Your eyes can't see them, but they're on you, inside of you and impact everything from your health to the food your eat. Microbiologist Dr. Susanna L. Harris takes us inside the microbial world in this episode. We talk microbes and your health, probiotics, bacteria modified plants and fabulous fungi. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Things We Don't Understand Why Other People Like.

Interview with Microbiologist Susanna L. Harris

Speakers

Nick VinZant: Profoundly Pointless Host

Dr. Susanna L. Harris: Microbiologist

Show notes

• Microbiologist explains microbiology

• What is the microbiome

• Microbiologist on if probiotics actually work

• What bacteria do for our immune system

• What is the most dangerous virus

• What is the most dangerous fungi

• What is the most dangerous bacteria

• What are bacteria modified organisms

• Bacteria modified plants

Nick VinZant 0:13

Hey everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant. Coming up in this episode, we're talking about microbiology, and the top five things we just don't understand why other people like

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 0:27 bacteria control our entire lives like they control my life, of course, but they control just the world and that's why they're the coolest things ever. We've known for a while certain bacteria, certain viruses make people sick, certain fungi, fungi make people sick. But we're really understanding now that it's the entire microbiome. So the entire group of bacteria and microbes living in a certain spot that cannot control the health of their host. Most of the probiotic supplements that people are taking are absolute garbage. Very happy To put that out there at the most, they might have 10 different strains of bacteria and your gut, you have thousands of different types of bacteria. I really think that our definition of microbiology and possibly our definition of life is going to change in the next couple of hundred years, especially as we start exploring other planets.

Nick VinZant 1:21 I want to thank you guys so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, we really appreciate it, it really helps us out. So I have always been fascinated by the unseen world. The things that we don't see and maybe don't even know about that just have this huge impact on everything that we do. microbiology is a great example of that. And our first guest is an expert in microbiology and she has this fascinating insight into what exactly is in the microbial world and what that means from everything. For our Health, to the food that we grow and more. I want to caution you though, if you don't know anything about microbiology, like I don't know anything about microbiology, this conversation can be a little bit like a beautiful hiking trail that starts in a swamp before it gets to this amazing mountain. And I mean that in the sense that there's some concepts that we talked about at the beginning. That can be a little bit hard to get through. But once you once you have a grasp on these concepts, the impact of them is just unbelievable, because there is so much there. This is microbiologist Dr. Susanna Harris. What is microbiology

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 2:46 you can break it down into micro and biology, right. So it's the study of tiny life, generally the idea of tiny life meaning that you can't see the individual components without a microscope.

Nick VinZant 2:59 So When I think of it, I kind of think of Alright, there's viruses and there's bacteria. Are those the two main things? Or is there a lot more than that?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 3:07 It's kind of an interesting question. And same with everything in biology, right? There's not really a clear line anywhere, but we've got viruses and bacteria. There's also an entire kingdom called archy. Which for a while, people lumped in with bacteria, but they're so different. They're basically aliens compared to bacteria, but they're about the same size. And also included in microbiology are single celled eukaryotic organisms. So you can think about the little tardigrades little water bears, which I think are adorable or there's like different kinds of fungi have very small individual cellular life versions. So microbiology is cool because it does overlap into all of these different spaces and even so my degree is Microbiology and Immunology. So a lot of microbiologist also So study individual cells and different components of human bodies that you couldn't otherwise study.

