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- [00:01]
A
This holiday season, Capital One reminds you to give yourself the gift of 1.5% cash back with the Capital One Quicksilver Card. Can I earn 1.5% cash back on birds? Birds? What if you sent your true love two turtledoves plus a partridge and a pear tree? Sure, but why would anyone want that? The song was very convincing. Earn 1.5% cash back on all your holiday purchases with the Capital One Quicksilver Card. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details.
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When you think about meal kit companies, what do you see? Probably long, complicated recipes and subscriptions you can't escape. But with the new Blue Apron, we're doing meal delivery differently. No subscription needed, faster, easier meals and the same dedication to quality we've always had. Shop 100 plus meals@blueapron.com get 50% off your first two orders with code apron50. Terms and conditions apply. Visit blueapron.com terms for more.
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C
Like Culture, Language evolves If you take a look at a piece of Old English text like Beowulf, it's pretty likely you wouldn't be able to understand the majority of words. I mean, I can't even make it past the first word. Then oui, gardena y giar dagum. Okay, I don't know, but if someone from 8th century England Time traveled to today, they definitely wouldn't understand us either. The language is changing faster than ever, thanks to technology. Our algorithms aren't just speeding up trend cycles for things like fashion and movies, they're accelerating the development of our vocabulary. So this episode I'm going to talk to Adam Malekzik about how technology, social media, the Internet, and even podcasts are changing the way we communicate with one another. Then we'll take a look at a study that not only debunks the idea of an ancient Egyptian curse, but it turns it into a new potential drug to target leukemia cells. But first, let's chat about a new DNA search engine that can make a significant impact for biological and collaborative research. This is Curiosity Weekly from discovery and I'm Dr. Samantha Meen. Let's get into it.
- [02:43]
A new tool is enabling scientists to search vast public DNA, RNA and protein databases in just seconds. It's called Metagraph, though some are calling it the Google of DNA, it's the new tool developed at ETH Zurich. It offers capabilities that far exceed traditional search engines like While Google indexes hundreds of billions of web pages, Metagraph can efficiently sift through millions of billions of DNA letters. That's huge amounts of data that reach into the realm of petabases. This search engine presents a significant advancement in biological research in a cost effective way. In October of 2025, the work was detailed in the publication Nature and quickly became talked about as a revolutionary tool for researchers working with these huge databases. DNA sequencing has brought an avalanche of data in recent years, primarily through large scale research projects like the 100,000 Genomes Project and the Genetic Epidemiology Research on Adult Health and Aging, or JIRA Study. The Sequence Read Archive also plays a crucial role by providing free access to extensive sequencing data. Together, these resources have generated more information than is practical to analyze with our current methods. And that is where Metagraph comes in. This search engine simplifies the process of accessing biological information, which lets scientists ask powerful questions of these public databases. Metagraph uses simple text prompts, uncovering hidden patterns without requiring detailed annotations beforehand. This is similar to how a video search on YouTube can find relevant videos, even if the keywords don't exactly match the title or description. Metagraph integrates information from multiple publicly funded data repositories amounting to 18.8 million unique DNA and RNA sequence sets that encompass all forms of life. It's hard to imagine the sheer amount of data. To showcase the capabilities of the tool, researchers successfully scanned more than 200,000 human gut microbiome samples for genetic markers related to antibiotic resistance. Doing this kind of analysis previously would have taken an extensive amount of time and resources, but this time using a high powered computer, they completed it in about the time it takes to watch an episode of Expedition Unknown. As the demand for open source data sharing continues to grow, both Metagraph and similar initiatives highlight the critical importance of accessible biological data. And Metagraph isn't alone in the race for expansive sequence search tools. There are other platforms like Logan that are also pushing the boundaries of genomic research by stitching smaller sequencing reads into longer cohesive stretches of DNA. And then there are platforms like Galaxy, which is a suite of open source web based tools for analyzing genomic data, allowing researchers to execute and share workflows easily. While each tool has its specific strengths, the collective advancement in this area is leading to significant discoveries. In fact, Logan played a key role in discovering around 200 million natural variations of a plastic eating enzyme found in organisms. Metagraph represents a leap in the accessibility and analysis of biological data as a resource for researchers. It could make strides in genomic discovery and understanding.
