Image Courtesy of the New York Times
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[? Blackalicious rapping “Chemical Calisthenics” ?]
? Here we go!
? Neutron, proton, mass defect, lyrical oxidation, yo irrelevant
? Mass spectrograph, pure electron volt, atomic energy erupting
? As I get all open on betatron, gamma rays thermo cracking
? Cyclotron and any and every mic
? You’re on trans iridium, if you’re always uranium
? Molecules, spontaneous combustion, pow
? Law of de-fi-nite pro-por-tion, gain-ing weight
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? I’m every element around
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Welcome to Spark Science, where we share stories of human curiosity. I’m Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff, and I teach physics and astronomy at Western Washington University. Also, I host this radio show with my wonderful cohost and improv entertainer, Jordan Baker.
Jordan Baker: I am Jordan Baker. I work at the Benefit counter of Macy’s.
[Regina laughs]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: You do not.
Jordan Baker: I sell women’s makeup.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So if you want to go to Bellis Fair and get sprayed with perfume. You do that too, right?
Jordan Baker: Yeah. I mean, I don’t where there, but . . .
[all laughing]
Jordan Baker: I can just spray you with perfume.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Which actually brings us to today’s show: the science of smell. Perfume, smell, Macy’s.
Jordan Baker: That was a great segue.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It was a great segue
Jordan Baker: It’s almost like somebody loaded you up with that.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Jordan Baker: Go on.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Thank you, Jordan. And our guest today is a colleague of mine at Western Washington University–awesome lady–Dr. Lina Dahlberg. Is that how you say your last name?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yep.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Excellent, I didn’t mess it up.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: No, no you didn’t. Awesome job.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So how are you doing today, and welcome.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Thank you. I’m doing well, thanks.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So is this your first time on a radio show?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: It is my very first time on a radio show.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Can you tell?
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: She’s so nervous.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well we want to welcome you. And you’re actually one of our last shows before our long break, before our relaunch in January.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Sweet.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So it’s all on you.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Okay.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: No, I’m just joking.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I’m the anchor. I’ve got to hold us in.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: What is your research? What’s your position at Western? And then, tell us all about yourself.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Okay, in that order?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yes.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Check. So my research is looking at how cells maintain the right number and localization (so, putting things in the right places), the right number of proteins on their surface. And what we’re really interested in is how that affects the sense of smell in an animal.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Cool.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: We could talk about what proteins have to do with smell. I’m sure we’ll get into that in depth. But we do this in a model system, which means that’s it’s a simple organism. So humans, mice, monkeys, are all very, very complex and they have a lot of thinking.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: We like to use a simple system that has an easy nervous system, and very few but very stereotyped behaviors. And so we use a little worm called C. elegans.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So who else uses that who’s been on our show before?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Right. So you recently talked to Dr. Jackie Rose who also works in the nervous system of the same animal, which is great. So I have a collaborator right down the hall from me.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: She’s also super fun.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: She’s also super fun, and so I have a great coffee drinking buddy, also.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So I heard a rumor when I was at Western Washington University at the turn of the century.
Jordan Baker: Uh-oh.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That there were monkeys at Western that they did experiments on and stuff like that.
Jordan Baker: The first one, or the second one?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: What do you mean, the first one?
Jordan Baker: Turn of the century.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Um, yes, I am a vampire and it was 1899.
Jordan Baker: Okay.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Huh.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It was actually 1999. I’m not a vampire.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Oh.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I know, right? So we just got lame. So are there monkeys? Have you heard about this?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I can only speak for the biology department.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: We do not have any mammalian systems at all in the biology department apart from the professors.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Got it.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: We’re fully mammalian it turns out, not vampires, also. The psychology department does have some rodent models, but I have heard exactly zero from anybody about primate research.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: We’re going to have to look that up.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: You should look that up, because I could be wrong. But I really, really doubt it.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So tell us why as a kid, where’d you grow up and why did you want to do science? Why did you want to do biology, specifically?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah. No, definitely. So the first question that I missed is I’m a professor. I’m an assistant professor at Western right now. So I’m starting my third year teaching and doing research on campus. So you got that out of the way.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: In the biology department.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: In the biology department. So I’m in the biology department and Jackie Rose is in the psychology department.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And there’s a link between the two with the neuroscience program?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: There is, it’s not an official link anymore. The behavioral neuroscience major is now its own major out of the psychology department.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh, okay. And did that just start?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: It had been a joint program and it ended. The joint effort ended last year.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay. But the behavioral neuroscience, they still have to take a lot of science I’m guessing, even though it’s out of the psych department.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: They do. I actually teach a course, a senior-level class, that’s probably over 50% behavioral neuroscience students.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Do they get a BIO minor, also?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: They can, but they don’t get it automatically.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yep.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So why did you want to do biology as a tiny child?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Wow. As a tiny child. So based on child rebellion and stuff, I shouldn’t have wanted to be a biologist. Both my parents are molecular biologists.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh you disappointment.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Dun dun dun dun.
Jordan Baker: Gross.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So sorry. Ew, huh?
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So they’re actually both professors. My dad’s a full professor. My mom’s a research professor.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Were they here in Washington?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: No, in Wisconsin.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So middle of the country, in Madison. So I grew up in Madison.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Jordan Baker: That’s the capital.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: It sure is
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I didn’t know that.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I might have known, I don’t know.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So I actually grew up sort of surrounded by a scientific culture, which definitely gave me a sense of. how fun science was, a little bit of also how hard the work can be. But I actually grew up thinking anybody could be a scientist. And I still believe that strongly.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: But growing up with two scientist parents definitely helped.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: But, I think I went to college and I was like, “You know, I’m going out on my own . . .”
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Musician.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Political science. I was like, “I think I can do political science.”
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: And then I took a chemistry class and I was like, “Oh man, I really like organic chemistry. I kind of like this chemistry stuff. Maybe I’ll be a chemist.” And then I was like, “Oh, I’ll just try biology.” And I tried it and I loved it! Oh dear.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: How old where you? What year in school were you at this point?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So I took my official biology class my ninth grade year in high school and it was so bad that I vowed never to take another biology class.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So my next biology class I took was not until my sophomore year of college.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Jordan Baker: So not much willpower, then?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Right. Stick-to-itedness, nah.
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: Give it a couple of years, maybe I’ll try it again.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah, exactly. Maybe I’ll try it again.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. So your parents, you’re a sophomore, and you tell them, “I like it.” What do they do?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: You know, my parents have never pushed me one way or another. I think I came home and had the crisis that a lot of college students have where they go, “I could, I could still do this political scientist thing but I don’t really know what it would take me towards or I could do this biology thing and I’ve seen where that goes career-wise.” So I felt really comfortable in it.
