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Hey everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Today I'm going to be talking about ancient DNA, which I know a lot of you guys are super interested in. So I'm here with Dr. Elizabeth Jones, of the paleontology, education and outreach. She is a paleontology education outreach coordinator at the NC State Museum of Natural Sciences. And she wrote a book, which I did read over this weekend about a topic that I am super interested in “Ancient DNA: The Making of a Celebrity Science” and I want to talk about the book and stuff like that, I do want to tell the listener, a lot of my interest in ancient DNA is relatively recent. I mean, I've been interested in it for a long time. But I feel my attention to the field, from a scientific perspective, like reading the original papers, really dates to around 2010, maybe a little earlier. Whereas when I was much younger, I did hear about ancient DNA, but mostly in stuff like the New York Times Magazine, or Scientific American, and a more secondary stuff. So it was interesting to read the book, because it goes back into kind of the Paleozoic of ancient DNA, so to speak, where, you know, kind of the pre genomic era, which was, and we'll talk about it, I think you call it the first hype cycle in the book. And I do remember that and the reason I reached out to you is you tweeted something out about something in the New York Times Magazine, and I very specifically remember reading this in like seventh or eighth grade, dating myself here, but I think my science teacher was printed it out or did like a Ditto copy or something like that. And I remember thinking it was super interesting then I didn't like think about it too much, obviously, for honestly, for another 15 or 20 years, as I went off and did other things with life, and then it's kind of in the back of my mind, so it kind of triggered it again. So the subhead of your book is “The Making of a Celebrity Science”. So before I read the book, I was wondering if it was going to be focused on celebrities in science, kind of like Pääbo - Svante Pääbo, David Reich, that make appearances other people in the 1990s show up, you know, most listeners or viewers will know Alan Wilson, big deal outside of ancient DNA, etc, etc. But that's not what you really mean by celebrity science. Can you talk about that? Dr. Jones?
Yeah, so celebrity science is this new term that I created to give a framework to the history of ancient DNA research, but also as a framework to look at other sciences, not just ancient DNA. So celebrity science is a scientific field that develops grows in the media spotlight with a lot of intense public interest, and media exposure. And the key thing about a celebrity science is that it operates to use some scientific evolutionary terms on the group level. It doesn't it doesn't mean there aren't celebrity scientist, perhaps within that celebrity science. So you mentioned Svante Pääbo. David Reich, I think some others might argue for Eske Willerslev. There are a number of people. But I'm, I'm not making the argument for any of the scientists with an ancient DNA research as celebrity scientist, I'm arguing for the subject of science that these researchers are interested in. And that is the act of extracting and sequencing DNA from ancient material. And it's public interest around that subject. That is what drives it and makes it into a celebrity science. So something comparable could be like Astronomy, or forensic science too
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would say, you know, because I've thought about this over the years, you know, I have friends that edit science magazines and cosmology. That is, I mean, people know a lot more about cosmology than solid state physics. But arguably, solid state physics has a much bigger effect, actually, through chips and stuff like that in our lives. But nobody, I mean, most people wouldn't actually know what it even is. But cosmology, most people know the Big Bang Theory, they know galaxies, stuff like that. And obviously, in paleoanthropology, I'm super interested in it, but it cuts a much bigger figure in the public imagination than many other areas of anthropology or biology because well, it's about humans. The human past, you know, we're humans, so we care a lot. about that. And so you're talking about ancient DNA. I mean, to some extent, there's a little bit of talk, there's talk about proteins in there, too. So we can get into that. But can you kind of give a general sketch of the history of this field? I really I mean, you know, you mentioned Jurassic Park. I know there was some stuff before. But really, to me, it seems like that particular movie is kind of like a landmark where interest in this sort of stuff really exploded in the public consciousness. And I do remember, the media representations of this field, always had to have a Jurassic Park reference in the 1990s. I do remember that.
Yes, so the great thing about history. So caveat, it's not all dates. It's not about dates and names all of the time. That is part of it. But when writing history, we have the advantage of chronology. So I look at ancient DNA research from the 1980s, to well in the book about 2015, because that's when I stopped doing the research. And then it took a good five years to rewrite it and edit it. And I had to actually rewrite the conclusion right before I sent it into the editor, because it's changing all the time. So if you're starting the conclusion with what's the oldest DNA, a new discovery came out, and I had to rewrite it, so it's easy to date myself, but the chronology goes from the 80s, the 90s, and then the early 2000s. And it's also marked by the technological advances. So the first one being PCR, polymerase chain reaction, that coming out at the end of the 1980s. And then that is the main technology that took ancient DNA research through the Jurassic Park era, we can call it that in the 1990s. So the book 1990, and then the movie 1993. And then all the subsequent movies after that, also followed the field. And then in the early 2000s, you have the development of next generation sequencing, which really came at a could not be more perfect time for ancient DNA researchers, because they were struck stuck in the within the limits of what they could do with PCR. And NGS really changed the game, and allowed them to do a lot more with what little DNA they had. And it took them into the genomic era. And so we're looking at about three decades of moving forward, and moving back with what scientists think we can do as far as what kind of material can we get DNA from? So tissues, muscles, perhaps bone, and then looking eventually into the environment? So environmental DNA, and also micro biomes. And then they're also pushing the limits on how old Can we go. So that's one of the real driving themes. Not just in the media, but really what a lot of researchers were trying to do, how old Can we go? How old can DNA be?