- [05:59]
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Who drives the world forward? The one with the answers or the one asking the right questions? At Aramco, we start every day by asking how? How can innovation help deliver reliable energy to the world? How can technology help develop new materials to reshape cities? How can collaboration help us overcome the biggest challenges? To get to the answer, we first need to ask the right question. Search Aramco Powered by How Aramco is an energy and chemicals company with oil and gas production as its primary business.
- [06:29]
A
This holiday season, Capital One reminds you to give yourself the gift of 1.5% cash back with the Capital One Quicksilver Card. Can I earn 1.5% cash back on birds? Birds? What if you sent your true love two turtle doves plus a partridge and a pear tree? Sure, but why would anyone want that? The song was very convincing. Earn 1.5% cash back on all your holiday purchases with the Capital One Quicksilver Card. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com for details.
- [07:00]
C
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- [08:39]
C
Not me already being seated for this yap fest. Oh my gosh, am I giving super energy. Chat. Okay, from that alone and my discomfort saying it, you could probably guess a lot about me from my age to what my for you looks like. And by the by the way, before it was called a for you it was newsfeed and before that it was a timeline. Language has always evolved, but the time we spend online is changing the way that happens and how we talk to one another online and in person. To learn more, we have the Internet's word nerd linguist Adam Alexik, author of the New York Times bestselling book Algospeak. Adam has a linguistics degree from Harvard College and shares educational videos about words to over 3 million people online. AsmologyNerd welcome to the show. Adam.
- [09:23]
A
Hi. Excited to be here.
- [09:25]
C
So thrilled to chat with you. I'm so interested in words and I always get etymology and entomology confused. So I'm going to start with that word etymology, the. The study of words. Is that correct?
- [09:37]
A
Yeah, yeah. Well, an etymologist would tell you that the word etymology comes from the Greek root etymos, meaning truth. So we're talking about the study of truth. And entomos I think is from like a word meaning sever or segment or something like that. So yeah, easy to get, tell the two apart if you look into the etymology.
- [09:56]
C
I love that you just have that ready off the top of your head. It's amazing. Now, we know language has always evolved, but your book Algo Speak, it's really good. I really enjoyed reading it. Thank you for that. It's all about how the invisible forces behind social media are changing that process. So I'm curious to hear from you. What are the biggest differences in how new words spread now compared to pre digital times?
- [10:21]
A
Yeah, well, I mean, what just happened in your intro? I thought that was fascinating. Right. So you used a lot of like Gen Z slang. Some of it comes from African American English. The not me doing blank. You talked about how we no longer call it a timeline. Yeah, because it's not chronologically ordered because these platforms changed everything, put it out of order so that they could sneak in more advertisements than ever to jumble up your feed and make more profit off of you. So all these, like, decisions upstream by the platforms are affecting how ideas spread. The timeline one was interesting because that's just more of an organizational idea. But then when we talk about slang words, that the algorithm is this incubator for slang. It creates these echo chambers and filter bubbles that feel like they have spaces to use their words, these communities, and then it opens up those communities just enough to allow those words to spread. It creates these incentives to form new words because it, like, censors a lot of stuff. So you can't say the word kill on TikTok. And many creators say on alive. But now we have evidence that people are starting to say on alive in person as well. And I think that's fascinating. Clearly, the algorithm is affecting. It's this unique bottleneck for our language.
- [11:27]
C
And is it true that it's happening faster now? There's more globalization of it, like things are less geographically combined, perhaps, and now spread more. Are there any other key trends now that we've changed the evolution of language to being online? That couldn't have happened before?