My parents, to their credit, were like, “This is a decision you have to make.”
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: But deep down.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I’m sure deep down they liked that. Our Thanksgiving conversations are riveting, for only us.
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: Awesome.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: My sister’s a physicist. Uh-oh.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow. Do you have any brothers?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: No.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay. That’s awesome. Well I think you kind of nailed the hammer on the head. There are so many students that go into university, and if they don’t have any exposure to science, they don’t know anything about science, they are at these crossroads, and they don’t have the benefit you did where you knew where it was going to go. And they have no idea. And they’re like, “I don’t know, maybe business would make me more money than going into biology, which I really love,” or something.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I think that’s awesome. I try not to push my daughter into physics, but she’s like, “I really like science.” And I’m like, “You do whatever you want.” It’s really hard. She’s six.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Well perhaps she’ll also like horses and painting.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: She loves painting and drama, so I’m kind of pushing that. Like I really care about that. So when she rebels, she’ll go to physics.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Very smart. Very smart.
Jordan Baker: Wow.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I mean, one thing that was important, I thought, in college, was I could have gotten a chemistry minor by taking a couple more science classes. But I definitely was like, “When am I ever going to take Renovating Shakespeare? Whenever am I going to get to take that English class from someone who really knows what they’re talking about Shakespeare?” The answer is never again. So I tried really hard also in college to make sure That I took some things that’d just widen my horizons.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That’s awesome. Where did you go to college?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I went to Haverford College, which is a teeny tiny liberal arts college on the East Coast. It’s right outside Philly.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay. So your parents were like, “Stay in Madison and live with us.” That’s what I tell my daughter.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah, no. No.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I’m like, this will save us money because we can’t afford anything else.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: It definitely would have saved us money, especially at that time. I think Robin Kodner and I have talked about this (she’s also a professor at Western). She grew up also in Wisconsin. We kind of look the same, but we’re not.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh that’s right. I mean, you don’t—you guys both have black hair.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah. And we’re the same height.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Jordan Baker: I was gonna say . . .
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: And we both grew up in Wisconsin and we’re both biologists.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: She’s got glasses.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: She has glasses.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That’s how you can tell the difference.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: But the point is we were talking about in-state tuition. At the time we were going to college it was like $2000 per year. It was really cheap.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: For Western it was a little over $3000. And I mean, I still had to take out a lot of loans. But it was definitely cheaper than any other place I could have gone.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So I bucked that.
[Regina laughs]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah, I went to a private liberal arts college. But what I got to do there was really phenomenal. And they had us doing primary research our secondary year. For the first biology class I’d taken in seven years and they had us doing real research with no right answer, just an answer that we might get and try to corroborate. So yeah, it was a phenomenal experience.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So that hooked you.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: It did.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: What did you do in grad school and where’d you go?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So I went to grad school out here, actually, at University of Washington in Seattle.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: We get a lot of those at western.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yep. I actually just took some of my students back down to the U-Dub this past week so they could look around the biochemistry department where I got my PhD. And they could look around and see. Everybody we met said, “Gosh, we get great students from Western here.”
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That’s awesome.
Jordan Baker: Wow.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Plug for Western, again.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
[? Janelle Monae singing “Wondaland” ?]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: If you’re just joining us, this is Spark Science on KMRE 102.3 FM in Bellingham. I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff.
Jordan Baker: And I’m Jordan Baker. Today we’re talking about the science of smell with Lina Dahlberg.
I worked in a very cool lab. We were a developmental biology lab, so we were looking at how it is when you have an egg—you think about an egg it’s round, maybe it has a pointy end and a rounder end—but frog eggs, for example, they basically have a top and a bottom. You can’t see where the head is going to be. But as soon as the egg is fertilized, there are signals that go throughout the egg, and within about 12 hours, you can actually start seeing where the head of the animal is going to be.
And within 24 hours, you can actually see it visually where the head of the animal is going to be. So I was working on the signaling pathways that the cell uses to make sure that the head ends up in the right place, but also that you don’t make extra heads. These are important when you think about the development of a young animal. For example, Jordan…
[voices intermingled]
Jordan Baker: Yeah. Of course.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: You should see Jordan. He’s like, “I’m pretty sure my baby has a head.”
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: But when I was teaching development and I was pregnant, those were some scary moments when I thought of all the things that can go wrong. It’s amazing.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: But we have to trust nature. Most of the time, it doesn’t go wrong.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Exactly. And that’s really the amazing thing.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It’s okay Jordan.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: That’s what the ultrasound is for.
Jordan Baker: I used to artificially inseminate cows, and my step dad still does. He actually sent me a picture of a two-headed calf the other day.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh, but they don’t live very long.
Jordan Baker: No they don’t.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: No, it’s so sad.
Jordan Baker: But it’s fun to learn stuff.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: But again, very rare.
Jordan Baker: Right.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Incredibly rare. And what happened in that situation is everything else went so right. I mean, that’s actually another amazing set of pathways. It’s sort of funny that you could say if that’s the only thing that went wrong. But there it is.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: The lab that I was in was really cool because we were working on this very organismal cellular project. But I was also working part-time in a lab that looked at the molecular, the atomic structure of proteins. And so we were looking basically at, from the organismal level but also the molecular level how it was that all the pieces could fit together time it these signaling pathways go right.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And how they communicated?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yep. So I used a lot of the biochemistry to look at the actual communication between the molecules.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Which is fascinating.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Indeed, yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So Dr. Lina and I are part of this workshop, this program at Western. I remember during the workshop there was somebody who had like a student-centered learning activity that they were just trying it out on the professors and they were like, we would make students take, go through this activity and talk about how cells divide. And I, sadly, have only taken one biology class in my life and it was in high school.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yep.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Because in physics, there were so many classes you didn’t have to take the other sciences. And I remember being in this workshop that Dr. Lina and I were both in and I was like, “Wow, this is what happens?” And they were like, “Yeah, you made a baby. This is what happened inside of you.” And I was like, “Really? Wow.”
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: The flip side is that a similar workshop that I think you weren’t attending, we did one on physics.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh, the light one? I was there.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: And I came away and was like, I sure wish that I’d known that about twenty years ago. I learned so much about light in about an hour-and-a-half. Then I was embarrassed that I hadn’t known it a lot sooner.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I was at that one. It’s really, so this stereotype that if you’re a scientist, then you’re this cartoonish person who knows all of science and you can build a time machine. Most scientists do not know much more outside of their own field and it’s unfortunate. But we try. We love to learn and we try to learn as we get older and older. I’ll probably take a chemistry class one of these days, and biology.
