Fertile ambitions: scientists’ plans to slow the biological clock

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1:03The Economist.

1:09Hello, and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Ore Ogumbi. And I'm Rosie Bloor.

1:19Today on the show, how Russian propaganda is threatening Belarusian culture. and, from protein hunters to umami lovers, why everyone wants a taste of biltong.

1:35But first...

1:43Couples are having children later, and with that, risking their ability to have them at all.

1:51The tick of a woman's biological clock is set by the fact that her eggs are some of the oldest cells in her body Peeking while she's still in her own mother's womb and depleting every month from puberty to menopause In vitro fertilization has been the only real solution offered to older women Which can be an expensive and heartbreaking crapshoot But science is finally being developed to change that. With IVF, with in vitro fertilization, doctors are only ever really able to manipulate the quantity, the number of eggs that can be fertilized. What can't be changed is the quality of those eggs. Katrine Braik is a science editor at The Economist.

2:38That's important because as women are trying to have babies later in life, the quality of their eggs naturally deteriorates. By targeting specific molecules that are responsible for that deterioration in quality, two European startups are basically trying to come up with treatments to improve the quality of eggs. Well, it's about time. Why has this only just come into focus? What's actually happened over the last five to ten years is a sort of building understanding of what causes age-related infertility. And there's some basics of cell biology here that are important to understand before we go into the details.

3:26Every cell in your body contains 46 chromosomes. Now those 46 chromosomes, half of them came from your mother and half of them came from your father. Human eggs, they actually start off with a full set of 46. So actually what needs to happen as the egg develops is that it needs to get rid of half of those chromosomes. And it needs to get rid of the right 23, and it needs to get rid of exactly 23. If something goes wrong in that process, then an egg can end up with either too few chromosomes, or it might end up with too many chromosomes. It's why women who are older have an increased rate of miscarriage, for instance.

4:07It's also why women who are older tend to be more likely to carry children with chromosomal abnormalities such as Down syndrome. The research that we've seen recently really delves into why these eggs end up having this abnormal number of chromosomes. Okay, so what have these researchers figured out? In order to understand why older women tend to have eggs that either have too few or too many chromosomes. They really looked at how this cell division is happening. They found that chromosome structure inside the developing egg gets looser with age. And basically, there are a few different molecules that cause this.

4:48There's one that's called cohesin, that's basically a molecular glue that holds these chromosomes together in their pairs. And there's another molecule called Shugoshin-1, a name that was inspired by a Japanese expression meaning guardian spirit. Shugoshin-1 protects this molecular glue from being cut up by an enzyme. So you have these three molecules that are kind of essential. You've got the glue, you've got the protector, and then you've got the enzyme that eats up the protector. What researchers have found is that it is possible to boost this Shugoshin-1 that protects the glue that is already there.

5:28So how are these startups protecting this vital guardian spirit molecule, as you call it? What one of the companies, Ovo Labs, has come up with is a therapeutic molecule. They're calling it EmbryoProtect1, but it's basically inspired by the guardian spirit molecule. It's inspired by Shugoshin-1. It stabilizes the chromosomes before they develop the defects. What that means in real terms is basically if you were going through an IVF treatment, you would end up with a greater number of healthy viable eggs at the end of that than you would normally have in an IVF treatment. So what's the other startup doing then?

6:09The other startup is trying to end up with the same results. They're just doing it in a slightly different approach. which euploid biotechnologies has developed a molecule they're calling Livanta. And what that does is it keeps the enzyme that normally chops up Shugoshin-1 busy elsewhere. And as a result, you hopefully will end up with more Shugoshin-1, more protective molecule and more chromosomally normal eggs. How about younger women? Will any of this groundbreaking science apply to women my age? There is some interesting science being done there, including at Overlabs. It's very early days, so I won't go into the scientific details, but I think what's really neat about this generally is that what you're seeing here is researchers first trying to understand at a molecular and at a cellular level what the causes for infertility are.

7:03We do know, for instance, that women in their 20s have miscarriages. Why is that? Aneuploidy is one cause of that. When a woman is in her 20s, about 20 % of her developing eggs will be aneuploid. And so if it's not age-related aneuploidy, what is causing aneuploidy in younger women? The researchers are looking into cells of younger women as well in order to understand the mechanisms that underlie this. And they are developing therapeutics that could stabilize the developing egg in order to reduce aneuploidy in younger women as well. We've talked many times on the show about fertility, including with you, and I imagine there'll be great demand for these kinds of treatments in the coming years.

7:51That's the expectation. And as someone who has experienced IVF myself, I can tell you that I would have been very interested in these treatments. and speaking to the founders of these startups, everybody is very clear that they've had already quite a lot of interest from women who would love to be part of their clinical trials. Now, they're not at that stage yet. This is still very, very early days. I think it's important to say that the implications of having some kind of treatment for aneuploidy would be really quite profound. IVF has been around for nearly 50 years. It's barely changed in that time.