Nick VinZant 4:07 So when we talk about these, these these micro organisms, Are they alive? Like we're alive? They think they have a goal so to speak, or are they alive like machines? And they're just trying to accomplish what their genetics tell them to do?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 4:23 Oh,wow, I am loving this because now I'm having an existential crisis over here. So I guess it kind of goes back to the question of how much decision making do we even have? Are we just going off of our genetic programming and what does that mean? Are we programmed to think the way we do? The question of life in microbiology is pretty contentious. So going back to those two things you brought up originally the viruses versus bacteria, bacteria we know are alive some of the requirements of being alive are maintaining some homeostasis, being able to replicate themselves. Being able to have a metabolism. So they take in energy and they use it. And viruses are kind of interesting because they can't do a lot of those things without having a host cell. So they can't replicate on their own. They can't make or use their own energy. And so it's a question of do they exist as life forms? Are they just hijacking cells? Then there's questions of there's actually bacteria that hijack other cells. But in short, most of these bacteria are functioning on kind of just external stimulus. So whatever they're experiencing on the outside, they are programmed to have specific responses to and so we don't really think about them having a motive a lot of times we kind of give them these these ideas of Oh, the virus is trying to wipe out the population or the bacteria is trying to get in. It's it's really more of a fact that Bacteria the virus is only going to survive if it does certain behaviors in certain contexts. And so I don't know though I don't know how you can break that apart from let's say, a goldfish or your pet dog or even people

Nick VinZant 6:15 that makes sense butt, you know, like, dogs will run and play together, so to speak, but bacteria aren't necessarily they're not doing things like that, right? They're just kind of being bacteria. Does that make sense?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 6:29 It totally makes sense. It's absolutely what what most people think of, and actually, this is what got me really, really, really interested in microbiology past the point of just wanting to go to college and study it. So in in, in high school, I took an AP bio class and we spent a couple days learning about bacteria and viruses and specifically bacteria phages, which are viruses that infect bacteria, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. And I found out you know, hey, I want did go to college anyway, I knew I wanted to study science. Let's go get a peach or let's go get a BS in microbiology. And while I was there, I got an offer to work in a research lab that was studying this bacterium called myxococcus xanthus. cysts and mixshow is something that lives in the soil, it doesn't hurt people, it doesn't really help people that much. You know, it's not gonna be the cure for diseases and it's also not going to make people sick. But it was really fascinating to learn about because Mexico is known for having these extremely complex multicellular behaviors. So each individual bacterium can survive on its own. But when they get together in clumps, what will actually happen is that they will divvy up tasks. So it's sort of like they create their own little city where some of the different cells are doing things like catching nutrients and digesting them and other of the cells are creating little spaces that are extremely protected in case some sort of maybe Amoeba. By and tries to eat them or gets really dried out. And so in this case, the cells are signaling to each other kind of similarly to how dogs would when they're playing of, Okay, we're going to go this way, or we're going to share this behavior. And that's, I think what's really cool is that it does cross over into that point of, are these actually individual bacteria that we should study all by themselves, you know, one by one? Or do we need to understand how these could exist as a group or even eventually how they could exist as groups of groups all together?

Nick VinZant 8:32 I guess the better way for me to, to phrase that would be Do they have intelligence?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 8:40 Um, I don't think I mean, they're there. They don't have. We don't think of them as being able to understand the future or necessarily making decisions based on what they anticipate will happen. It's much more based on the the behaviors that they exhibit the things that they do are Kind of pre programmed based on in the past one of their ancestors face the same choice. And the ancestor who made, you know, the specific decision that allowed them to live, ended up making a bunch more bacteria. And so that pre programmed choice is kind of hardwired in as part of what is going to allow them to make a decision. So I guess, I don't know. It's one of those questions. I think you could ask any microbiologists and we'll do this sort of horrible back and forth thing where they're not they're not sitting around having a convention saying like, let's make somebody sick. But they do actually communicate with each other so that they can make someone sick.