- [11:44]
A
Yeah. Well, first, it's very difficult to definitely tell you whether language is evolving faster because linguists don't know what a language is. They don't know what words are. They have no way to measure the speed of language change. There's like, indicators we can find. And it does seem like it probably is, but it's. It's always going to be like this weird, arbitrary. I gotta hedge my answer before I tell you it, but it seems like algorithms create all these new incentives for influencers to use language faster than ever. That does seem like it's definitely true. And yeah, there's a homogenization that also occurs. I think the stat is that a language dies out every two weeks. There's 7,000 in the world, and we're just going down from there. But that was going to happen regardless of the Internet. Actually, I think it was already in place, this sort of pattern since we started centralizing states before the Internet. Globalizing in general causes this sort of regional homogenization. So every country is going to have this language tied to its national identity. All these small dialects are going to die out. And the Internet some ways played a great part in preserving those dying languages, their discord groups and whatever, to preserve some local languages. However, online there is absolutely homogenizing force. 51% of the Internet, I think, is in English. And.
- [13:01]
That'S like the lingua franca. If you're speaking to somebody else and they're speaking a different language, you're going to revert to English. And in the online space, influencers are pressured to talk in standard accents or both, sort of conforming to the peculiarities of the general American English pronunciation and maybe British English, depending on where you're from, the received pronunciation. But there are also these dialectal quirks that exist purely online. And I've written about the influencer accent. I kind of clearly talk quickly, but I'll talk in even more exaggerated stressed voice online because that's good for grabbing attention. At the end of the day, these platforms create all the incentives to grab attention.
- [13:44]
C
Yeah, the influencer speak. I catch myself doing it sometimes and I'm like, wait, should I be do it? Should I not? And then you really get in your head about the way that you're talking. And obviously we speak different depending who we're talking to. And sometimes I get tripped up of which version of me am I right now? And it's very interesting.
- [14:03]
A
I don't think there's anything wrong with you. I mean, you probably use a different podcast voice. TV broadcasters use a different TV announcer voice. This is really no different. We always code switch for the medium. You're going to talk differently to your friend than you're going to talk to your grandmother. That is a very natural part of human communication that we adapt to the communicative environment. The algorithm simply is this new environment where the style of communication that's incentivized is speaking in a maximally retention edited style, where I am creating a new stimulus all the time to keep you watching my video.
- [14:39]
C
And it's not just the specific words that we use, but even the way that we'll speak. And you mentioned in your book how now that short form video, like, is the mode online right now? You gotta be fast. You can't make your video too long. So even just the phrasing of your sentences has probably shrunk down so that you can get messages across more quickly. And so even like, that structure of how we speak now seems to be different too, right?
- [15:03]
A
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely. There's been an increasing choppiness in our language since ancient Rome, when Cicero would, like, talk for like five pages of length and not like, at a single, like, end of a sentence.
- [15:17]
Yes. Certainly our speech has been getting snappier and snappier. And this already also started with the television. A lot of what I talk about with the algorithm, I think we first look at the television, see what it did and now the algorithm is doing that, but kind of worse, honestly. Yeah.
- [15:31]
C
You credit journalist Taylor Lawrence for coming up with the term algospeak in her 2022 Washington Post article. And the original use that she described in there was code words or turns of phrases that will avoid getting posts removed or downranked by content moderation systems. Like the example you shared of unalive instead of kill, since you know, murder doesn't play great in the algorithm. But there are lots of other examples of of words, not just to evade censorship, that have evolved online. Can you give us a little taste of the different kinds of algospeak that we might see and that we could learn about in your book?