Yeah, that's, that's a biophysical question. Right? So obviously, it's a, it's a robust macro molecule. But, you know, at some point, you know, time catches up to everyone and everything. But it depends on what the thing is. And so the structure of DNA? I mean, you know, I don't know, you probably have talked to people. So when I talked to scientists about this, they usually, so there's a mammoth, you mentioned a mammoth DNA, I mean, obviously, where are Mammoths going to be relatively cold, kind of dry. So it's like optimal preservation, I think they now have dated it, at last I checked to a little over a million years. So my understanding is, or not my understanding what most people say is, you know, they're probably, they're probably going to get something in that range. But they don't seem to anticipate it's going to get much further than a million, maybe, but we're not going to get to 10 million, probably not, three, you know, I mean, just like talking to people, that's my understanding. It's going to be different with proteins. So proteins are more robust. And, you know, you allude to proteins, like you talked about proteins, but obviously, it's a book, mostly about DNA. That's the sexy molecule, you know, but proteins are very robust. We're probably going to get into the Miocene, you know, 10 million years, whatever. pretty confidently what I hear with protein, so that's a slightly separate issue. But yeah, so I mean, Jurassic Park was a major influence. That would be the hook, and you're talking about polymerase chain reaction and just for the listener out there, basically before PCR, it was really hard to get enough DNA to do anything. Even with modern contemporary things, so that's why the original mitochondrial Eve, they had to get the tissue from placenta, because that's a massive amount of DNA that they could use. This is pre PCR age, once you have PCR, some of the rate limiter for, for the amount of tissue you need is removed. Obviously, with intra DNA, you have a lot less tissue. So that makes a big difference. And you're bringing in next generation sequencing, which is basically okay, we generate way more data off that amplified DNA. So it's kind of a multiplicative, you know multi- It's multiplicative, in terms of by 2005. Would you agree with that characterization?
Yes, yeah. Thank you, you saved me the safety, the energy of explaining it.
Okay, so here's the thing, whenever, whenever I talk to people about biology or genetics, obviously, PCR comes up. And you're actually you were pretty good about saying it was polymerase chain reaction. But it's just like such a background condition of our world that we don't define, and what it means to normal people. And so I have to do that, because like, I have gotten that feedback were like, Why are you guys talking about PCR? I don't know what that is, Oh, crap, you know,
Yeah, no - it's a great idea. I mean, we take it for granted. And that's what's that was what was incredible about interviewing the scientists who work in this field, because like Russell Higuchi, for example, who is on the very first - Well, one of the very first ancient DNA papers with Alan Wilson, any he remembers the labor and the time intensive process it was to just get - I think, what did they get? Something like 35 base pairs of DNA from a 140 year old Quagga, which is zebra like relative of the horse, a really cool animal that they're actually trying to do some back breeding with and having some success to repopulate in Africa. But I mean, it was just it blows your mind, because you take it for granted. And it took days and days and weeks of just doing something that we can do now, without even thinking about it.
Yeah, 35 base pairs. I mean,
It's wonderful, isn't it?
Yeah, I'm like, I'm laughing like somebody who's like, listen to the audio will not see - It’s just, it's just weird to think about what we can do. I mean, that's what's so exciting. You covered in your book, you cover the field, obviously, from the beginning to, to the mid teens, as you said, but in terms of data generation, it went up two to three orders of magnitude, at least, you know, so it was like, you're seeing the explosion of the whole field. But some of the early things. Some of the early studies were interesting, because, you know, this is a field fraught with controversy. Now I can talk about the field after say, like 2005, in terms of like coming into the genetics world, as you know, in grad school and all that stuff. I don't remember. I mean, I read about it, sometimes books like yours, I don't remember the 1990s. In that way, I just remember it as a normal person, you know, a kid reading about it. And there was a lot more controversy than I knew. You put some of the details out there in terms of contamination, and stuff like that, because it didn't really I don't feel like it hit the public consciousness. We just saw the headlines, the first publications, the first pass, and then it kind of just faded away. And the reason it faded away is because of, you know, frankly, contamination, and like a lack of confidence in some of the results that were coming up. Can you talk about that a little?