Nick VinZant 9:40 You mentioned that the rk what's what's so unique about them that you think of them as like aliens?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 9:47 Yeah, so this kind of gets into the differences of what we can see under microscope and kind of how we're looking at it and saying, Oh, these are basically the same size shape, they're probably the same. It would Be sort of the same as if we looked at lizards and cats, right? Where on the surface we look at them and say, okay, they're, you know, about 15 to 20 pounds for a really large iguana. They have four feet, they have a tail. So this is the same exact thing, right? But if you if you showed someone a lizard and a cat, they would say No, those are definitely very different. That sort of the same thing with Rk. And bacteria, where they're often similar sizes. They're really tiny. rk are interesting, because a lot of them can live in Super extreme environments. So these are the things when we talk about can we find life at the bottom of the ocean or encapsulated in the coldest places in the world or in those deep sea events or near volcanoes, it's oftentimes archy that are known as extremophiles, meaning that they love extreme conditions. But they're so different in terms of their DNA. Yeah. It basically, it, it looks like that if you started off in in one place, like let's say you were making, making a meal and you had a handful of ingredients. If you mix them together one way it's going to turn out into a soup. If you mix them into another way, it's going to end up being a pie. They're so different. That would be like having completely different starting materials, but still ending up with a soup, if that makes sense.

Nick VinZant 11:32 Is that kind of where life started? Is that what they're thinking?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 11:37 So it's a good question. Basically, they're thinking that the branching point between these groups was really, really really long ago. So if we look at them, we might say, okay, they have similar behaviors are the same size. So they're probably pretty similar but we can trace back there lineage and say, Wow, these were not connected with each other. Almost all the way back to When we can try to figure out what that origination point was. So when we're looking at when did you carios split off from bacteria. So one of these, we call them eukaryotes, because they're called True cells. They have membranes and they have organelles. If you've ever heard mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. That's what they're talking about that these little organelles exist in these eukaryotic cells. When they split off from bacteria, it was around that time, and maybe even further back that rk split off in their own direction. So it's sort of these different families of when, when they started being distinct when they started moving away from each other. And instead of them being kind of like siblings, they get closer to being cousins, and then Far, far family members. And it's, it's so interesting. I think it's a really great example of how science is constantly changing and our definitions are changing is that a lot of people that I know Who are around my age? I'm 28 right now are right on that cusp of being taught that archy and bacteria are basically the same thing. And you know, this tree of life is constantly being redrawn. refigured because we're getting this new knowledge and we're saying, okay, we're not classifying by how they behave anymore. We're looking at their DNA and understanding where all these things changed.

Nick VinZant 13:24 So when you look at bacteria, like how much do we really know about them on a scale of like, one to 10 one we know absolutely nothing. 10 we got this whole thing figured out. Where do you think that we are now?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 13:37 Huh? That's, that's a great question. I I guess it's it's one of those things that I just wow, this was tricky. Well, let's, I guess we could put it this way is that 100 years ago, we didn't really know what viruses were for. Like understanding what viruses are versus bacteria, that's been a relatively new thing to realize that those are so distinct. And then it was actually less than 100 years ago, that we found out that DNA was the the molecule that contained all the genetic materials, and it wasn't any other part of the cells. So knowing that DNA is really important is only, you know, 80 years old, I think, at this point. So I guess in terms of that, it's, I think, we know increasingly more about certain things. I I really think that our definition of microbiology and possibly our definition of life is going to change in the next couple of hundred years, especially as we start exploring other planets. We definitely understand a lot more about the microbes that affect human health more than before and a big change is actually going back to that idea of community. interactions where we've known for a while certain bacteria, certain viruses make people sick, certain fungi, fungi make people sick. But we're really understanding now that it's the entire micro biome. So the entire group of bacteria and microbes living in a certain spot that cannot control the health of their host. So it's not just the case of, I end up getting some sort of bacteria while I'm on a trip and it upsets my stomach. And then I take antibiotics and I clear that out. And we're all done. Understanding that there's also a ton of really healthy bacteria that are helping me to be more healthy. And that disturbing that balance could actually be really damaging. For those pieces. We know that it's important, but we really, really don't understand a lot. You're talking

Nick VinZant 15:51 What do you think of probiotics. Does that work or is it a waste