- [16:06]
A
Yeah, of course. I think Taylor Lorenz popularized it. In true Internet fashion, algospeak is a child of the Internet. And then it takes on these new lives. And I'm now trying to use it in a new way. But every meme always evolve in its own way. Everything is algospeak at this point, like every new word we're seeing because there are incentive structures created by the algorithm. So 6, 7 is very popular right now. Right? 67 was created through the incentive structure of clip farming, where NBA players would say the number during interviews in hopes of getting edited into a viral TikTok clip and going viral. And then Gen Alpha kids started saying it, hoping to get edited into a clip and go viral. And because there's this promise of going viral, this implicit understanding that you could get turned into this popular video, people start saying 6, 7 literally. The word is a meme meme about how we are incentivized to say words to get them to spread as memes. And I mean, obviously that it's now turned into this just nonsensical interjection. But I think the underlying butt of the joke, the humor, is in the absurdity of using a clip farming word in a dissonant kind of context. And the reason we say that is literally because the algorithm incentivizes us to say that that's the same is true with all words, even when they're less self referential than that. I mean, the same was happening with Skibidi Labubu Dubai Chocolate. If that means nothing to you, great.
- [17:36]
Those are chronically online Internet words. But we say these words as influencers. As an influencer myself, I know that when a word is trending, I want to tap into that trend to go viral, because that's my job. So simply the fact that the algorithm sees something as trending means I'm now incentivized to reward that trend. But in doing so, I further perpetuate the trend. I call that the engagement treadmill, where we are in a positive feedback loop, never endingly of using words that are trending for the sake of using words that are trending. And that makes the word more trending. And I think that's how we get this idea of brain rot humor, which is different than the idea that things are bad for your brain. I think brainrot humor is this meme aesthetic of overused slang words nonsensically pushed by the algorithm that we then turn into comedy. Sorry, very long winded answer for that. But that's one another example of what algospeak is. I mean the fact that they create all these online communities, these unique sort of filter bubbles where you think you're talking to your audience, you're going to use a certain kind of language. We're always code switching because the infrastructure, the underlying medium, the user interface is affecting the way you're going to articulate things.
- [18:45]
C
Can you share with our listeners what some of the benefits of coming up with these terms are? Like, why are they so important to us culturally? And why do some people roll their eyes?
- [18:54]
A
Yeah, language is a marker of identity. Every single word you use signals something about who you are. I mean on the surface level, if you're speaking English, you're signaling, I'm an English speaker. But there's also like these small dialectal variations, there's like accents that we have. All of these tell a story about who we are as a person. And you're asking about like the middle school brain rot words to the middle schoolers. Those are ways to bond, to create a shared identity with middle schoolers and to differentiate their identity from that of adults. And that is a time honored process that has been happening with every single generation of middle schoolers that has ever existed. Because at the end of the day they're, they're in this new cultural moment with this new cohort of people trying to figure out who they are. That is what their, the job of a middle schooler is, is to figure out who they are. And so part of that is using language because language is this tool of figuring out who you are. It's not meant for us. Yeah, you could roll your eyes. It's okay to both roll your eyes at it. I rolled my eyes when you made that intro. But at the same time, you know, I still, I still celebrate the word. I think what, what makes it eye roll worthy is that you're not supposed to be using them. You're not the target speaker of these words.
- [20:08]
But they serve such a powerful purpose within communities. And I also see how when, for example, I say slang starts in niche communities like African American English, I see the power it holds in those communities. A lot of Gen Z words that we now think of as like Internet slang, like slay, serve, queen, cooked, ate, gyat, bus and all that stuff, that's from African American English. So a lot of that was ballroom slang, which was this gay black Space in the 1980s in New York City. And it was this unbridled form of self expression to use these, these words. It was saying, I am part of this community that is different from the other communities we've been taught are correct. And then the words filter out into the Gen Z English and then they lose that power. But there's always this story of power and belonging in any word. And I think that that's such an important thing to be looking at.
- [20:56]
C
I really appreciated that chapter in your book where you talked about the cultural appropriation of words like woke is no longer a word that anyone with progressive social values would use themselves.
- [21:09]
A
I think if you, if you.
- [21:09]
C
Now it's just.