Yeah. So this idea of contamination to explain with you might not be familiar, not you but listeners, that the idea of contamination, at least as I describe it is both literal contamination of the ancient samples. So perhaps, the ancient sample can be contaminated with modern DNA from scientists handling it or just other organisms in the environment, contaminating it. So it's really hard to tell if you've got the real deal. And then also, I say there's figurative contamination. And this is where the media comes in. And I want to be really clear that as a historian, I'm not saying that the media is a negative influence. But I'm saying that a number of scientists perceived that too much media or unjustified media attention around certain studies, could seem could be a contaminating factor on the credibility of the science. And so yeah, exactly. Like you said, a lot of this really played out internally amongst the scientist across the scientific papers, at conferences, but what really the public saw was this, what can we do with ancient DNA being played out, and the media picking up on that? So how old Can we go, and a number of studies saying we can obtain dinosaur DNA, or we can get DNA from insects in Amber's that are multi million years old. And then other studies questioning it or either backtracking on it. And that was what really played a role in decreasing not just the scientific community's confidence in ancient DNA, but the public's confidence in ancient DNA of being able to do the Jurassic Park thing, as they knew it. And why that mattered is that it wasn't just this internal amongst scientists, like we're having some issues, we don't believe your kind of work, because you don't do these kinds of precautions or use these kinds of techniques. But it was playing out across the media, too. And the public was aware of this, and involved in it as readers. And so that's what was really complicated about the history of ancient DNA and why it was so contentious. It was like a public affair, not just a private affair.
Yeah, yeah, I remember. Your book was detailed about the first dinosaur DNA. I didn't remember the dates. I just remember dinosaur DNA. And I remember the buzzing in the classes, we were talking about it. And I mean, this is, you know, I mean, DNA is part of our lives in a way that it wasn't in the 1990s. It was still an exotic. So okay, here's a, some of the listeners will know this. But the first time I heard the word, I heard deoxyribonucleic acid if I wasn't an episode of GI Joe, in the late 1980s, because I had never read the whole I knew I’ve seen DNA, I'm sure. But I hadn't seen that ever spelled out. And when Sergeant Slaughter had said it, and I was like, Whoa, that's cool. Anyway, it was just, it was really, really different back then. And so, you know, DNA dinosaurs, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this is going to blow up culturally. And so it was a big deal. And we were I mean, I remember talking to my best friend about, you know, what are we going to do with the mosquito DNA and people were feeling that it was going to happen, at least to get the DNA. Now, of course, this is early days of PCR, early days of this whole field. And so actually, we were way more optimistic, or expectations were not. They were not calibrated appropriately, you know, and I'm speaking now, just a person on the street who doesn't know the science at all, because that's what I was back then. You know, and I think I was, you know, I was reading Scientific American. I wasn't like the typical Joe off the street. So I think I knew a little bit. But you know, I'm just telling you, like, I remember like, very specific. It's like, light flashbulb memory. Like, I remember conversations, like after playing basketball with my friends, and we would talk about, like, yeah, like we talked, because Jurassic Park was huge, you know, is there are no movies like that actually, today, like these sorts of culturally transformative blockbusters. Because, to be candid, our culture is a little bit more derivative. We're doing the comic book movies over and over again. And the 27 sequel of Fast and Furious, you know, so I just want to make it clear for you young people out there. What a big deal it was back then. Okay. So, you know, there's 80 million I think it was 80 million year old DNA. Supposedly, can you talk a little bit can you go into the details of what happened there in terms of it was published, and it was probably the stuff was published in Science and Nature, okay. It wasn't an obscure no offense, Bulgarian, you know, whatever, entomology journal, because I get that from like a mentor of mine. He'd always say, Bulgarian entomology, but anyway, but it was like, it was pretty high profile. And it wasn't peer reviewed, you know, publications, you know, the top ranked ones. Can you talk about what happened there?