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 16:10 So there's two pieces. One is that like we definitely were covered in healthy bacteria, we need our bacteria. The last thing we want to get rid of all of our healthy flora, so the little living creatures in us. Most of the probiotic supplements that people are taking are absolute garbage. Very happy to, to put that out there because it's sort of similar to the vitamins situation where if you're not getting enough certain vitamins, you definitely need to supplement those. But most people who are eating fruits and vegetables and some proteins are probably getting all the vitamins they need. And so those extras are at the very least just getting washed out of your body. What we know there's about probiotics for human health. We know that you need these good bacteria We know that certain foods might allow your stomach and your gut. A lot of these bacteria live in your intestines allow that balance to be maintained better. But if you look at probiotics, at the most, they might have 10 different strains of bacteria in your gut, you have thousands of different types of bacteria. And so it'd be a bit like having a forest fire and saying, well, we need to repopulate this forest let's throw in a ton of squirrels. So you'll have a population. But that doesn't mean it's a healthy environment. And so you're a lot better off eating these fermented foods and eating like fiber rich food, organic types of vegetables and things and those are actually called prebiotics. So the conditions the nutrients that you add, that allow healthy bacteria to live are called prebiotics. The bacteria themselves are probiotics. I personally would never spend money on probiotics. There's a really cool study showing that if you take antibiotics, which are going to kill all your bacteria, right? If you take antibiotics, and then you take a probiotic, it takes your body longer to get back to its normal state than if you had just taken the antibiotics themselves. And you kind of change that bacterial environment within your body, or is it basically always going to be the same? Oh, yeah, our microbiome changes constantly. And it seems like little changes can affect it pretty drastically. So if you're eating a bunch of sugar or a bunch of fat, or let's say you're eating a ton of carrots, maybe you take a certain type of medication, all of these different things are going to shift your microbiome. Even things like we know that babies who are breastfed versus formula fed have very different microbiomes including on their skin. The thing is, though, is that we don't know which of these changes really matter. We Know that a lot of changes can happen. We know that taking an antibiotic for an infection can change your microbiome all over your body. But we don't know which individual pieces are the most important. And so it's really hard to evaluate which changes you can make in your lifestyle or your diet that will be overall good for you.

Nick VinZant 19:22 So but is it a symbiotic relationship that we have with them? Or does one of us kind of get the better of the other?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 19:27 Yeah, so symbiotic relationships are really interesting because there's definitely a symbiosis where both are benefiting in their own way. The question I guess, is it is whether it's a mutualism re are both of them benefiting equally or is Yeah, is one winning. I think I mean, humans need a healthy microbiota. We know that. We know that if you don't have enough exposure to different microbes and different types of You know other whether it's bacteria or fungi, if you don't have exposure to those things, your immune system doesn't really know how to handle stuff in the future. So introducing, basically like letting your kids play in some dirt, making sure they have the ability to come into contact with different types of proteins, bacteria, all these different pieces. That's really important to train your immune system. And so we know in like, for instance, rat studies, if the rats don't have native microbiome, then they have a lot harder time dealing with future infections. So there's some component of this that humans have always evolved with microbes. We've never existed at a point where there haven't been microbes all over us. And so some of our natural processes depend on the microbes. We can't take up the nutrients that we need. We might have even changes in our biochem History, there's been an association with moods based on the microbiome. So I guess it's sort of a question of where do humans end and our microbiome begins? Or should we just consider our microbiome actually part of who we are. I feel like whenever any scientist really starts to study stuff, things just get really confusing. Yeah, that's basic. Basically, the art of science is just getting more and more unable to define things that that seems so simple, right? You know, like, What is life? Like? Ah, that's really complicated question, actually.