- [21:10]
A
Yeah, if you look at the history of black language, this has been happening, right? The word cool was the original woke. It merged in 1880s African American English, possibly from the West African concept of itutu, which is like stoicism under pressure. And then that spreads and it still had this connotation of like cold temperature. And then that spreads into American English. And woke is still communicating. Being aware, being, you know, doing things, but being aware, understanding of this implicit kind of systematic problem in society and, and we keep cycling through words because those keep getting kind of either taken or at this point weaponized.
- [21:46]
C
Do you see a line for where it's no longer appropriate to use those words from another group? Like, do you have a. Oh, I.
- [21:55]
A
Think this is 100. A subjective decision. I think it's. I mean, everybody obviously makes their own subjective decisions about language. It's. Linguists are supposed to be objective and yet we use language. So we are playing a part in this as well. I think the important thing about remembering etymology is the study of truth is that knowing where words come from gives you first a better understanding of where society is at as a whole, of what is influencing society, of where culture is coming from. Once you have that understanding, I think you can act more conscientiously by thinking about the power behind the word you're using and evaluating whether you want to use it. I'm not going to start sentences with like, not me doing it, you know, like, or slay or, you know, I don't say that because I don't, I don't think that's like a marker of my identity. So I think we should just educate ourselves about who's using words, where words come from, all those things, and then we can communicate more powerfully in our own lives.
- [22:49]
C
Now you make a really great point about how there isn't actually a ton of research on this phenomenon because it happens so fast and academia can't always keep up. So I'm curious how you keep up because you always know like, you're like I, I don't even know the word yet and you're posting about it and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm behind.
- [23:06]
A
Well, I see it as my job to scroll TikTok for research, which is a crazy sentence I guess to say. Well it's, I'm very lucky also to be in this position where I'm like now the main guy who's commenting on slang words as they emerge and people will like tag me in new videos when there seems to be a new slang word. So now I get access to this word before every other etymologist and I get to kind of track how it's evolving or yeah, people will ask me questions and then I'll look into a little bit deeper. But I see my, my self assigned role on the Internet as documenting these changes live as they occur because by the time academia gets around to them, it's 10 years later. The origins are so muddled and murky already the way I'm looking at them because the Internet is this, if anything, there's too much information to sift through. It's so hard to tell where something actually comes from because we're overwhelmed with the amount of information. And there are, there are strategies you can like set search filters before a certain time on different platforms and different search services. I think Know youw Meme and Urban Dictionary are genuinely some of the best places to, to start.
- [24:10]
C
You've done some recent content around AI and how LLMs like ChatGPT not only speak differently, but we also talk differently to them. I'm wondering if you can talk more about that and, and how their widespread use might change the evolution of words even more in the future. Yeah, some wild speculation.
- [24:28]
A
So something's definitely happening with the LLMs. I want to point out quickly that we're not suddenly going to like ChatGPT is not going to be inventing words and spreading them or something. The start of language diffusion, I think, is still going to be the algorithm. And it is this network where ideas are set to cascade quickly through this information ecosystem. So ideas are going to mostly be spreading between us on the algorithm. But if we look at the individual experience on ChatGPT.
- [24:57]
There'S. There's something crazy going on. Right? It doesn't actually speak English. You assume it speaks English. It's going to use some words slightly differently. It uses the word delve, for example, like 10 times more than humans do.
- [25:08]
C
And oh my gosh, so much.