Jordan Baker: It’s nice to see you guys broadening your horizons.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, we’re trying.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah, all the way out of physics. I told you, this is why I took the English classes. I wasn’t sure it would ever happen again.
[laughter.]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay, so let’s get back. You’re in grad school.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: You’re looking at how all this stuff works in eggs. Is it just from frogs’ eggs?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: In that case, I was the only one working on frogs’ eggs. But then the rest of my lab was working on zebrafish, which are another model. They are also a great system because they develop quickly and they’re optically clear. People have actually stopped using the frog so much because the eggs are full of yolk, just like chicken egg has a lot of yolk in it, but the zebrafish eggs—
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: They’re delicious.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Well they’re all so delicious, right?
Jordan Baker: I was going to say that.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: But the zebrafish eggs, the embryo develops outside the yolk and so it’s very easy to see and the eggshell is clear, so a lot of people are moving towards that.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Did you do a post-doc? We were just talking to another post-doc.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I did. I did do a post-doc. I moved all the way back across the country.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Geez.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I went to Boston. I was at Tufts University. And the things they say when you take a post-doc is don’t change too many things. So don’t change your model system and the place you’re living and the biological question you’re asking all at the same time. So I just went ahead and did all three.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: You did all three.
Jordan Baker: Good for you. Good for you.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So for our listeners again, who didn’t listen to the post-doc (I think it was Life at Volcanic vents), a post-doc is when you basically graduated with your PhD, You’re not quite a professor yet, you’re on this weird limbo and you have a job for like two years where you’re doing your research under another professor and getting paid slightly more more than a grad student and slightly less than a professor.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Right.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Exactly. So it’s basically a situation where you have a lot of freedom to use all the training you got as a graduate student to go really deep into a new question.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So when you become a research professor, you’ll be able to ask these questions on your own and do these things on your own.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Right. And so the idea is if you’re bombarded from all directions with different possibilities, you should be able to use some of those reasoning skills, ideally.
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: Hopefully.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Hopefully.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Hopefully.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: We’re going to take a break. And when we come back, we’ll talk about how you changed all those three things and you survived and you’re a well-adjusted professor. And we’ll talk about the things you do now with the worms and Dr. Jackie Rose.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Great.
[? Janelle Monae singing “Wondaland” ?]
? Your magic mind
? Makes love to mine
? I think I’m in love, angel
? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take me back to Wondaland
? Me thinks she left her underpants
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: If you’re just joining us, this is Spark Science on KMRE 102.3 FM in Bellingham. I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff.
Jordan Baker: And I’m Jordan Baker. Today, we’re joined by Dr. Lina Dahlberg, molecular and cell biologist.
[? Janelle Monae singing “Wondaland” ?]
? The grass grows inside
? The music floats you gently on your toes
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Today’s episode, The Science of Smell, was produced in the KMRE Spark Radio Studios, located in the Spark Museum on Bay Street in Bellingham. Our producer is Katie Knudsen. The engineer for today’s show is Eric Ferrietta for example. Our theme music is “Chemical Calisthenics” by Blackalicious and “Wondaland” by Janelle Monae.
[? Janelle Monae singing “Wondaland” ?]
? Your magic mind
? Makes love to mine
? I think I’m in love, angel
? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take me back to Wondaland
? Me thinks she left her underpants
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Welcome back to Spark Science. We’re talking to Dr. Dahlberg at the science of smell. We haven’t really talk about smell yet, but now we are.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Alright.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So yeah, we’re smelling the microphones here. They smell good. I smell pot pie. I was just eating that.
Jordan Baker: I can’t smell the microphone.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: You can’t? It doesn’t smell good.
Jordan Baker: There’s probably lots of people’s spit on there. I don’t know how many people use these things.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So in your post-doc, I’m guessing, is when you got to this idea of smell.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Oh, close. Very close.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: You’ll have to wait just four years. So I did a post-doc wherein I changed cities.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: How did that go for you? Did you go insane a little bit?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: No. Well, maybe. You could ask an outside observer.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Did you have support when you changed all those things.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yes, I did.
Jordan Baker: I’d probably just want to start slapping everybody ’cause of their accents.
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: I don’t know what it is about a Boston accent, but . . . go on.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Really? Boston’s full of immigrants to, you know, from the West Coast. So they don’t all sound like that?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh really? Of course.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So I actually moved across with my—I guess he was then my boyfriend. And so we moved across together, which was great. I knew a few people from college out in Boston, but Boston’s kind of big. You have to get across the city to find people.
So yeah, that worked out really well, actually. I was ready for a break. And one thing that’s interesting about how science works is often, career-wise, often it’s hard to get a job in the same places where you’ve done your post-doc.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Which is a funny, it’s a funny conundrum because you’ve done great work and you know everybody and yet you can’t turn that into a career, usually. You usually have to leave the university you were at. So I knew I wanted to come back to the West Coast.
Jordan Baker: So you went as far away as you could
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So I want as far away as I possibly could!
Jordan Baker: Nice.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah. And what really took me out there was I wanted to do a teaching post-doc.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So most post-docs are a research intensive and you’re really just practicing your craft, which is doing scientific research. And I got into a post-doc program that gave me training both in the research and grant writing, and things that you need for a successful research career, but also in teaching and pedagogy.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow. Was it 50-50?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: It was nominally 75% research and 25% teaching. It was probably a little closer to 50-50. But in any case, I ended up teaching my own course at a local college at the same time that I was getting my research project off the ground.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh cool.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So that was a four-year program and it was really great for both research and teaching. And in that post-doc, I was learning about the nervous system of this really simple model organism, the nematode, which is a roundworm that lives in the soil and it eats the bacteria on rotting fruit.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: What?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: And it only has about a thousand cells; 302 of them are neurons.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: And we were actually only studying about 15 of those neurons so we were really getting simplified in terms of how a nervous system goes.
Jordan Baker: Is that small, neurons-wise.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Number of cells? Yeah.
Jordan Baker: Like, compared to what?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So we have about 10 billion in our brain. And we were talking . . .
Jordan Baker: You guys might.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: You look like you have at least 9 billion.
Jordan Baker: Thanks.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah, you’re welcome. With a “B.”