Right. So when we're talking about dinosaur DNA, let's there are two different approaches that scientists really pursued in the late 80s, early 90s. So either the first being getting DNA from an insect preserved in amber. So to clarify, the scientist involved in the study, so a number of them a group in California, a group in New York, and then also a group in London, who was trying to verify some of these results. So they, they were not trying to get well most of them were not out to get dinosaur DNA from these insects in ambers but they, they were, in a sense, testing this Jurassic Park hypothesis. And the group in London, who actually what it what did they say in their paper that they they, they failed, failed in every instance to replicate to extract and sequence identifiable DNA from insects in amber their research was funded by the UK by the UN an ancient biomolecules initiative, and in their application, they said, you know, we are here to test the Jurassic Park hypothesis. So there's a pretty clear, you know, exceptionally clear link between the cultural influence of Jurassic Park into the science. And then the science putting back out to the public what we can and can't do. So. So you had a number of studies in the early 90s, saying we can get multimillion year old DNA, I think, 130 years from an ancient weevil, something cute like that. And but, you know, at the end of the 90s, you know, there were reports that said, you know, red lights on on DNA, on the Jurassic Park DNA, we can't, we can't get it in the sense that maybe they did get it and it was a fluke, or a one off, and that's the hard thing with DNA is like, you may have it, ancient DNA, sorry, you may have it, but it may only be a little bit preserved in that one specimen from that one area. And it's really, really hard to get that type of preservation and in other instances, and to show that it is a more prominent phenomenon. Now, the other thing is getting dinosaur DNA from actual dinosaur bone. Now, that was way more far fetched, but people tried to do it anyway. So there are a number of instances. And one of them, Mary Schweitzer, and Jack Horner, who I know well and worked with, you know, they were my supervisors. In the in the early 90s 1993, they actually wrote an grant application to the National Science Foundation to try to look for DNA from dinosaur bone. And it was granted the summer that drastic Park was released. And there was also really clear communications from National Science Foundation personnel that said, you know, what a great opportunity to showcase the science, we funded it, because of this, you know, connection with Jurassic Park to see what we can do. And, you know, they were unsuccessful in getting any identifiable DNA from the bone. And there were a number of other studies that said they did, and then turned out, it was a human DNA that had been amplified. And that was a really, that was a real showstopper for the field. It really set back the scientific community's confidence in what people could do.
Yeah, one thing I want to just as reading, I think it does also be before next generation sequencing, and we'll get into that, you know, the amount of data the amount of sequence retrieved was often the supposed in sequence, okay, the putative sequence was very small was not too many markers. So it was also sometimes it looked like it was hard to do the phylogenetic comparisons necessary to actually figure out what this was supposedly from. So you know, today, we can do really, really fine grained analyses, you know, like 30 40 million, 40 million Americans have 600,000, at least 600,000 DNA positions through the Personal Genome, it's, you know kits, okay. Like, I mean, we're talking like a handful dozens of markers. So you can imagine the statistical robustness there. So there are all sorts of problems validating what happened during this period. And so there was a rollback. And it looks like there was a concerted rollback. So most of most, most people will know who Svante Pääbo is because he is a Nobel Prize winner now. And he wrote the book Neanderthal Man, and he's just become a massive, massive deal. And, you know, when you when I originally got your book, and I saw the title, you know, obviously, I initially thought that the celebrity was gonna be about the people. But you know, you had a different definition of this, like public science and this group cultural phenomenon. Okay, but Svante is now a celebrity. He is a maybe not the average person on the street, but the name will ring a bell with a substantial proportion of the public, but, and he has been passionate, and he's talked about it. He was into Egyptology. He's been in this field forever. You know, he was I think it was in Alan Wilson's lab with, you know, with Cooper and a bunch of, you know, I think Alan Cooper, and then I think Stoneking was in that circle. I mean, these are names that people who are interested in the past will know, okay, in terms of like, human evolutionary genomics, genetics as it's applied to the past, you know, phylogenetic inference, all these things, okay. But the role that he and some of his collaborators played in the mid to late 90s was kind of different in terms of there were more low profile technicians that were kind of throwing cold water on a lot of these things, right.