- [25:10]
A
Yeah, but now, well, that, that was true. But now actually in the past two years, we've seen an increase in humans also saying the word delve as we see ChatGPT saying this. And we ambiently, like, we don't make a conscious decision, oh, I'm going to use word delve 20 times today. You just kind of like ambiently have this background idea of how much the word delve should be being used. And then ChatGPT increases that ambient idea. And the more you see something represented, the more you're going to think a certain kind of thought. So that's one thing. The other thing is that, yeah, it's like designed to sound like a friend, a conversational partner. It'll use first person pronouns, it'll mirror your responses. All this stuff to make it sound like it's literally psychologically designed to be sycophantic and all of that, and it's not a person. I think the most dangerous thing we can do is anthropomorphize it, because now we're in this territory where we give it a level of trust in humanity, which it is not. It's just a bunch of computer servers that are predicting the next token, which happens to look like the English language. But in fact, sometimes the predictions are wrong. But then also we as humans, our innate tendency is to also mirror. We will mirror each other's tones, each other's body language, all of that. So when ChatGPT is mirroring us, and there are studies showing that we mirror it back to some extent a little less than humans, but as it gets more human, the more we anthropomorphize it, the more we're going to be doing this. We're now in this positive feedback loop of it mirroring us, us mirroring it. And the whole thing with the word delve is just kind of the tip of the iceberg. We're going to be talking more like ChatGPT and that's sort of the underlying idea that any new medium that is like really out there is going to be strongly affecting our sense of reality and our construction of language as a byproduct. Because I think language is secondary to reality. Language is our way to evaluate reality. And that's in that way, it's the study of truth because it's signaling what's real about what we think is real.
- [27:05]
C
It's a new constraint to evolve new language and new ways of speaking now that we have this, this other pressure that's existing.
- [27:12]
A
Creativity definitionally comes out of constraints. And I think we dismiss a lot of the stuff we see online. I've seen some really amazing videos now. There's some really terrible videos. There's, there's definitely stuff I would call brain rod. There's AI slop. But I've seen some incredible creativity online. It's this new medium. People are making this fantastic stuff. It's still considered like low art or like not as worthy of our attention. But there's, there's stuff on there which I would say I, I have seen. And there's new voices being uplifted, there's new thoughts being expressed that I've never seen in like a mainstream publication or something. Like, I think there's absolutely a fantastic place for the Internet and we can treat it seriously. In fact, we should be treating it like this is a medium. Like this is. It's important to know where your news is coming from. We all agree on, like knowing the bias of a newspaper is important. Why not think about the bias of the algorithm? I strongly believe that because we think of it as this lesser form of entertainment, we don't look critically into it. And then when we don't look critically into it now, we're in trouble because it's still affecting our sense of reality.
- [28:21]
Algorithm is doing this the same way words that are popular. Algorithm are now more popular in our everyday speech because it's doing the same thing. It's like ambiently creating this awareness of a new language. And I believe I wish in 10th grade ELA classes they should have, along with poetry scansion, they should have a how to look at TikTok seminar. Yes, but it's not, it's not a reality. And certainly they're not regulating the algorithms because I also don't want to ascribe this problem purely to us. But right now it's a difficult political moment and they have a lot of money behind them to. I think the problem is inherently with the engagement optimization algorithms. But, but I think in the meantime, the best thing we can do is become radically media literate about what these forms of technology are doing to us. And once we find out what they're doing to us, we can disarm that power. We can reclaim our own agency online. The more you are aware of, of what's happening, the kind of better informed and I think Gen Alpha and Gen Z are incredibly deeply aware of the algorithm and AI in this new medium and we could learn some lessons from them. I think they're less in trouble than some of the older people.
- [29:28]
C
Last thing I gotta ask, do you have a favorite niche Internet word? Niche Internet word or popular Internet word?
- [29:36]
A
There's this trending wabi Sabi meme on TikTok and there's two ways you can go. One of the ways I really like, I like that there's this Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi, which is perfection in imperfection and recognizing the flaws of something, making it something more beautiful. Like a bowl cracking. And you repair the bowl by highlighting where the crack was. That's, that's wabi sabi. And it's being used on TikTok in sort of this positive way of, oh, I like my nose bump. Now it's wabi sabi. Right? But on the, that's one positive direction. I like that angle of it. The other angle is like now incels are unfortunately co opting the meme in some directions. Like it's, oh, your nose is wabi sabi. You should, you're always gonna lose out to Chad or something. And that's like, they're, they're using it to enforce their worldview of how people fit into neat hierarchies of attractiveness. So it could go either way.
- [30:33]
C
We just, it's always an angle.
- [30:34]
A
No, we just need to be aware of what the meme is who could be interpreting it in different ways. And that way we reclaim power over it because they can pry also the Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi out of my cold dead hands.