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: She didn’t say million.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: No, I didn’t. And so when I left my lab, it was really important that I have a project that I thought I could take to a new university and thrive with. And the 15 or so neurons that we had been interested in, there are a lot of people studying those particular neurons. And I felt like it was to my advantage actually switch one more time. Hopefully, not too many more switches.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: But one more time, and take what I knew about how to work on neurons in a small microscopic organism but act a question that was very different. So instead of thinking about learning and memory, which is what we had been studying in my post-doctoral lab, I went to the sensory neuron system and am now, and that’s how I moved into the olfaction field.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh, so you actually do know a lot. There’s a lot of crossover between you and Dr. Jackie Rose because she does memory and stuff in the same worm that you are now working on.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Exactly. So the work I did in my post-doc is very much parallel with what Jackie Rose is doing right now, in fact. We’re finishing up one last project in those neurons, so we’re actually working a little bit. In Jackie’s lab to get some of those things finished.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So what is the main question that you ask about this simple organism about sensory stuff. Like what’s the main thing you want to get out of this?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So I want to know, I actually am really interested in how it is that we receive signals from the outside world. So if you think about a lightbulb, right, we know the photons of light are actually exciting molecules that are basically on the outside of cells. And that message (there is light outside) has to be relayed into the cell so that the cell can send the message to a receiving cell. And that cell can send the message further on into the brain. And that would all be happening in the part of the brain that in mammals is the visual cortex.
So I’m interested in the same kind of question, but in the sense of smell. So if you walk into, the example I like to use is if you walk into an Ikea store—
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Meatballs.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Meatballs and cinnamon rolls. Right?
Jordan Baker: Wow.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yes, it’s overwhelming! But you can smell something right away. And you don’t need to know a lot about what’s going on to know that there’s a food source nearby. And it’s external to your body. So that sense has to be relayed across a cell membrane, how to excite the right part of the cell, and then the cell has to send that message on to the right part of your brain that says this is a smell. So that’s the big picture, is how do we keep ourselves healthy so that they can actually relay those message?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So what happens when those cells don’t get healthy? What happens when people—I know you’re looking at this worm but of course, you can extend it to humans.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Right.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And that’s what you’re trying to do.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Mhmm.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: What happens when people lose their smell?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Why does it happen? And then what are the, like, effects to the other parts of the body?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: If you think about the relay that has to happen between the outside world and the part of your brain that’s actually making sense of the sensation, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong. It’s actually in that way similar to development. It’s amazing that it usually works, right? So what can go wrong? Many things. What we know is, for example, in patients that are pre-symptomatic Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s patients often lose their sense of smell early. And what we think is those are actually cells that are dying. So the cells that would normally be receiving the sensation are actually not surviving very well.
Jordan Baker: Ohhh.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh wow. That sucks.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: There are also situations that can small if you injure that part of the brain that would be doing the processing, right? So if you damage your olfactory cortex—
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So that actually happens, right?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Sure.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Like what part of the brain, is there a head trauma?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Head trauma or stroke, and sometimes it’s unclear and people will have these sort of short periods in their lives where they lose a sense of smell, and then they regain it back. And often those are unclear exactly what’s happening.
Jordan Baker: I heard that smokers lose their smell, too. Is that true?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Or it dulls it.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: It does. I don’t know what the molecular basis for that is. So I’m not going to pretend.
Jordan Baker: Sorry!
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: And what I also don’t know is whether those patients or those smokers have a higher rate of cell death in their nose, right? So are they losing the sense of being able to receive the signal of a smell, or is it attenuated, or is there something else happening?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. And I think, I mean what I’ve heard, because I’ve heard the same thing, it’s that, cuz there has to be, or in my everyday life I realize that there’s maybe this connection between my tastebuds and smell, right?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Mhmm.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And if you have a cold and your nose is stuffed up, it’s hard to taste things too. So what is going on there? Are the smokers losing taste buds and that’s why they can’t smell?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So the same thing can be happening, right? You’re pulling a lot of toxins over your mucus membranes in that case, so the same thing could be happening. Your taste buds are actually cells, right? So they receive different signals than your nose does. And so the interplay between the signal from an odor and the signal from say a salty flavor, those mix to form the taste and smell that we think of everyday. And so if you lose one aspect of either of those, you’ve lost half of the sensation.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh, okay. And when you’re smelling something, in your nose and everything there’s those hairs and they catch things, right?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I want to talk about what’s actually happening.
Jordan Baker: Are we going to talk about boogers? Is that what we’re talking about?
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: We should. We should.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: They block the membrane.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So, I mean, that’s how we take smell, right? That’s what the children’s shows tell me. So how am I wrong?
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: As we say in teaching, that’s a really interesting idea.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: And you’re not exactly wrong. Cells have different shapes. So when we think about the cell, if you’re looking under a microscope for the first time, people will give you for example a piece of a plant to look at. And a cell is a little square box, and that’s what it looks like. And you look at the cell next to it, and it’s a little square box. And the other side, kind of a box. That’s not what all cells look like. And so especially neurons that need to be interacting with the outside of the environment, they actually often have little things that look like hairs. And so they actually have sort of fingers that can protrude out into the environment a little bit, and that gives a lot of surface area for the odorant to be received.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Different from the little black hairs in your nose.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. But biology-wise, why are the hairs in our nose, then?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: The black ones? The ones that look like eyebrows?
Jordan Baker: Are they just filters?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: They’re just filters. So they’re keeping the muck out, basically.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So they are not what’s catching those particles?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Those hairs themselves are not catching particles that you would use as odorants, no.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So odorants are just going in because they’re so small.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Right, so the odorants that we’re studying are about—I’m going to count carbons here—are between 8 and 15 carbon molecules. So they’re very small molecules.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: They would not be caught.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: They would not be caught by the nose hairs.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I told you, I didn’t take biology.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: But if you were to inhale a cup of sand, for example, the nose hairs might stop some of the sand.
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: That sounds like it hurts.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah I wouldn’t try it at home.
Jordan Baker: Do not try this at home, kids.
[? Janelle Monae singing “Wondaland” ?]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: You’re listening to Spark Science on KRME 102.3 FM in Bellingham. We’re talking about the science of smell with Dr. Lina Dahlberg.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay, so these odorants go in. How do they relate to memory, though? Because you do have some expertise in memory, you were saying, from your post-doc. And so much, I think, when people talk about memories they talk about smell. It comes up all the time. Tell me what the heck is going on there.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah, so that’s what we call association. And so if something happens and at the same time you are experiencing a smell, not only is the smell being relayed to the part of your brain that says “this is a smell,” but the parts of your brain that are activating memory are also rewiring so that you are actually rewiring your brain a little bit, so that smell sensation becomes physically sort of attached to the cells that are helping to maintain the memory.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh wow.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So the next you smell the smell; you can actually be activating a memory.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. Yeah, so for me, the smell of dry erase markers for the longest time made me think of kindergarten because it was the first year I’d ever encountered dry erase markers. Our school in San Diego had gotten a big white board and I was like, “What the heck is that?”