8:27It was invented to help women whose fallopian tubes were blocked, meaning they couldn't ovulate. It definitely was not invented or designed for women facing other forms of infertility, including age-related infertility. And as we know, increasingly women are wanting to start families later in life. So we're seeing more and more women seek IVF in their mid to late 40s and even beyond in their 40s. So a treatment that aneuploidy would be huge in terms of helping families have the babies they want when they want them. Katrine, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you, Ore.

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10:58In 2020, massive protests erupted in Belarus after President Alexander Lukashenko rigged the election. Demonstrators were locked up. Some were tortured. Hundreds of thousands of people fled the country. In exile, many continued their stand against Lukashenko's government. Anyone who comes on the street with this flag, or even with words in Belarusian language, in protest context, they will be put in custody, put in prison. And it's impossible to express another opinion than the opinion of the ruling party. The battle for control in Belarus is fought over in every corner of the social and political realm.

11:42Now it's extending to traditional culture. As national heritage is trampled, it's being replaced with Russian propaganda. So of course plenty of Belarusians have strong economic or family ties to Russia and feel a strong sense of kinship with the wider Slavic world. Katie Bryant is a senior producer on Economist Video. But Belarusian culture and language has been seen as an important guard against growing Russian influence. and there are at the moment strong threats against it. Katie, explain the context for this national culture in the light of Belarus's relationship with Russia. So President Lukashenko has always been pro-Russia.

12:23He's lent on Soviet symbols to prop up his authority. But he's had a difficult relationship with Putin. In the past, he's had some room to manoeuvre. For example, he criticised the annexation of Crimea, but things changed radically in 2020. when there were widespread protests against his rule, which were brutally crushed. And he relied heavily on military support from Russia to do this. Since then, his regime has been increasingly reliant on Russia economically, militarily, geopolitically. And now, as Lukashenko's bid to maintain power grows more desperate, he's cracking down on Belarusian culture and ceding even more influence to Russia.

13:03What does that mean on the ground? If you're in Belarus, in what ways can people see that Belarusian culture is disappearing? So there's been a wave of repression playing out across this year. Over a couple of days in July, various shops selling Belarusian clothes or food announced they were closed down. Music and history festivals were cancelled. Earlier in the year, publishers, translators and sellers of Belarusian language books were detained or designated as extremist. and so what this means is that the signifiers of Belarusian culture and language are disappearing from the public space. So for example one of the shops that shut down in July is one that's been running for over 10 years in Minsk.

13:45It sells modern clothes with traditional designs. I spoke to one woman in Minsk who described hearing the announcement that it would shut down she said she rushed over to buy a final purchase. She said the shop was almost empty, there were orders piling up in the corner. And she described the shop as somewhere for brave people because wearing clothes with national motifs in Belarus requires courage. How has Lukashenko used culture as a tool in the past? So Lukashenko is ever the opportunist and he has elevated Belarusian culture when it suited him. He's also leaned very heavily on Soviet symbols and Soviet identity to bolster his power.

14:21In the 2010s, there was a real revival of Belarusian culture. It was described to me by various people as a sort of Minsk hipster phenomenon that really grew in popularity. So Lukashenko himself was even photographed wearing a shirt with a traditional design. Then what we saw in 2020 was these symbols of Belarusian national heritage and culture were really taken up by the democracy movement, by the opposition and by the protesters in general. The most important example of this was the white, red, white flag of the Belarusian Republic in 1918 that was absolutely everywhere in the protests and then was swiftly banned.

14:56And so to give a sense of just how intense that repression was, even wearing red and white socks would get you picked up by the police or there's reports of people issued fines from red and white manicures. You've talked about how Belarusian culture is being repressed. In what ways are we actually seeing a flourishing of Russian culture? So for example, state-run theatres have hired Russian directors and actors and staged fewer Belarusian language plays. Monitoring groups describe to me how museum exhibits emphasize historic links with Russia. Another example is official concerts headlining Russian musicians, particularly those with pro-war stances or those that are favored by Putin's regime.

15:37And then this is an area where open source intelligence is really helpful. So we used research from a think tank called iSands, which have been monitoring telegram posts from various schools. And they tracked a real increase in the commemoration of the Day of National Unity between Russia and Belarus across the schooling system, an increase in military clubs, even in preschools, some of them very closely linked to clubs in Russia. And we're also seeing it elsewhere in the education system. So if you compare history textbooks for 16 and 17 year olds, you can see a real increase in Russian narratives, whereas back in 2021, they described both positive and negative aspects to Putin's rule.