Nick VinZant 21:39 So what what kind of research are you working on right now?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 21:42 Right, so I just finished up my thesis work. So I've finished up the PhD in microbiology at UNC Chapel Hill, and my thesis work. I'm glad you brought up probiotics was actually looking at probiotics for plants. So a lot of companies and this is becoming a an even bigger field of study, a lot of companies are looking at whether they can improve plant growth. Instead of adding fertilizers or different kinds of chemicals, they want to know if they can add bacteria and improve how much the plants are growing or if they're able to survive certain environments. For instance, I mean, the the most studied mutualism between bacteria and plants is like with soybean plants and the rhizobium. These bacteria will come in and form little nodules on the plant roots, it's sort of if you're going to learn about it in a class, that's what you learn about is the soybean plants where you pull them up and the roots have little bumps on them. And that has something to do with helping the plants these bacteria are actually fixing the nitrogen so they're making the nitrogen in the soil available to the plants and the plant can eat them and then you don't have to add fertilizer into the soil. So that's one really good example of a clear symbiosis between plants and bacteria. What we know though The other plants in the soil, very interactions with soil bacteria can help them grow during times of drought, they can actually help them prevent infections from other diseases. And companies are asking how can we take those bacteria that exists in the soil? Can we put them onto plants and solve some of these problems? And it's a really big topic right now, because we there's been a lot of pushback to people using GMO plants or genetically modified organisms. There's been pushback about using chemicals and antibiotics and fertilizers. And so the idea is maybe using these bacteria, we can move away from using such environmentally expensive treatments. But can there be pushed back you know,

Nick VinZant 23:45 you mentioned GMO genetically modified organisms, is that right? That's the Oh yeah, I got that. Right. Um, but is there going to be pushback like Oh, they got with a GMO and now they've got VMO bacteria, modified organisms, as gonna be the same thing like, Is there gonna be a same reaction to this?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 24:03 You know, I think the idea is probably not. Because a lot of these bacteria that are being added most of them have not been modified themselves, which means that they were originally taken from the soil we took and we made sure that we only had one type of bacteria in our sample. And so we know what it is. But we know that it was originally from the dirt, it's natural people are very comfortable with the idea of this is something that already existed that could already have been with my lettuce anyway. So yeah, let's put it back on lettuce. That's really one of the big ideas is that it's maybe a little bit less Frankenstein. I personally try to eat as organic as possible because pesticides and herbicides fungicides can all stay on the plant for longer but I am very pro GMO. I have a sticker of that on my laptop because All of the genes that we put into plants are genes that are found elsewhere. And there's a lot of scrutiny on them. And I think that actually, it's a concern of mine that this push away from using GMO and thinking about can we use these kind of in parentheses, natural things, whether that's going to be, you know, whether that's going to be driven by science or driven by kind of public opinion that my project basically looked at these probe these plant probiotics, and said, Yeah, they can have a benefit, especially in a lab space. But is this benefit enough in the crop system? Or are we just selling farmers something that we think sounds good that they will be likely to buy that their consumers will buy because it's not GMO? Or is this something that's actually going to be helping them

Nick VinZant 25:53 you talked about immunity in immunology so what role do bacteria play in our immune systems,

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 26:03 bacteria control our entire lives, like they control my life, of course, but they control just the world. And that's why they're the coolest things ever. So I'm kind of I'm more, I'm more experienced with the plant side of some of this stuff, but like, bacteria change the plant's immune system, they actually, they can shape if a plant has no bacteria on it. And it encounters a new bacterium, what will happen is that it turns on all these different pathways, it'll put out hormones, it will change where it's sending us energy, what kind of chemicals it's producing, because it's having an immune response to this bacteria. But no matter what the bacteria is, it usually at least recognizes it. And so good bacteria can program the plant to have a certain immune system, meaning that it's putting out different types of those hormones and preparing for instance, this is one of the coolest things ever. I think that we can take a bacterium called bacillus subtlest, which is it's found everywhere. It doesn't hurt people, it doesn't hurt plants. If you put it on to plant roots, then all the way up in the leaves where it's not even touching, the plants have pre programmed their leaves so that if a pathogen or a bacterium that comes along to make the plant sick, if that lands on the leaves, that plant is actually more ready to defend against that pathogen than if it didn't have these bacillus subtlest at the roots. So it's sort of like that prep material of okay plants get ready to see some other bacteria because this is a bacteria space. Similar stuff is with humans, where our immune system is constantly kind of putting out different cells and saying like, hey, this this cell is meant to defend us against anything that has this little flag on it like this type of protein on it, and your body has to go through this whole process. saying, Oh, actually, no, we don't want ourselves to attack something with this little protein on it. We don't want our cells to attack this bacteria that's actually really good for us. So if we see that attack, we need to get rid of it. It's it's sort of this training program for your body to learn who's the good guys who's the bad guys? Who do we want to keep an eye on?