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Right
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It’s the first time I ever saw one. So yeah, for the longest time, every time I smelled a dry erase marker, I thought of kindergarten.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: And you know, there’s so much wiring happening in a child’s brain, that a lot of those memories, we might not be able to place a room but we get a sensation that makes us feel that happened when we were really young. A lot of that has to do with the wiring that happens when we’re developing our brains.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That’s crazy.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah.
Jordan Baker: I didn’t necessarily do research, but I stumbled across this video today.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Oh dear.
Jordan Baker: It was the top ten most disgusting facts about farts.
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: And the very first one was—
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Like the most disgusting or the least disgusting?
Jordan Baker: The most disgusting facts.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I’m just trying to count down from ten to one.
Jordan Baker: So the number ten one, the first one (cuz it was like a 10 minute long video and I wasn’t going that far)—
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well you didn’t even watch the whole video?
Jordan Baker: No!
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Ugh.
Jordan Baker: Give me the Cliffs Notes.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Jordan Baker: But they basically said that somebody enjoys their own brand as it were, because your brain senses the bacteria inside, or that your body regularly produces. And if you smell somebody else’s, there’s a danger warning in your brain that warns you from—
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Foreign bacteria?
Jordan Baker: They think that somehow they think they’re going to get that in your mouth. And so it’s like, “Don’t eat that! Danger! Danger! Danger!”
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I’d never seen that video, but maybe I should go see it.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And please send that video to me so we can post it on our Facebook page.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So one thing that’s really important here is when you’re smelling something, you’re not smelling the bacteria. You’re smelling a byproduct off of the bacteria. So it’s not at all ridiculous to think that that could be happening, that you’re used to the smells that are coming from your insides. You have a very strong connection with your microbes, right? You could be used to the byproducts.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: We’re in it together.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So to speak.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Or they’re in you together.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah. Whatever.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: We’re a universe, together.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Mhmm. So the byproducts coming out of your bacteria maybe more familiar to your nose.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Bearable. They’re bearable.
[Jordan laughs]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Or not bearable, but familiar.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Either one. Either one.
Jordan Baker: Was that me or the dog? Ehhhh.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It’s weird. I do want to take it away from farts, even though farts are super funny.
Jordan Baker: Right. I was trying to bring in something that was scientific.
[Jordan laughs]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That was good, actually. That was good. But pheromones. I’m super interested in that.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Okay.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And this idea that, because obviously that has something to do with sensory, right?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Totally.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: They’ve done studies. My favorite one was they gave a whole bunch of women these shirts, these white shirts.
Jordan Baker: Yeah, I saw that one.
[Jordan laughs]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And all these women are smelling these shirts and they gave the women after that a whole bunch of pictures of dudes and then said, “Which shirt do you think belongs to which dude?” And they picked the one they liked the smell the best to the best looking guy, and they were right a lot of the time. Obviously not 100% of the time but a substantially significant amount of times.
And they also did another study. I think they did the same thing with women’s pillows or something like that, for men. On what the heck is going on?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So it’s complicated. Go figure, huh? We like to do these experiments in the worm.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Whoa!
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Because instead of having to worry whether a worm finds another worm attractive (they don’t have eyes), what they do? They give off pheromones and they can actually sense how many animals are around them, and whether it’s a good place for them to be. And we can actually, there’s actually been a lot of work done recently in isolating the precise chemicals that make up the pheromones that determine how animals react to each other in a group.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Because I know that perfume companies—we get back to perfume, where we started—are just trying to simulate these pheromones and be like, “If you wear this, women will love you.”
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Right. The Old Spice thing.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: The Old Spice.
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: The Old Spice effect.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So do you know anything how it relates to humans and why those pheromones exist. Is it something like this mate is going to make better babies with me? I mean, how does this work?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Right. So from that behavioral standpoint , I think that’s very much it. We are tuned to be more receptive to the pheromones that evolutionarily lead to more productive mates.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: And so on a very simplistic level, that’s what it is. And brain-schmains, you know?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay. Before our break, I do want to ask one last question. Jordan, did you want to ask something?
Jordan Baker: No, I was going to comment about another video that was right on the same sort of thing that we were just talking about.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Tell us about the video.
Jordan Baker: It was another video basically about what you were kind of saying, that they took all these shapes from guys who had just got done working out, and they had all the women smell them. And all the women were obviously grossed out by the smell except for one woman, except she was close to her menstrual cycle. So . . .
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Oooh.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Which brings me exactly into the question I was going to ask.
Jordan Baker: Yeah!
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: High five!
Jordan Baker: Vroom!
[hands slap]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Radio magic, everyone.
[laughter.]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh Jordan, you’re awesome. The question I was going to ask is how do these pheromones relate to the idea I’ve heard—again, I’ve not taken biology, I’m not a biologist—that women, their periods sync up. And if there’s a whole bunch of women around, it starts to sync up. Does that have to do with pheromones? I mean, how are these women communicating menstrual cycles? How is that happening?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I think that it is pheromones but I am going to not even touch that one.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I just don’t know enough about anatomy and physiology to go there on the human scale.
[Lina laughs]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: But it’s probably pheromones. Okay.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I think that’s likely it, but I’ll go look that up right now.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Let’s all go look that up. Because it’s fascinating. It’s fascinating how much we can get away from menstrual cycles, but how much any organism communicates without even sight, touch.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Right.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I mean, we’re still communicating. It’s amazing.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: It is amazing. And it’s all through the air.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff, whispering: It’s crazy.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: It’s crazy.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It’s actually exciting for me and not scary, which is very new for me.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I’m glad I could bring that here.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah. We’re going to take a quick break, and then when we come back we’ll talk more about this craziness and hopefully Jordan and I will mentally sync up one more time, and we’ll talk about movies.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Sweet.
[? Janelle Monae singing “Wondaland” ?]
? Your magic mind
? Makes love to mine
? I think I’m in love, angel
? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take me back to Wondaland
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I’m Lina Dahlberg and I’m a biology professor at Western Washington University. You’re listening to KMRE LP 102.3 in Bellingham. Your community, your voice, your station.
? The grass grows inside
? The music floats you gently on your toes
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Our show is entirely volunteer run, and if you would like to help us out, click on the button Donate.
? Don’t freak and hide
? I’ll be your secret santa, do you mind?
