All organisms are talking with each other
and they're using the oldest form of communication: their chemistry.
It can be rather noisy out there at times so different organisms have evolved ways to listen
to specific partners in their communities we can sometimes think about these chemicals
of having other uses outside of nature and in the context of human applications.
Welcome to Wavelengths, where we talk about our planet with experts from Scripps Institution of Oceanography
covering everything from the deep sea to the edge of the atmosphere
I'm Kate Furby, a marine biologist and journalist
i got my PhD here a few years ago and now i'm back learning more about what's happening at scripps
I'm here today with Brad Moore a professor of natural products
thanks so much for joining me today Brad Kate it's great to be here when you say natural
products yeah some people think skin care or organic food what is it that you study exactly
we study the chemistry of nature we can study some of those things you said but really it's about the
little special molecules that all of life makes we study those the reason that they make them
and what we might be able to do with them all alright Brad so what are we out here looking for
this this little critter here is called plucamium it's a a red seaweed that grows
here in La Jolla actually up and down the coast of California and it makes a special chemical
that we study in my laboratory cool can i can you throw it to me can i throw to you
can you catch? Tell me how this little lady might cure cancer humans have been using nature to
cure diseases since the dawn of time we can think of many medicines in our own
cabinets like, aspirin that come from the bark of a willow tree many drugs like that have been
developed from plants the seaweed that we've been talking about it's in the early stages
of discovery have you had another natural product that made it that is further along
Yeah so we've been working with colleagues here at Scripps to develop a bacterial chemical from
a little bacterium lives in the bottom of the ocean it makes a toxin that tells little
things crawling in the sand not to eat it and today that chemical its name is Marizomib
is in phase three clinical trials to treat a cancer called glioblastoma it's a cancer of
the brain it has a magical property that allows this chemical to naturally get into the brain
which many chemicals don't what other scientists in your field had to do was
just physically go out and collect massive amounts of of organisms in order to make medicine but now
you can take just a small piece of one organism back to the lab and synthesize it
you could always synthesize it in a chemical hood using chemicals that come from petroleum okay or
the modern era is now just getting a small piece of the dna out and putting it into yeast
and forever and ever that yeast will make that chemical for you cool okay so you're taking
yeast that we use to make bread and beer and teaching it how to make medicine that's right
every natural chemical links back to DNA like cholesterol and us or caffeine in your coffee
from this morning remember DNA is the building block of life it's a genetic
code that tells an organism how to make itself each organism's genetic code gives us a recipe
for how to make those very chemicals naturally in the lab so for example we can put DNA from seaweed
into baker's yeast to trick it into making a seaweed chemical we can then test it in the lab
and see what it does maybe it cures a disease in humans with the genetic blueprint in hand
we're all set to train yeast or other microbes to become little chemical factories
it sounds like you're making this yeast do a lot of your dirty work we certainly are do you pay it?
at all um we we paid as much sugar as it would like to eat so that's how you get from seaweed
to anti-cancer drug that's amazing isn't it pretty cool yeah and you can do this with
almost anything absolutely everything all organisms are gems they have special genomes with
their special chemistry and they're all trying to teach us something and we just need to look
a little closer at their dna to get a sense of how we can use that to solve tomorrow's problems