Nick VinZant 28:21 I would imagine that any of these kind of micro organisms simply because of their life cycle and evolution, that they're actually much more advanced in a way, is that true?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 28:33 they adapt more quickly, right? Technically, everything is as evolved as each other. Because everything, even if it's something that hasn't changed a lot for a really, really long time, it's still gone through the same amount of pressure, evolutionary pressure, but what I would say is that, let's say you have a guinea pig, you have two guinea pigs, and they have a guinea pig family and then the guinea pigs. Keep having fun. In over 10 years, you've had I don't know what the doubling time of guinea pigs is, but you've had 40 rounds of guinea pigs and you would look at them and say, how, how different are these great, great, great, great, great grandchildren of the first guinea pigs to those original guinea pigs? And you'd say, okay, there's been this amount of change, like maybe we've seen some changes in color or size, or, you know, maybe their eyes are slightly further or, you know, closer together. But with bacteria, they're changing so rapidly, that, you know, they can have a doubling time, which means that they reproduce essentially, in like 20 minutes totally depends on the bacteria. It depends on the environment, but the bacterium that most people think of immediately is called E. coli, or Escherichia coli, but we use it in the lab, it doesn't hurt anything. We use it to study things, though, and it will double every 20 minutes. And so what happens is that over 10 Yours. I don't even know that math right? But you've gotten, you've had so many changes that this, the final grandchild of that original bacterium could look completely different. It's had all of this opportunity to change. And it doesn't have to rely on a bunch of other cells. So for a bacterium, it could change significantly and its behaviors, it might say, Oh, I suddenly now prefer a totally different temperature. And that's not a big issue versus in a human. If you were to suddenly, like, if your arms were suddenly to mutate, it would probably affect a lot of your other processes. So it's this combination of really fast reproduction compared to everything else. And also, they can change so many aspects without really affecting their overall survivability in certain conditions. I think I just made that more confusing.

Nick VinZant 30:57 No, I get it. They basically can adapt quicker

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 31:00 Yeah....but.Oh gosh, I feel myself being really semantic

Nick VinZant 31:07 is that the the dumb guy interpretation they adapt faster than we can.

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 31:12 The tricky part the thing that I'm getting hung up on and I think it's just a sign of me needing to, to go back and think about the sitcom stuff that I do is that the word adapt is very different than evolve.

Nick VinZant 31:24 Are you ready for the harder slash listener submitted questions? Always, what is the most overrated micro organism?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 31:33 Oh, the most overrated micro organism. The most overrated micro organism is the bacterium that causes the plague. So it's called Yersinia pestis. And I think it's super overrated because, yes, it's like destroyed societies. And it's this huge player in like world's history. And so that matters. But it's actually pretty easy to kill right now. So I actually got to study Some of this as part of the beginning of my graduate school I got to work with you're sending a pestis and compared to some of the bacterial infections we're seeing that can't be killed by antibiotics. Yersinia pestis is so easily killed by like really basic antibiotics. And so when people get all freaked out about Oh, there's three incidences of the plague. Well, first of all, those happen like those infections happen regularly in Colorado, they're transmitted by fleas on ground squirrels, and every couple years, there's a handful of infections, but of all the bacteria that people think are going to take over the world like everyone thinks that the plague from your past this is gonna come back and I'm like, that is my least concern.

Nick VinZant 32:43 It's a glass cannon. Have you ever heard that phrase?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 32:46 I don't think I have actually. Nick VinZant 32:47 It's a comic book nerd, which I am kind of phrase where they described him as a glass cannon. Like it's very powerful, but it just falls apart as soon as you touch it.