? Don’t resist
? The fairygods will have a fit
? We should dance
? Dance in the trees
? Paint mysteries
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Welcome back to Spark Science. We’re talking to Dr. Dahlberg about the science of smell. And we took a break after we talked about crazy stuff. And now let’s go back to a little less crazy. What’s new that’s happening in the field of smell?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So one thing I wanted to talk just a little bit about because we were talking about behaviors that were very human and very complex behaviors.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: When I’m thinking about smell in my lab, I’m thinking about behaviors that changed an animal when they’re smelling.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh, OK.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So what my research is really looking at is using behavioral readout as a way to see how well sensation is functioning. And so in my little corner of the smell world, what’s new is that we’ve known for probably 15-20 years now what kind of molecules have to sit at the outside of a cell to make contact with an odorant molecule.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So that’s fine. So we know that there’s that puzzle piece that has to join up. But what is less clear, at least in the smell field, is how those molecules that sit out at the edge of the cell and actually contact the outside environment, how are they kept in the right place at the right time, right? Like, you don’t want to smell things too strongly. You were talking about smell sensitivity. We don’t want to be overly overpowered by a single odor. But you also don’t want to end up in a situation where you can’t smell something.
So the cell actually has to maintain exactly the right balance of molecules out at the edge of the cells. And they all have to be in the right places, right? We talked about the sort of fingers of the cells that have to be out interacting with the environment. And we have to make sure that the proteins, the molecules that are actually going to detect the odorant, those have to be out at the fingers. Because if they’re back in the middle of the body of the animal, they aren’t going to do any good.
So in my little corner of the smell research area, what’s new and exciting is figuring out how it is that the cell actually makes sure that the right molecules go to the right places so that smell can be maintained for the animal.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So we were talking about smell sensitivity at the break. If a dog, like a bloodhound or something, do they have more of these fingers that you’re talking about?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: That’s such a good question. So it’s less the cells look so very different, but the brain area in a dog or a mouse or a rat that’s used for processing smells is huge compared to ours.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Ahhh.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So if you look at a mouse, and they have those pointy little noses and pointy heads, and you look at the actual shape of the brain, they have a whole—it almost looks like an extra lobe of the brain—that’s the olfactory bulb. And so there’s a whole part of the mouse brain that’s probably about a tenth to a sixth of the size of the entire brain that is dedicated only to smell.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Ahhh.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So that’s very different from a human brain, right, where we’re just like, eh. We use it. But also use our eyes a lot. We use our ears. We use our sense of touch. We really use all our senses at one time and bring those together into a single picture. Whereas a dog or a mouse really depend on that sense of smell, so they have got a dedicated part of the brain that’s enlarged over the course of evolution to make sure that the smells can form the same picture, basically.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh, that’s super interesting.
Jordan Baker: Hmm.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Thinking about smell, I think about how it also affects behavior in the sense that certain foods just make people happy. Do you know what I mean? Or just food in general make people happy. I think humans, if they smell food, they’ll buy more or something. I think malls use this.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Ikea.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So do you have any, have you read anything about research on that? How they can actually, like, affect purchasing?
[Dr. Dahlberg laughs]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: That’s the psychology.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I haven’t read a lot about that. But it’s similar to a memory, right? If you’re associating a good feeling with a smell, then yeah, of course you’re going to feel better. You’re going to potentially stay longer in that store. That makes a lot of sense.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, and I think all humans feel better when they eat, and therefore . . .
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah, and if you’ve had a bad experience with a bad food, you have exactly the opposite association, right? So applesauce, or apple juice rather, it still makes me feel not well.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Really, why? Tell us!
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Because I got carsick on apple juice when I was three.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh my god.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So just the smell of apple juice. Not apple cider, by the way.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: You were three.
Jordan Baker: Three, wow.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Just the smell of apple juice.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I don’t remember anything when I was three.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I don’t really remember it, right? I just remember that it was bad and that I don’t like it.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Similar, white board markers. Amazing, right? There you are in kindergarten. It’s a new and exciting feel. That’s a positive.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It’s so funny that you were talking about this because it instantly made me think of pregnancy. So let’s go back to pregnancy and weird stuff, because that’s fun.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Mhmm.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: When I was pregnant, the smell of salmon was horrible.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Mhmm
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And the smell of udon noodles, Japanese noodles, was horrible. And it’s so unfortunate because my husband loves catching salmon, loves cooking slime in salmon. And all of a sudden it was something that I couldn’t stand. What was happening?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Right. So that’s short circuiting your memory part of this, right? Because you would like something to smell good and in fact you probably anticipated that it would smell good.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: But what you’re seeing there is the importance of hormones in our bodies. Hormones can really change our brain chemistry. You can actually change the way that cells signal to each other. So probably what was happening is you were triggering a response that is normally just not there.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh wow.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So with elevated and different amounts of hormone, different hormones in your body, you’re actually going to trigger different brain responses to the environment, which is crazy. It’s amazing.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: This is amazing. Science is amazing.
Jordan Baker: So when I go overseas, especially to Europe, they smell Americans smell like dairy or milk.
[silence]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Huh.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: What?
So I didn’t know if there was something that like—
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Maybe you do, Jordan.
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: I’m lactose intolerant. I smell like milk. I didn’t know if there was something weird about that.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I’ve never encountered that. I don’t know. My families all European so I’ve gone back a lot. They’ve never told me I smelled funny, though. Maybe they’re just being polite.
Jordan Baker: Exactly.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well we have a lot of European listeners and we think you’re awesome.
Jordan Baker: We know we smell like dairy products.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: We do.
Jordan Baker: We apologize. We’ll wear more cologne and perfume.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I think it’s funny that you brought that up because on a previous show we talked about growing up and how our school was right next to a dairy and we did smell—I mean, we didn’t smell like milk—but we smelled milk all the time.
Jordan Baker: Right.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So maybe there’s something to that.
Jordan Baker: And the little fertilizer sprayers. My wife can’t stand it but I’m like, eh.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, actually, it’s not that bad.
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: No. That smell. And then living in California, where I used to breed cows and stuff. I’d get covered in turds by the end of the day. I’m just like, “Eh, whatever.”
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That’s what happens.
Jordan Baker: Yeah. You get used to it.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: You do.
[all talking at once]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So that’s another thing. A sewage line broke underneath a place that we rent (my family). We noticed it and then we realized that at the end of the day, we’d be like, “Oh god, it smells.” We didn’t know a sewage line broke. We didn’t know what it was. And then we realized that after an hour of being in the house, we didn’t really smell it anymore.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So what is happening when we get used to these smells?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah, so we’ve been talking about an odorant, so it’s a very small molecule and it interacts with another molecule on the outside of a cell. And then we’ve sort of been black-boxing it and saying, “Oh yeah, a cell sends another signal.” So there’s actually—surprise—a lot of of molecules between the original odorant locking into that puzzle piece of the odorant receptor. In biology, we call this downstream signaling.