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, we have so literally have to talk about the people. Because the people are the agents of change and of new ideas and pushing them forward or like you said, rolling them back. So I - Yes, so I would there, there were two groups. These are self ascribed groups of researchers. So when interviewing them, researchers on both sides of the divide, or the ancient DNA world recognized this split in the community. You know, on one side, you had the believers and non believers, or the haves and the have nots. And so the believers were a group of people who the more conservative scientists would say, had didn't have the proper protocols or proper know how to do ancient DNA well. And the non believers, who, who would be people like Alan Cooper, Hendrik Poinar, Svante Pääbo. They were not just big powerhouses in the scientific field of ancient DNA. But they also had a lot of political sway in the sense that they were publishing high profile research. So they were being, they were being risk takers, and they were putting themselves out there in the media, like going after Neanderthal DNA, and then the Neanderthal genome. But they were proponents of their type of science and their type of celebrity around that science. And they were opponents to other people's research that didn't, that didn't match the caliber of research that they felt that they were doing. And that needed to be done in order for ancient DNA research as a field to be credible to be accepted in broader evolutionary biology. And so what was interesting is that, because the media was picking up on these publications, about dinosaur DNA, or multi million year old DNA, people like Alan Cooper, Svante Pääbo and Mark Stoneking, they, they couldn't just sit back and let it, let it ride and ignore it. So they responded to it, both in interviews with the media, and then also in the scientific publications. So in 2000, you have this landmark publication by Hendrik Poinar, who actually worked on some of the early amber insect DNA work with his father, and some other scientists. And then Alan Cooper, who was a big figure, a bit big, controversial figure, especially as we know, now at Oxford, and they published it in science. And it basically said ancient DNA, do it right or not at all. And it listed these nine, nine techniques or precautions that any researcher needed to implement in order for their results to be considered rigorous enough, or perhaps believable. And this became, inadvertently, a checklist. And it, it was a gatekeeping process, essentially, that kept the people who were doing different types of research who weren't following these, perhaps protocols as strictly as others, it kept them from getting published in journals like Nature and Science and from getting research grants. And so how scientists responded positively or negatively to the media had a really big impact on what others in the field were able to do in terms of research and where they were able to get it published. Yeah, so
‘The Scientists and the Media’ that's a different book. It's another 100 PhD theses, I don't want to, well you know… I guess it's kind of a love hate relationship is what I would say. Just privately that, you know, there are some people who shout out to protect the innocent, I will not name but you know, people who complain about other scientists using the media and then when it comes time for their publication, I noticed some hypocritical behavior. But I mean, you know, when is your lab when it's your collaborators, you want to maximize the juice, right? So it's a coordination problem. And everyone everyone gets involved in this game. But in a way, I would say that it's actually like a, you know, it's a positive. You know, even if it was a lot of people took it as a checklist, it's almost a positive development that science can actually work because there was a massive hype cycle in the 1990s. And the people that really put a lid on it, were the scientists. Right? That's right. I mean, they they did not they didn't they were not like, allowing it to get, they did not allow themselves to get cut. Well, they got caught up initially, but then they're like, wait, wait, wait, hold up, you know, what's the whole was kind of like, I see that. I think that's how I describe it. And then you mentioned, you know, four or five, four technologies and next generation sequencing. I wanted to get into like, the details of what next generation sequencing is, you could go check out some YouTubes everyone online, that's the easiest way in my opinion to like, actually, like, see how they do it. Basically, this was just describing, okay, like, you can generate data and automated way very, very fast. You have these like, shattered DNA, these little fragments and computers are reassembling. Literally they're reassembling, they're assembling the sequence and then you're aligning it, okay. And you're taking this and you're mixing it with these molecular biology wetlab techniques. Pääbo, Willerslev, in particular, you know, in the last 15 years, have really pushed the clean rooms and getting the DNA free of contamination. There was also issues related to so Okay, DNA contamination, degradation, there are certain statistical signatures biomolecular and biomolecular says like, which tends to degrade and blah, blah, blah, use computer to filter all this, so you can understand it as a human being, but actually, for human beings to do this would be extremely laborious. And probably like, you know, you'd have to be the pharaoh of Egypt and be, you know, okay, like, everybody in my kingdom has to do this, because you can't compute it fast enough without, you know, without modern technology. So technology really enabled it. And so you have this, like, next wave of DNA studies, you know, arguably the there's a Neanderthal mitochondrial study from 1997. But there was a bunch of follow ups in the second half in 2005 to 2010. So can we go through say, I don't know. Like, there was a cave bear, I think in 2006, and then it culminates with Neanderthals and Denisovans. And 2010. A lot of this is actually centered around Svante Pääbo lab, although I think Eske Willerslev got the that arctic, the Arctic person in the Saqqaq individual, a little ahead of the Neanderthal, the timing is not coincidental. We don't need to go into, it’s like a whole, there's a whole thing about the race. I mean, that's how so I mean, like, I don't think it was like, highlighted in your book. But I mean, there is like a book to be written about the race to sequence and get ancient DNA, because that's what it's become where it became for a while, right. So can you talk a little bit about the second hype cycle and what happened there?