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 32:56 Yeah.Yeah, exactly.

Nick VinZant 32:58 Who runs the world. us or them?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 33:01 Oh, for sure them. I mean, we, they could live without us, right? Like humans could be gone tomorrow and most bacteria would not even notice, including the ones on us, like most of the ones that live on us can live in a lot of other animals or just out in the environment. There's no way there's literally no way that we could survive without microbes. Without microbes, we would be covered in just just wastes like not just human waste, but just the world would be covered in detritus of old plants and dust and all this junk that we just think disappears, but it's really microbes doing all of this constant cleaning and production for us.

Nick VinZant 33:42 They don't need us at all kind of makes me sad, actually. They just taken take and take

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 33:50 I think we definitely have this human centric idea. So that question of like, Is it is it a mutualism? And it's like, I mean, because we're people we want to feel like we're giving them something But they don't really need us. They could be anywhere else.

Nick VinZant 34:02 If you had to transform into one of these, would you be an virus or bacteria or a fungi?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 34:10 Oh, you know, I really I like fungi, I think that they are under studied and that's because they're really hard to study. I'm particularly happy I didn't have to say them for my for my work. We know a lot more about bacteria than we do fungi. And so that's why bacteria get more press. fungi are super cool, you know, yeast, it makes beer it makes bread. You know, I don't think there's any higher calling than being able to make beer and bread. So yeah, I'm gonna go fungi.

Nick VinZant 34:38 They seem like the happier fluffier kind of version of it right? Yeah, you know, they're, they're pretty cool. They make hi fi so they're nice and fluffy or they can be in little individual, like spore shapes. And there's a bunch of them that can cause some pretty vicious diseases that are really hard for us to target because going back to that idea of Tree of Life and when they separate it out, fungi are eukaryotes. So a lot of our antibiotics work because they only target bacterial cells and humans aren't made up of cells that are bacterial. But the human cells are eukaryotic fungal cells are bacteria. Whoo. human cells are eukaryotic. fungal cells are eukaryotic. And so it's hard to make chemicals and treatments that are going to target fungi. That won't hurt humans. So I don't know I think, you know, fungi are the come from behind. We're we're not too worried about them now. But that's that's the thing that I'm keeping my eye on of like, if these decide that they want to take over the world, I'm not sure how we can stop them. You have to watch out for the fungi, huh? What are people doing wrong in terms of the world of micro organisms?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 35:58 I think that there is a huge pressure right now. And always, but I think it's growing, especially in terms of increased capitalism of who can have the most exciting finding who can create the one pill cure, who can have the rule that's going to be set in stone forever. Basically, we're trying to simplify it too much in terms of the science, right? It's one thing to be trying to simplify for the sake of communication. And I think we all need to be careful when we communicate with each other to to make sure it's understandable. But far too often, I see companies and scientists and academics try to make their science sound more exciting or more conclusive and saying, okay, we know if we add this bacterium, we get this result. And so we're going to take this bacterium and spread it around the world and we're going to fix whatever human health it's just getting to Grant I wish we could scale it back a little bit and have less competition for creating knowledge. So I guess that's it's really more towards the scientist studying microbiology. I think one of the things we're doing wrong is that we are overselling because we feel like we have to

Nick VinZant 37:19 Like every single research project has to change the world otherwise we're not interested you know, I'm speed flowing right into the next question, which is what is the most interesting micro organism?