Upstream is the odorant and downstream is the effect. What’s happening is a bunch of molecules inside the cell, now, interact with each other and send the signal to get an action potential or to get chemicals released from the far end of the cell.
That happens when the first odorant molecules interact with an odorant receptor. But after a while, you’ve saturated the system. And the system can only keep going for so long and it’ll actually sort of turn itself off. And so you’ll actually see what we call a feedback loop where the signaling that’s going on actually turns off—just at the very inside of the cell—the original signal.
And there are a couple of ways you can do that. One, is you can, if the odorant stops binding to the receptor then the receptor gets turned off. But the other thing you can do is just take the whole receptor inside the cell, and if it can no longer interact with the outside of the cell—
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh, it just sucks in?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Eww.
Jordan Baker: It just retracts.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: It’s not quite like a vacuum, right?
[laughter]
There’s a molecular process that brings this in and it’s actually quite well regulated, but you can actually internalize a receptor that’s been turned on if you want to say “Enough. Enough with your signaling. We’re going to turn you off.” Pull them inside, and then it can’t bind anymore receptors, can’t find anymore odorant.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: And so the signal actually gets turned off.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So your brain’s like, “I’ve had enough of this poo smell. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Um, you can have that kind of feedback, where you can have a signal that says, “Actually cell, you need to calm down. Stop that.”
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Or it can be a situation where after a certain amount of time, receptors are just internalized at a specific sort of clockwork. And so after a while you just aren’t receiving the same amount of signal, depending.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I’m glad we brought that up.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So yeah, that’s a well known situation. It’s called attenuation, where you actually reduce the signal despite the fact that the odor is still clearly in the environment. You just aren’t sending the signal anymore.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: My sister came to our house and was like, “I’m not going to do this anymore.” She up and left. And then we got it fixed. It was fixed. Strong work.
Jordan Baker: I wonder, there’s no way you can actually control that, right? You can’t just, like, say, “Nah.”
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Mentally?
Jordan Baker: Yeah. Train yourself to like, every time I go into a public restroom, shut this signal down.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[laughter.]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Not that I know of. But that is, that’s the way car air fresheners work. So you know, you step into a car with a little pine tree, right?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It’s wonderful.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: It’s wonderful, and then you don’t notice it any longer because you completely attenuate to that smell.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It’s so true. It’s so true.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: It’s no longer sending—even if the receptors are active, you’re no longer sending a strong signal downstream because it’s clearly not an important smell.
[? Janelle Monae singing “Wondaland” ?]
Jordan Baker: You’re listening to Spark Science on KMRE 102.3 FM, and we’re talking about the science of smell with Dr. Lina Dahlberg.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I had an air freshener that was my favorite in high school. It was a Star Trek air freshener. I talk about Star Trek on every episode.
[Jordan sighs]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Now just to annoy Jordan.
[Jordan laughs]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Before, it was because I cared but now I want to annoy him. But it was wonderful. My dad sent it to me and joked that it smelled like Klingon. And that’s what I would smell.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Haha.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It didn’t. It was like cinnamon.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: How do you know what a Klingon smells like?
Jordan Baker: They smell like cinnamon.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: That’s what I meant.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: He was being derogatory. I love Klingons. I hope they can listen, too, to our show.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Are we translating?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I should. This show will be translated into Klingons.
Speaking of Klingons, let’s get into our segment of talking about pop culture. So what, in your life, have you seen on TV or movies that they talk about smell, and you’re like, “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” or on the other side, maybe this show did it somewhat accurately.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Oh, you put me on the spot here.
Jordan Baker: Yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It’s alright. If you can’t think of anything, we can talk about something else.
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: Or maybe have you ever been at a fancy restaurant and somebody orders like some wine or . . .
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Great one!
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yes, Sideways.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I was just going to say, I had a hilarious situation. It was not quite Sideways. I went and I ordered a glass of wine. And the guy brought me a sample. And I smelled it and I said, “This one smells just like Star Wars.”
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Did you really?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah. And my husband was like, “What are you talking about?” And he smells it and he said, “I don’t know.” And the guy at the bar said, “I think they said roses.” I think the perfume is roses. And I smelled it and I was like, “Oh.” And I was like, actually, if I smelled very deeply, the super strong smell of roses smelled just like Star Wars action figures from my childhood.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: But when I smelled less deeply, it actually did kind of smell like roses.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That makes so much sense.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: And it was this hilarious moment where I was like, “It only smells like Star Wars” and I didn’t even have the vocabulary to explain what was going on.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Memories.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: All I could see was Princess Leia and her hair, and that was it.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well I do have to say, the air freshener that had the Star Trek air freshener, it also came with something my dad got (both at the swap meet) of a little Klingon super-, action figure—I keep on saying superhero—it was a Klingon action figure at the end of a candy cane thing. It was from the swap meet. It was secondhand. And it smelled like B.O.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Great.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It was Worf and it just smelled like B.O. My sister and I boiled it. We tried to wash it with bleach. It would not, the smell would not go away. So sometimes I will smell something and say, “Oh, that smells like that Klingon action figure that I had.”
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So, it made some Star Trek, Star Wars.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Done.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: We’re all nerds here.
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: I was gifted mullet shampoo one time.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Does it work on regular haircuts?
Jordan Baker: No, it does. It had the description of all the mullets like the mudflap, the Kentucky waterfall, and the rattail. But it went through describing them all, but the smell was muscle car. It had the real muscle car scent.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Oh, yeah.
Jordan Baker: I put it on my head and I was in a muscle car. And I don’t know if you guys—
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It just took you there.
Jordan Baker: You guys obviously don’t—I mean, I don’t know, maybe you guys go to a lot of car shows. But if you go to the old—
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I don’t.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: No, but I wear a lot of mullets.
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: But if you get into the old Thirties and Forties hot rods that all smelled the same way, and I put it on my head and that was it.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: That’s cool.
Jordan Baker: How they encapsulated a hot rod into a shampoo is amazing!
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That is amazing.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yeah, that is amazing.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Let’s bring it back to wine though.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So there were those movies about, like, “I smelled this one and I can smell a chocolate nuttiness. And I can taste it.”
