2:Cool. My last story is just about a study that was done Oh, i just read the name of it over in London Sainsbury Welcome Center at University University College London. So they're looking at sort of the flip side of how brains work, because you know, you have studies with lab mice and lab rats where they're, you know, trained to drive a car or trained to click a joystick and get a treat, and they work for months with these animals to like, train them on a specific behavior and study how the brain works. But now they're kind of taking a step back and saying let's look at how the brain works in a more natural setting where maybe like a stressor is introduced or something like that. So they have this little video of a little lab mouse just sniffing around a table and there's a little shelter shed thing off to the side, and then all of a sudden a circle shadow appears and starts to get bigger, as if an object's coming closer to the table, and the mouse sees the shadow, stops for a millisecond and then immediately books it back to the little shelter. And so they're kind of looking at what in that mouse's brain, because this is a lab mouse, this isn't a mouse that's been out there that, like nose birds are, you know, after them. It's not a learned behavior, It's just something that's in them that, like you know if you have a shadow coming and it's not even that an object is approaching, because it's just a lab controlled shadow that gets larger and larger. So they're kind of looking at more natural stressors and how the brain reacts And they think that, you know, this is just the beginning of this type of research.
Speaker 2:But what else can they do? Can they get an owl? Can they use a drone to have something approach? And how can they study the brain and its you know its reaction and see how this kind of can translate to humans? It says the end result is like studying a professional athlete The brain might work differently in a messy, unpredictable real world because they have all these other studies with very controlled training, reward system. But this is sort of the opposite of that and kind of how can this help translate? for you know pain responses or you know even conditions they're saying might help with understanding Down syndrome and autism to not look at this controlled environment but more of your natural, you know, messy, disorganized environment. So kind of cool.
Speaker 1:It's a cute little video. It's kind of crazy, though, that they have that natural just instinct to something's come in and got to get out Because it's just a shadow, especially if they're just lab mice, because I mean, i remember reading about like rats, a study they did with rats and they took they were basically like wild rats and then they bred them and then they put them into a controlled environment, the like you know, the offspring, to the point where they never had to experience any sort of like fear or predators.
Speaker 1:And then when they exposed, when they exposed them to some type of like predator, they did have the same response as like their, their parents or the ones that were natural from the wild, and they believe that they can pass down those kind of traits. But for lab mice that are just for generations, have just been bred in the lab and have, you think, no concept of that. They don't even know that they're a prey species. So that's kind of crazy. And it goes back to cats too, backed, you know let's. we started with cats, we'll end with cats. today They do the same thing, like indoor, only cats have never seen outside, ever, you know. but they stare out that window and they see squirrels go by and their jaws are chattering and they're like they start high-pitched elevating you know, like they know they're supposed to be out there chasing it and getting after it.
Speaker 1:So anyways, cool. Well, this one rambled on for a little while. Hope everyone stuck with us till the end and made it through the termite story at least You know. Hopefully never out there.
Speaker 2:Experience that until next year, but I'll let you know if they come back.
Speaker 1:So please go rate, review our podcast, i mean, if you're like going to go, if you're going to go check out Danielle's little Mary mice, is that what it is?
Speaker 2:Little Mary mice.
Speaker 1:You can check out hers too. Boost her her followers.
Speaker 2:And let us know how you pronounce miniature.
Speaker 1:Miniature. Yes, how you pronounce miniature, because you add a syllable like mini, but there's an A in the word Miniature. Say I have three, you have four, yeah, i still say miniature. I still say the A.
Speaker 2:Plus, you're skipping the I Oh okay, right, miniature.
Speaker 1:So yeah, let us know. Put it in the comments somewhere. I guess you can remind people when you post. once we get this episode back. We could do a little poll. So, anyways, i think more people are going to side with me, but we'll find out, all right. Well, thanks everyone for listening, and we'll catch you guys next time, see ya.