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 37:34 Oh, most entering interesting microwaves. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna throw it out to listeria, Listeria monocytogenes. listeria is super cool. It's one of my favorite bacteria. I'm pretty bacteria heavy, like viruses are amazing, but you got to stick with what you know. So listeria are super interesting. First of all, like they're a big issue in terms of causing. If you hear on the news like oh, there's been a huge outbreak. I can't think of the word for this food poisoning. There we go. Food poisoning like Listeria monocytogenes causes a bunch of food poisoning, especially in like milk or different dairy products or packaged meat. A while back, there was a really big outbreak with cantaloupe farm. And the thing with listeria is that it's not it's a pretty hardcore food poisoning. where a lot of people end up hospitalized a lot of people end up dying, but it's so interesting because it is able to survive at cold temperatures and at human temperatures. So like it will grow at refrigerator temperature, and it's very happy there versus we keep things in the refrigerator so that they don't So they don't go bad but but listeria like to be there and they like to be in our bodies and I just think is really cool because no matter what we do, we're like, I'm smarter than the bacterium and put my milk in the fridge. It's like listeria doesn't care. It's it's gonna take a nap. It's fine.

Nick VinZant 39:19 Like the honey badger of bacteria.

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 39:22 Yes, yes. Perfect, Nick VinZant 39:24 um, most dangerous one.

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 39:29 Most Dangerous, you know, I'm gonna have to think, Wow. I mean, I guess we've kind of classified these with like biosafety level ratings of E. coli. The ones we use in the lab are like a biosafety level one and biosafety level four are microbes that we don't have cures for. So that's things like Ebola, the Ebola virus is just deeply terrifying. The thing with the Ebola virus right is that it is not super transmissible you have to actually be touching the fluid. So I think that man, what's the most terrifying I guess I love them so much. I think they're so cool. So even when they're scary like even during this time of pandemic where everything is terrifying. I'm also just digging into understanding Coronavirus. And so it's really exciting. I guess the scariest topic for me is antibiotic resistance, where we're just getting to the point with certain diseases that we used to be able to easily wipe them out and because of our behaviors and not not doing this responsibly, we're getting to a point where we're going to be set back 200 years and suddenly say, we can't treat with antibiotics. We've got to just treat your symptoms and not cure you of that bacteria.

Nick VinZant 40:52 Tell me about Ph. D balance.

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 40:54 Oh, Ph. D balance.So yeah, I found it Ph. D. Balance is In my second to last year of grad school, so this was back in March of 2018. And it came about because I read a paper saying that about somewhere between 25 and 40% of graduate students were dealing with signs of anxiety or depression. And this really hit home for me because I was a graduate student too, has always dealt with depression and anxiety. And I've had a really hard year that the year before. And I saw this, and I really wish I had known that statistic because I wish I felt like I could reach out and talk to somebody. And so I founded this page on Instagram, it was supposed to be just like a get a handful of people together to talk about our experiences and support each other. It was originally called pH depression, and shared some of my story and shared it with a photo of like, Hey, here's the person that you normally see. But here's the story going on behind it. And it just took off like people wanted to come and share their stories. They talked about anxiety about postpartum Depression, about bipolar disorder about traumatic abuse all of these different pieces. And it started spreading out to being something of just a place for graduate students to talk to each other about some of the taboo topics that everyone sort of feels like they are the only one to experience. It's something that they should be ashamed of whether it's problems with an advisor or difficulties with financial situations or difficulties with mental health, making places for people to actually talk about those things and learn from each other experiences.

Nick VinZant 42:33 That's pretty much all the questions I have what's coming up next for you.

Dr. Susanna L. Harris 42:37 So let's see.So I'm continuing to run PhD balance. I now have a team of about 20 volunteers all spread out over the world and they're the best people I get to interact with. It's an amazing group of folks. I'm also really leaning into my interest in science communication. I did some while I was in grad school through a local planetary And through Instagram and Twitter. But now working as a marketer for a company called grant engine that is pretty cool. They actually write government grants so they write the grants for a company to get government funding. And so my job is that I get to talk to scientists who we think could benefit from that government funding, I get to talk to different funders and explain why they should their companies should be applying to these sort of things. So I get to talk to scientists to business people and also get to play with some of my marketing skills.

Nick VinZant 43:35 I want to thank Dr. Harris so much for joining us if you want to connect with her. We have linked to her on our social media accounts, or Profoundly Pointless on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And we have also included her information on the RSS feed that's on this podcast.