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Yep. Yep.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And I can’t believe most of it.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: But, I mean, do you know anything about?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Like, is it real?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah. I mean, of course some of it has to be real, obviously.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So when you think about what a complex smell is, it’s actually a huge combination of molecules. Tiny molecules and we have individual receptors on different cell types that are individual classes of receptors and different cell types that will receive that particular molecule.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: And so in the human nose, what’s really amazing is that one receptor, one receptor type is found on one cell. And the cell next to it may have a different receptor type. So if you need the right combination of small molecules to be around to get the smell of chocolate, for example, all those cells have to be active and healthy and able to receive the signal.
But, that means that you can actually formulate, right? You want to smell a muscle car; you can actually formulate what it is, what combination of small molecules is required for our nose to pick up that smell. So when people say they smell nuttiness, it’s not because they’re smelling a walnut. It’s because the same small molecules that maybe are found in the air around a walnut can be detected out of the wine. So it actually is realistic. I mean, the one we use in our lab for the worms: if you go to a movie theatre, you smell your butter popcorn.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yes.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: There is a really simple smell. So the smell of butter that they put in fake butter popcorn is a small molecule that we use in our labs. And it turns out that the labs smell it.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Do they love it?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: They do love it because it’s the same molecule that’s made by the bacteria they eat. And so you are also talking about the microbiome. And all the bacteria in our guts, they’re producing small molecules. The animals that we work with, they eat bacteria and they find the bacteria by smelling them. And they smell, in particular, one of these smells that they can go for is the smell of buttered popcorn.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow, so it is bringing us back around to pop culture and movements.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: It is. So there you go.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Back to your movies, right away. Totally.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So I, I don’t know if there’s any TV or movies you might have seen that just have a lot of misconceptions. So, there was one misconception that came up in our show just now where I believed that the hairs in our nose actually grabbed—you called them—odorants.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Odorants, yep.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: But they don’t. Are there other misconceptions that you might have, maybe just heard students or TV or somewhere, that just drive you crazy about smells?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Wow. I don’t think that I, you know I think smell is an underappreciated sense a lot of the time.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I think it is.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So I think there’s less of that, “Did you know your eyes can see in 8 thousand million different colors?”
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: There’s less of those misconceptions that get widely propagated simply because people take the sense of smell, I think, a little bit more for granted.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: The big one that you do hear about is you can’t taste if you have a cold, right?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right, which was what was in my brain.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So you taste differently, but you aren’t not tasting per se.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: But I haven’t seen a lot of things we’re I’m just, like, “Well that’s ridiculous.”
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Maybe I don’t watch enough pop culture.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I think what we may be learning is that I should turn off David Attenborough and go watch some Apprentice or something.
Jordan Baker: Yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah I don’t know who David Attenborough is. Who’s that?
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: He narrates the Planet Earth series.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Ahhh.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: So if you watch a lot of nature movies with your children . . .
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I don’t.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I don’t. We watch Bob’s Burgers.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Right.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Plug for them.
Jordan Baker: Maybe if Morgan Freeman did it.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right, that’s true.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Right.
Jordan Baker: Or James Earl Jones.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Or James—well? Which one did the penguins?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Morgan Freeman.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Morgan Freeman did the penguins.
Jordan Baker: That was Morgan Freeman.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I believe it was him.
Jordan Baker: Morgan Freeman. Morgan Freeman. Morgan Freeman.
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: Sorry, that was true facts about Morgan Freeman.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I want to come back to, you’re absolutely right, smell is taken for granted. Thank you for doing the work you do. Because, if you think about superheroes, there are superheroes that have: I can see through walls. I can fly. I can stretch my body. What are other senses? I can yell. There’s even the Black Canary. But is there a superhero that has super smell? I don’t think so.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: It may be complicated, because if you say, “I smell really good,” people might take it the wrong way and think you actually smell good.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Like smell like roses.
[laughter]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I guess then you would be smelling well. So maybe that’s it.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right, right.
Jordan Baker: Scooby Doo.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: But the grammar can get difficult. Scooby Doo?
Jordan Baker: Scooby Doo, you could see some of his scent trails
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Scooby Doo, you’re right.
Jordan Baker: And he would follow the scent trails.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff, joking: But he’s an animal. I mean, we’re talking about humans, right?
Jordan Baker: Well you didn’t specify.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Or superheroes.
Jordan Baker: You weren’t specific.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That’s true, that’s true.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: It’s a good point. I don’t know of a superhero. Listening audience, anyone?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well the only one I can think of is Daredevil because he doesn’t have his sight. That he uses everything else and I’m just assuming he’s using smell as well.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Presumably.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Presumably.
[Jordan chuckles]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: With that, we’re going to end our show on superheroes and the Daredevil.
[Lina laughs]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And I want to thank you for coming to talk with us.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Absolutely.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And dealing with our ridiculous questions.
Jordan Baker: Yeah, thank you.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: That’s fine, I really enjoyed it.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And you’ve educated me and I think this is even better than taking a biology class.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: Oh, well you can still come and take a biology class.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I probably should.
[Regina laughs]
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: I’d be happy.
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: I won’t. I won’t.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well, thank you for coming to talk to us.
Dr. Lina Dahlberg: You are welcome.
[? Janelle Monae singing “Wondaland” ?]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Thank you for joining us. We just spoke with Dr. Lina Dahlberg about the science of smell. If you missed any of our show go to our website kmre.org and click on the Podcast link. Our show is entirely volunteer run, and if you would like to help you out, click on the button Donate.
? Wander off into a land
? You can go, but you mustn’t tell a soul
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: This is Spark Science. I’m Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff.
Jordan Baker: And I’m Jordan Baker. We’ll be back next week. Listen to us Sunday at 5pm, Wednesday at 9pm, and Saturday at noon. If there’s a science idea that you’re curious about, send us an email or post a message to our Facebook page SparkScience
? Your magic mind
? Makes love to mine
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Today’s episode, “The Science of Smell,” was produced in the KMRE Spark Radio Studios located in the Spark Museum on Bay Street in Bellingham. Our producer is Katie Knudsen. The engineer for today’s show is Eric Ferrietta. Our theme music is “Chemical Calisthenics” by Blackalicious and “Wondaland” by Janelle Monae.
? Take me back to Wondaland
? Me think she left her underpants
? The grass grows inside
? The music floats you gently on your toes
[Blackalicious rapping “Chemical Calisthenics”]
? Lead, gold, tin, iron, platinum, zinc, when I rap you think
? Iodine nitrate activate
? Red geranium, the only difference is I transmit sound
? Balance was unbalanced then you add a little talent in
? Careful, careful with those ingredients
? They could explode and blow up if you drop them
? And they hit the ground
[End of podcast.]