Briefing Chat: The 30 year-legacy of a science icon – Dolly the sheep

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1:23Hi listeners, Benjamin here. It's the Friday show, the briefing chat, where we talk about a couple of stories we've read about in the Nature Briefing. and joining me this week is the one and only flora graham chief editor of the nature briefing flora thank you so much for stopping by it's always my pleasure to be here thank you so much ben for having me not at all well listen why don't you go first this week with a story that you've been reading about and writing about as well it has to be said and it's a story about a birthday an anniversary of sorts that's right this is a really special birthday and this is dolly the sheep it was 30 years ago 1996 on the 5th of july that dolly was born and of course her claim to fame is to be the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.

2:06Now, I was a bit surprised. I didn't see as much coverage and celebration of Dolly and the legacy of this breakthrough as I thought. But, you know, maybe it's because I was on a place in my career journey at a certain time 30 years ago, and maybe the young kids don't know who Dolly is anymore. But for me, you know, when I think about that legendary nature cover with like accidentally another sheep's leg in the background. I just think that has to be just one of the key images of the modern biological and biotechnological age. Right, because that paper, I think, came out in 1997. That was the first time I heard of it.

2:42I hadn't quite started at university yet, but I remember then this being a huge deal, right? And this was going to be the start of a whole new avenue of science. It was a huge thing. Yeah, I mean, I think people understandably thought, okay, this is going to be human cloning, like reproductive cloning from adult cells means we're going to have human clones. Now, it's kind of nice to look back now, 30 years later, and there's not a lot of human clones around. But it absolutely did prove to be a pivotal moment. I mean, cloning pets, for example, is now fairly commonplace among a certain demographic.

3:18It's widely used in things like agricultural animals, racehorses, things like that. So the risk of human clones still considered far, far too high. And that's not even to touch on the ethical concerns, which, of course, are enormous. But it seems the upshot is there was a huge, huge public response to this breakthrough. And long term, the effects have been broad, but perhaps not as terrible as was feared. But then Nature this week did write an editorial about the Dolly breakthrough and kind of used it as an example of it could have been an opportunity for maybe coming up with a little bit more thought out, firmer framework for these kinds of moments where science really needs to be communicated to the public.

4:05And there are a lot of complex ethical and technical concepts to absorb. And perhaps it was a bit of a missed opportunity in that sense. And here we are then, say 30 years on, you've been reading what other folk have been writing across the board. I mean, what sort of things have other folks said about this anniversary? I mean, I think that a lot of the kind of complex feelings of fear and apprehension have really faded away. So reading the initial coverage, hearing interviews today with some of the major players, I mean, Ian Wilmot, who led the team, passed away in 2023, but there's still plenty of people who were around at the time.

4:44And they say the last thing they expected was to be on the cover of every newspaper. So it's quite a fun recollection in that way, people talking about just being totally unprepared and kind of delighted to be sharing their work with the world. And reading kind of from decades past, the 10th anniversary, 20th anniversary, now 30 years on, it does feel like all kind of the waters under the bridge and maybe the worst fears haven't come to pass. So it does have more of a celebratory feel this anniversary, I think, than it has in the past. And of course, Dolly, if you would like to see Dolly, she is at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, nicely taxidermied on a spinning plinth.

5:23I have been to see Dolly in the National Museum of Scotland and she is rather gently rotating on this plinth. And for me, it was important to go and see her because I have been a scientist in a past life and this was a huge scientific story. But as you say, for other people, that connection maybe isn't quite as strong. but it's still important that folk are aware that this happened, I suppose. I mean, I guess the reason why this story has carried so much meaning for me and for so many others is it's a great example of how one, not a person, but a living creature can bring complex scientific idea to the forefront of people's minds.

5:58We all know how important it is for storytelling to come into play when it comes to science communication. And this is a perfect example. We have Dolly the sheep, we have a face, we have a name. Now, of course, that's not to say that the science itself was not also impactful. But it's hard to think of a breakthrough, especially in the world of genetics and things where things happen at a very technical scale and a very small scale, which so many people worldwide would have been able to say like, oh, yeah, Dolly, I know exactly what you're talking about. Well, many happy returns to Dolly then. And I'm sure we'll be revisiting this in 10 years time, Flora, you and I to talk about the 40th anniversary of this moment and where the field of cloning has gone.