Right, yeah, so the second hype cycle, how how it's, you know, parallel to the first one of the 90s is, you know, it's in the 90s, you have the race for the first DNA from whatever specimen mammoth dinosaur, whatever, or the race for the oldest DNA from whatever specimen. And then once you have next generation sequencing, it's not just about a few DNA sequences is about the first genome from whatever species and or the oldest genome for whatever species and the people who are really driving that. We're, we're not just people that are clever and resourceful, but they have resources to do the research. So next generation sequencing technology, the machines that are needed, the labs that are needed, the types of people that are needed to analyze the data, once you actually produce it. All of that is really, really expensive. And so you have to have financial resources in order to be able to access that kind of equipment in order to do those kinds of studies. So Svante Pääbo was well equipped at the Max Planck Institute, in Leipzig. And then in Copenhagen, Tom Gilbert, Eske, and Ludovic went when he was there, they had really great funds to support their really great ideas and their ambition. And so, yes, you get this hype cycle of and then also, I want to be clear that you know, the hype cycle in my view, as a historian of science, but also as a person, it is not like the media is not a negative. It is a if you look at the history of science in the long view, it is a what, perhaps we could say a natural process. Science is about asking questions, figuring out what you can do, failing, moving forward, figuring out what you can do and doing it again. And it's often triggered by I'm new ideas and new technologies. And what we're seeing is in a pretty short span of time, two hype cycles going on and about about about 30 years. And there's a lot of parallels, but there are a lot of differences. And in the second hype cycle, a lot of it is about, can we get genomic data from humans. Or ancient early humans, and then the Neanderthal and then also, you know, people we didn't even know exists, the Denisovans which that genomic data was produced from, like, the bone of a Pinky, Pinky bone, which is absolutely insane. And so you're, you're getting this. Now we've overcome the limitations of PCR, and our Jurassic Park days, and now we've really entered into the real world of evolutionary biology, and we can do what other evolutionary biologists can do and and more. So that is the tone that was set for, you know, the genomic era, genomic era and ancient DNA research.
Yeah, I mean, this isn't like gone too far. But, so the British, you know, they have all these ancient I mean, it's cold, I guess, sort of preservation and they invest a lot of, you know, a lot of time into it. So I know, they're working on an ancient biobank. So that, you know, they want to like actually predict trait distributions in ancient British populations. So we are we are so far beyond trying to, like use 34 base pairs, to see if we have like real data to actually doing, try to do genome wide association stuff, which is kind of weird, because, I mean, you just have their bones, maybe not having traits, I don't want to get into it. That's a whole thing, right. But the ambitions or ambitions are pretty far out there. Yeah, so one thing that I want to ask you about, you know, because there's a whole thing about, I think it's kind of faded away. But there was a period where a lot of all a lot of the ancient DNA work was, it was kind of a competition between people aligned with Pääbo, and people lined with Willerslev. So you have these two camps of collaborators. You know, because there's an extended, there's an extended universe of collaborators of archaeologists. I mean, David Reich was initially just a computational collaborator, I'm gonna say just but computational collaborator of Svante Pääbo before he got his own thing up and running. And so resources matter. And ancient DNA is this is kind of applied technology in a way, you know, in terms of the discovery, the commoditization the scaling up. So it's kind of almost a technology story. Would you agree with that?
Yes, yes, it is a technology story. Absolutely. Because again, so here, you have to have the resources to acquire that technology and use it. And also, it's very much a data driven and celebrity driven story, which is one of the arguments I make, so we see. Technology, sometimes taking the upper hand and driving the research, sometimes we see that it's the the data that like the specimen. So what's available, because ancient DNA research as a field is very territorial, much like paleoanthropology. Because here's the thing, like, there's only so many fossils, and you've got to find them, if they're even there. And then there are only so many of certain, certain types of early humans. And so in the field, and I didn't get into this a lot in my book, because it's pretty contentious. But, you know, it's no, it's a secret, but also no secret out there, that people are not allowed to work on certain specimens, you know, Neanderthals that Svante’s territory, and don't touch it. And then other areas, you know, Greenland, other Arctic areas, you know, whatever. That's Eske. David Reich, he can do ancient he can do ancient stuff, but you know, no one else don't touch it.
So it almost sounds like colonialism here?
You're right. It is, it is. And there is, there is a funny but also really disturbing argument to be made about that. And I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to accuse anyone of that. But it is important when to look at the history of science, and just the, the history of the world. When we're talking about migrations, when we're talking to about the development of science and who's doing it to recognize who's doing it today and on what areas and there have been other other people, other paleo geneticists who have made that argument that like, this is just a modern day colonialization of genomic data. And when it when it's on indigenous peoples, you know, that's that shouldn't be their data. Not indigenous peoples data, but the researchers data, I mean.
Razib: Sure, sure.
So it's pretty complicated. And I didn't get that into into the book that much, because, you know, that's another book. Yeah. And also, I'm an early career researcher, so I'm not trying to I'm not trying to destroy myself before I start. But yeah, that's a great point, you bring up and it's a very real one that is starting to be addressed, there's, you know, some ancient DNA ethics have been discussed, and we're moving in that direction, which is promising.