16:18They're now just incredibly positive. And what this amounts to is a real attempt to erase the European aspects of Belarus's history and to really emphasize Russian narratives and links with Russia in the education system. What does all of this amount to then in terms of the future of Belarus? So even before this latest wave of repression, opportunities to protest the regime were tiny. The regime has built an incredibly effective repressive machine. And Belarusian culture and national identity was one of the last places where you could signal some sort of anti-regime mentality without coming under the attention of the police.

16:57That's obviously now no longer possible. So what you're seeing is people getting rid of books because there's so many books being banned and it's hard to keep up. But if there's a KGB raid and you're found with some banned books, you can be charged with promoting extremist materials. Someone described culture in Belarus right now to me as underground, partisan, and all the more valuable because of it. Obviously, there are hundreds of thousands of Belarusians in exile in Warsaw, Vilnius and other cities across Europe. And they are doing all they can to keep Belarusian culture alive and to keep campaigning for democracy in their country.

17:30One thing that really struck me in the reporting of this was the amount of people in exile working incredibly hard to document what's happening inside the regime and to keep their nation alive for the day that the regime falters and there is some avenue for change. Katie, thank you very much. Thank you very much.

18:00So it was in 1652 when Jan van Lubbeck dropped anchor in the bay here. And when he rode ashore, he met up with the koi sand, the harten tot or the bushman. Greg White runs a make-your-own-bilt-on session in South Africa, which I recently attended. John McDermott is our chief Africa correspondent. He noticed that they were drying strips of meat, salted strips of meat in the sun. and I thought, not a bad idea. The Dutch settlers took the idea of drying meat and then added vinegar and some of the spices from their Asian trade routes. These included cloves, black pepper, and most of all, coriander seeds.

18:44They are seafallers, and that was one of the biggest challenges to obviously preserve food while traveling. The result was one of my favorite snacks built on.

18:58The classic version of Biltong is dried meat, usually beef, but also quite often game. So springbok, wildebeest, kudu, eland, all those antelopes that you might see running around on safari, even ostrich. And it's found pretty much everywhere in South Africa. So if you're hungry and you're popping into the petrol station or you're at a rugby game or visiting a township butchery, you can usually find some of this delicious snack, whether in the form of thinly cut slices or cheaper snapsticks, which are a bit like chewy dried sausages. And it's so popular that you'll even find it commonly placed into kids' lunch boxes.

19:46I often pop a few of the dried meat shards into my own kids' lunch boxes every morning before they go to school. I think at least one of our children enjoyed chewing on them when they were babies, so you often find built-on given to young uns when they're teething. And at a kind of slightly more refined end of things, you'll even find some of the posher wineries around Cape Town offering pairings with Merlot and Shiraz and Pinotage and Chenin Blanc. A food writer I recently spoke to, Anna Trapido, described Biltong as the one thing South Africans all agree on, with the exception perhaps of Trevor Noah.

20:24The name Biltong comes from a fusion of Dutch words, bil, meaning buttock, which is a reference to the cut of the cow, and tong, which means literally tong or strip. strip. That reflects the very Dutch history of the food, so the way the settlers mix their own dried meat with some of the indigenous techniques that they found upon arrival. And later in the 19th century, the Boers, as the South Africans of Dutch descent came to be known, took it to the hinterland when they went away from the Cape, and it became part of the mythology of that group of South Africans as they went on what's known as the Great Trek.

21:09For a while under apartheid, biltong was perhaps often seen as a white snack, but dried meat transcends race, it transcends cultures. There are many variants of biltong in black cuisine. So in Isisulu, it's called umkwa ibiya. And in the belly culture, you'll find rather than say coriander seeds being applied to the dried meat, dried apricots. The Vendor ethnic community, I'm told, brushed the meat with marula oil. And across black South African culture and cuisine, it's quite common to add bits of dried meat to stews to give it that umami flavour.

21:56These days, biltong is growing global, and that's partly to meet the worldwide demand for protein, but it's also because South Africans have moved abroad in large numbers and they've taken their snack with them. And what began as a Creole snack over here is becoming subject to fusion overseas as well. So now you find it in Berlin and Brooklyn, Hong Kong, Singapore, with lots of new flavors added. So it's possible to find peri-peri built on, much to the horror of traditionalists or even, dare I say it, mushroom-based biltong for the vegan snackers amongst us. Now, you might think a lot of this sounds like jerky, but it is absolutely not the same at all.

22:44I worry about your chances of surviving long in South Africa were you to make that association. Jerky is American. It's very sugary. When I was at the Make Your Own Biltong session, I was told, we do not use that word in this house. Jerky was obviously a slur. And it's also jerky that is something that is made at speed. My understanding is that in America, you get the application of massive hair dryers to accelerate the drying process. Biltong, on the other hand, is made according to what might be known as Africa time. It's air-dried, it will be ready in this delightful South African phrase, now now, which means not now, but later.

23:30And while that can frustrate many visitors to South Africa, I know from personal experience that it's well worth the wait.

23:54That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

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