6:39But for the time being, let's move on to our next story. And it's a story that I read about in Nature based on a Nature paper. Now, we've had a few ocean floor stories in the recent weeks and months, right? A lot of them about ecosystems. We had one a couple of weeks ago about a whale graveyard, which was an amazing story. But this one is a little bit different. It's maybe a bit larger scale. It's a geophysics story. And it's a first. But I have to say, it's a surprising first. And it's about seeing the Earth's crust split apart at what are known as mid-ocean ridges. I mean, this is just going to be such a spectacular sight.

7:16It's something I wish that there was video of it that I could watch. Working in multimedia, as I do, yes, I do wish there were video. But they did catch it. And for context then, I mean, at school, I'm sure, Flora, both you and I learned all about the Earth's crust, right, and how it's constantly shifting. There's these tectonic plates that float on the upper layer of Earth's mantle underneath. and these plates sometimes rub up against each other. Sometimes they push on top of one another. That's how we get mountains and valleys and all this kind of thing, right? But the oceanic crust covers two thirds of the world, so I understand.

7:47And it's made by tectonic plates shifting apart. So rather than rubbing up against each other, they're actually pulling apart. Magma rises up between them and that's how new crust is made. But as I say, nobody'd ever seen this happen before, which I have to say I was astonished by, right? Because this is kind of high school science, but it had never been actually documented. I mean, it's a bit of a cliche that we know more about outer space than we know about what's happening under the ocean. But this is a perfect example of that. And what I found interesting is the instruments they used to actually detect this.

8:19Did you look into that at all? I did. And this suite of instruments included underwater microphones called hydrophones that can detect sound waves. acoustic beacons these kind of battery powered things on stilts that emit and detect undersea sounds and measuring the sound kind of bouncing between them gives a sense of any changes in distance based on how long it takes for the response to come back and what happened was a team of scientists were looking at this one particular mid-ocean ridge which is called the southeast Indian ridge, which cuts across the Indian Ocean's floor east to west, sort of roughly, and it separates the Antarctic plate from the Australian plate.

8:59Yeah, if you swam from Australia to Madagascar, say, you might cross this line. Sure. And normally, these plates, they do pull apart about six centimetres a year. But sometimes in some places, there's a bit of a bit of a strain and then there's suddenly they burst apart. And And these things, as you might expect, they're accompanied by earthquakes, all sorts of stuff going on a fairly epic event. And so these epic events, what the scientists were hoping they could measure, and they struck gold, I guess. On the 26th of April 2024, these hydrophones started to pick up seismic tremors. Then over the next couple of days, the beacon data showed that the stations were moving apart.

9:42And they moved apart a lot. they moved apart two meters in a few days, as opposed to the regular six centimeters a year. Yeah. And in terms of vertical displacement, I read it was more than four meters. And the amount of lava that spewed out is hard to imagine, 160 million cubic meters of lava. So it was all happening down there. I mean, you can imagine there's these hydrophones and pressure sensors down in the dark depths and the sounds and the lava pouring out. And yeah, I guess I should be glad there's no video because I wouldn't want to be holding that camera. I can't imagine what 160 million cubic tons of slowly cooling lava would look like.

10:21But yeah, epic. And it's an interesting one because, as I say, this is the first time this has been seen. And as you alluded to there, we don't really know a great deal about the very, very deep part of the ocean. But this does give a sense of some of these enormous processes that are going on that helps make the earth, I suppose, what it is. I think what's so exciting to me is, as you say, it's the first time this has ever been seen. And so you just feel like this is just the start of a story that's a long time theoretically predicted, just the start of the observations that are really going to help teach us what's really going on down there.

10:57Absolutely right. Well, let's leave it there then for this week's briefing chat. Listeners, I'll put links to both of those stories in the show notes. Flora, why don't you tell listeners where they could sign up for the nature briefing to get even more stories like this delivered directly to their inbox. Oh, please head on over to nature.com slash briefing and you can sign up to our daily newsletter. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for joining me, Flora. I've been Benjamin Thompson. We'll see you next time. See you next time. Hannah, I just Venmo'd you for dinner. Obsessed. I'm spending it right now on the lip gloss that's been sitting in my cart.

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