So, you know, I feel like also, a lot of that issue has cropped up after 2015, which is kind of like, you know, a lot of your, your research, you said, you kind of ended around then so it was, it was basically focusing more on like the the discovery phase of the second wave or the second hype cycle. And then now over the last since, like, 2015 or so, a lot of things are being hashed out. So, you know, I mean, an idea for a future book, I don't know, if you're still interested in this topic, but you know, there's a lot of stuff going on, I want to ask just a few just closing questions. Like, you know, not separate for the book, but you know, kind of not necessarily connected to the book. So, what was the most surprising thing in your research? Because I mean, this is out of your dissertation work, was the most surprising fact that you discovered, you know, you know, what stood out to you?
Oh, yeah. Okay. So, two themes come to mind. That, one is that this idea of resurrecting dinosaurs, you know, predates Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. So the very first chapter is about this really, this Maverick figure who is kind of into everything, his name is Charles Pellegrino. And he actually wrote an article and published it in Omni, which is a now defunct science/science fiction magazine, called the article was called ‘Dinosaur Capsule’ 1985. And it basically put this Jurassic Park hypothesis out there. And for whatever reason, it just fell flat. It wasn't picked up, it wasn't talked about. And then Michael Crichton writes the book in 1990. And he's an established author has a lot of best selling titles already. And it gets picked up before it's even out by Steven Spielberg because he worked with Spielberg on ER. And so when I was researching, I was reading the acknowledgments of Jurassic Park. One addition, had no mention of Charles Pellegrino, but mentioned George Poinar and some of the other scientists who were doing some of this looking at insects in amber and the exceptional preservation at the cellular level. So not necessarily getting DNA but just looking at them. And, and so that, you know, acknowledging their research as inspiration for the basis of his book, and then another. Like probably as think six months or a year later, another publication of Jurassic Park, the acknowledgments actually say something a little bit different. They add Charles Pellegrinos, name in it, and acknowledge that he wrote about this in 1985. And what I find is that there is a big legal battle over Pellegrino and Poinar and Pellegrino accusing Poinar of hijacking his idea, because he thinks because Poinar knew about it early on, before he ever met Crichton. And it's this big, you know, who has dibs on the Jurassic Park hypothesis. And so the main point here really is that, you know, it's more than it's not just drama. It's, it shows that these ideas, this kind of speculative idea of what can we get DNA from was not just an isolated idea. It was, you know, part of part of the culture and it cropped up in a couple of different places, but it really just took flight with Crichton. And that's really interesting to note. The other thing was just, you know, I knew that ancient DNA research was a competitive field, but to really find out how competitive and how, like personally and professionally difficult it was for many of the researchers, of all the first generation, second generation, third generation of researchers, so really getting that human element and also how candid everyone was with me. Granted, the interviews were anonymous, perhaps that's why, but they were very forthcoming with their experiences. And that was really surprising. And I was really appreciative of that, because you don't usually get that.
Alright, so I'm gonna tell the story, I think it's but it's far enough that I can tell this. Some people don't know will know this. But so in 2018, there was kind of like that piece about David Reich in the New York Times Magazine that was not very favorable to him. And I got a message from my friend in Germany that some people at certain branches of Max Planck, were having a after lab celebration. So I think it's far enough away that like, you know, it's not, I'm not like speaking out of school here. But I live because like, and this was a friend who, they don't work in ancient DNA, but they're near one of them. And so they were like, what's going on? They're like, Oh, they're just celebrating that, that it came out. Because, let's just say that, like, you know, it's well known who the source is for some of those quotes were. So you know, this is science. This is not like, entirely shocking isn't limited to ancient DNA, a lot of big egos. Although I wasn't an evolutionary genetics. You know, there's a stereotype which I think is just true that human people who work in humans have really sharp elbows, you know, there's a lot of money, but there's also a lot of competition, you know, so it's just like the two go together. So we see that I want to like close out, I want to ask you about Mary Schweitzer's work. So I know a little bit about her. You know, she has like this really, really ancient DNA and ancient protein work, I guess. She's in North Carolina State. That's where you are. And you did a lot of your education there. And did come back, you came back there. So talk about what she's been doing. And I, you know, I do know that there's arguments about like these results, that is, from my understanding it’s pretty controversial. But I don't know too much about it. Can you talk about a little bit?