- [30:49]
C
That's Adam Malekzik, author of the New York Times bestseller Algos Week. You can learn more by following adamologynerd on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Thank you, Adam.
- [30:58]
A
Thank you very much.
- [31:05]
B
Who drives the world forward? The one with the answers or the one asking the right questions? At Aramco, we start every day by asking how. How can innovation help deliver reliable energy to the world? How can technology help develop new materials to reshape cities? How can collaboration help us overcome the biggest challenges to get to the answer, we first need to ask the right question. Search Aramco Powered by How Aramco is an energy and chemicals company with oil and gas production as its primary business.
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Yes.
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- [32:05]
B
Are you noticing your car insurance rate creep up? Even without tickets or claims, you're not alone. That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry handles the legwork by comparing quotes side by side from over 50 top insurers so you can confidently hit buy. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Jerry even tracks rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Don't settle for higher rates. Download the Jerry app or visit Jerry AI Acast today.
- [32:39]
If you're an H vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [33:12]
C
This is a science show, so it's not often that we get to talk about ancient Egyptian curses. But this is our lucky day, because researchers might have turned a curse into a cure for cancer. Let's back up a bit. In 1922, scientists entered King Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt, and within weeks, a few of those scientists were dead. A media frenzy ensued, and many said that those deaths were proof that the tomb was cursed. And that's the origin of the curse of the pharaohs, or the mummy's curse. But the truth is, 58 people had initially visited King Tut's tomb, and in 12 years, only eight of them passed away. Hardly a curse. It Wasn't until years later, on a completely separate expedition, that archaeologists discovered something that was a more likely culprit. A toxic fungus with the ability to survive thousands of years in an enclosed tomb. It's called Aspergillus flavis, or just a flavis. It's a common mold that's found in soil, decaying vegetation, or stored grains. And it is super resilient. When it's inhaled, the fungus can cause acute inflammation in the lungs. And if left untreated, it can grow in the chest and spread throughout the body, causing serious lung damage and even death. While on the whole, it can be deadly. Researchers at UPenn discovered that the fungus produces a new class of molecules that can be medically useful. They block the division of specific cancer cells. These molecules are part of a group called ribosomally synthesized and post translationally modified peptides, or RIPs for short. Now, there have been a lot of RIPs identified in bacteria, but only a small amount have been found in fungi species. Rips are made by a cell's protein factory, and then they get modified by the cell in a way that gives them a whole new suite of functions. The team at UPenn purified four different rips from Aflavis, taking inspiration from those and making a few tweaks. They found one version that had anticancer potency comparable to that of clinically approved anti leukemia drugs. They found this modification let the molecule sneak into the cells through a transporter on certain cancer cells. Once the modified RIP entered the cells, they blocked the formation of microtubules, which are essential for ce. Cancer cells are famous for their ability to divide uncontrollably, and that's what leads to tumors. So being able to block that process, in theory could stop growth of the disease. Their molecules only had this effect on leukemia cells. It was a lot more modest in breast cancer cell lines and didn't do much in the liver and cervical cell lines that they tested. This also hasn't been tested in humans yet. But the research team noted that in their laboratory tests, the bioengineered molecules performed just as well as current leukemia drugs. Understanding how these compounds can target blood cancer cells opens the door to discovering new classes of drugs to treat drug resistant cancers. I don't know if there's any better metaphor for scientific discovery than taking something that was feared to be an ancient curse and using modern technology to make it fight a deadly disease.
- [36:09]
For Warner Bros. Discovery, Curiosity Weekly is produced by the team at Wheelhouse DNA. The senior producer and editorial correspondent is Teresa Carey Our producer is Chiara Noni. Our audio engineer is Nick Kharisimi and head of Production for Wheelhouse DNA is Cassie Berman. And I'm Dr. Samantha Youen. Thanks for listening.
- [36:44]
B
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A
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- [38:13]
B
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