Yeah, so you're right, her work is really controversial. So she started off in the, in the early 90s, getting into the ancient DNA world and quickly got out of it and went towards ancient proteins, because like you're saying they're more robust or more stable. Sometimes they can be a lot more informative than DNA. And especially when you're looking at Dinosaur material, which is, in her case about, you know, 75 million years old is 65-75. That's what she was looking at, from the late Cretaceous, Hell Creek Formation in Montana. And she was working with Jack Horner, who was also that was her doctoral supervisor at Montana State who - and Jack Horner was also the scientific consultant to Jurassic Park, the first several ones, not the most recent one. But so she got away from the ancient DNA work started doing the protein work. And in 2007, she published a huge landmark article about extracting ancient proteins from a T Rex specimen from Montana. And it's super contentious, because, you know, that's the oldest kind of stuff out there. But it's also contentious because no one is really trying to replicate it. So it's really hard to say that you've got something when others aren't able to reproduce it or aren't willing to reproduce it. So in a lot of ways, I think there are some people who are excited about her work, but I'm skeptical of it. And there's also a group of people who are not excited about her work, and are really dismissive of it. And then you have a handful that say, Yeah, I think she did it. I think they did it her team, most recently in 2020. They, she and some of her colleagues, extracted materials like proteins and chemical markers of DNA. So they did not say it was DNA, but it it behaved in such a way that DNA would, but proteins and chromosomes from a 75 million year old, a duck billed dinosaurs, two of them, from Montana area. And so that's the most recent work. And again, of course, the headlines are, uh, you know, you know, bingo, dinosaur DNA, that sort of thing. So the Jurassic Park motive still comes through. But again, the jury is out, you know, is this stuff real? You know, in my opinion, whatever, which I don't want to say as a scientific opinion, but you know, never say never. You know, we've got environmental DNA that's 2 million years old now. So I don't know. Let's wait and see. So that’s where we right now.
Yeah, and I think obviously, it would be great. I mean, people want to know as much as they can about the past with as many tools, you know, as they, as they can use. So it'd be great for it to be true. I didn't know too much about it. So all I know, or what I vaguely recall is like, nobody could reproduce it or replicate it. And you're saying people aren't trying to. So within science? You usually, I mean, honestly, at this point, like, this is not like, you know, 1850, you need a community, you need a community of researchers kind of working together, and iteratively checking each other's work kind of advancing the paradigm. And my impression here from what you're describing is there's not a big enough community that's exploring this topic. So it's hard to kind of judge.
That's right. Yeah. And there are some that are saying, like, we've tried, we can't get it. But also it is, it is such a small community as in like, just like, two or three labs. And when we're talking about global science, that is, you know, that's, that's hardly anything. And so, yeah, you do, that's how science now because you, you know, modern science, it takes a village to show that you've got what you've got. And other than that you're a little bit at a standstill.
Yeah, I mean, my sometimes I joke that there's some GWAS papers that have more authors than samples. I mean you guys know what I'm talking about. If you ever, if you ever do like extended author list, like whoa, the browser's collapsing. Alright, so you worked on this, you know, your book came out last year, “Ancient DNA: The Making of Celebrity Science” You got this position here at NC State Museum. Just you know, as we’re going out, like, what are you working on? What are you excited about? What are you looking forward to?
Yeah, well, right now I am working in the paleontology lab, and I am running a public science project with eighth graders. So I get to work with teachers and students across North Carolina. And what we're doing is our paleontology team, we drive tons of sediment, about 66 million years old, from the Hell Creek Formation in Montana, we drive it back to North Carolina, we clean it, we prep it, and we send samples of dirt out with lots of micro fossils, and I'm so micro fossils are teeny, tiny fossils, like small bones, shells, scales and teeth, from all the creatures that lived in that environment at the time. So we're talking about what kind of animals lived around the time of, you know, T Rex, and triceratops, you know, to give everyone a reference point. And this is from the late Cretaceous. So the project is called “Cretaceous Creatures”. And we send the sediment out the students not only find their own micro fossils that we haven't even looked at before, but they're also identifying them and submitting the data on online and it creates this massive scientific database. So we've had in this first year, we've had about 4500 students across North Carolina participate, we have about 2000 data points have identified microfossils. And we're going to expand nationally in the next few years, and then internationally, involving some students, and probably South Africa, Bulgaria, perhaps Denmark. So it's a pretty big public science project. And that's, that's what I'm doing these days.
That's great. That's great. Um, you know, hopefully a new generation of scientists come out of this. I mean, things have really changed in the 1990s I gotta say, this was great. And it's exciting. You know, I we don't want to take the science for granted, but it's part of our lives now. And that's for the good, you know, I mean, there is progress, discoveries are still happening. It's not all in eternal dialectic. Right? Well, thank you for your time Dr. Jones, runs check out the book into DNA, the making of celebrity science, which again is not about individuals just want to make that clear, but um, yeah, so I will see you around and great conversation.
Thanks. Nice to meet you.
Is this podcast for kids? This is my favorite podcast.
