[bright music] - Hi there, I'm Frank Graff.

Did you ever wonder where the ants go when they enter the anthill?

There's a dating service.

Oh, it's for polar bears.

And, meet the North Carolina scientist who has saved millions of lives during the pandemic.

He's called the Coronavirus Hunter.

It's all coming up on "Sci NC."

- [Announcer] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station by viewers like you.

[upbeat music] - [Announcer] Additional funding for the "Sci NC" series is provided by GSK.

[dynamic music] - Hi again, and welcome to "Sci NC."

You know, in every science story I cover, I always ask the researcher the same question.

Why are you studying this?

It gives a little insight into the person.

And, while the answers vary, the theme is always the same, I wanna make a difference.

Well, that is certainly true with Ralph Baric.

The UNC Chapel Hill scientist spent his career studying coronaviruses.

The world can be thankful that he did.

- In my opinion anyway, we're training people to be universal specialists.

That's a strange word, universal specialists.

People who have a creative toolbox that can rapidly employ that toolbox to whatever happens to come down the pipe in the future.

- [Frank] You could say, Ralph Baric has an infectious passion for science, discovery, and coronaviruses.

It's why he's known as the Coronavirus Hunter.

- I've studied coronaviruses since about 1984.

I guess that's, it's hard to do the math, 36, 37 years.

[laughing] - [Frank] The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 took most of the world by surprise, but not Ralph Baric.

He's been on the front lines, investigating coronavirus outbreaks throughout his career.

- I was attracted to coronaviruses for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is, we knew nothing about this family of viruses.

The second thing is that, what little we did know suggested that they had a very unique way to replicate in the cell, that had never been described for any other RNA virus.

And so I was interested in how viruses replicate, how their genomes are organized, and how they regulate gene expression.

- So coronavirus, a virus that has dominated our lives, what's it look like, how does it work?

- Okay, I'm gonna do my best here at drawing this, so.

- Okay, there you go.

- I'm gonna draw it from the inside out, okay.

Inside out.

So the payload of the virus is called the nucleic acid.

And it's an RNA molecule that sort of is wrapped around here in the middle of the virus particle.

And that RNA is coated in a protein that I'm gonna call the nucleic capsid protein.

Now surrounding that is a little bubble of fat.

Projecting out from this particle are these large peplomer spikes.

And it gives the virus its unique appearance in the electron microscope.

And it looks like a corona, or a halo around the sun.

Hence the name coronavirus.

- Coronavirus.

- Have you ever seen the movie "Alien?"

There's these little plant-shaped things that sort of open up, those flaps opening up.

Right on the top is what happens on the coronavirus spike.

And three of them, anywhere from one to three of these can open up.

Here's your host cell, and there's a protein here called ACE2.

It has spaces in it that this can stick into that.

And once that happens, boom!

Virus go inside the cell, infects it.

- That's the infection.

- That's the infection.

[dynamic music] - [Frank] Researchers worked 15 hour days, in secure labs, under strict protocols.

Everyone united in the tedious process of analyzing the virus, and then testing drugs to create a vaccine to stop it.

- It's been a whirlwind of just absolute pressure.

And joy too, at the same time, when we figured out that a lot of these projects that we were involved with, with some of the major vaccine players, in fact, two out of the five Operation Warp Speed vaccines, both Johnson and Johnson and Moderna.

So it was really a good day whenever we heard that the vaccines were incredibly effective in humans in phase three clinical trials.

[dynamic music] Not only have we been involved in developing vaccines and antibody therapeutics against the COVID-19 virus, but we're also preparing for treatments and therapeutics for other cousins of the COVID-19 virus that could potentially emerge into humans later on.

- We're lucky to have a very large and experienced lab.

So a lot of people are working pretty independently, heading up their own projects.

Forming working groups of like, okay, these people are really great cloners, so they're gonna work on making a molecular clone of the virus.

These people are really good with primary cells, so we're going to start collaborations with the Marsico Lung Institute, and really try and understand what cell types are being infected, and what's happening with them.

These are our core mouse users, and so these people are going to work on developing mouse models of disease.

- [Frank] Successful vaccines create a protective immune response in the body.

Let's go back to the board to see just how that happens.

- When the virus infects you, you make a protein called an antibody.

And the goal of that antibody is to bind to the virus particle, and prevent it from binding into that receptor, and prevent it from infecting that cell.

- [Frank] The Baric lab's research was also central to the creation and clinical trials of the antiviral drug Remdesivir.

Antiviral medicines prevent the development of severe disease.

Similar drugs are in the pipeline.

- We are scientists.

But what drives us really, and people in this field, is really public health, right?

Yes, we're interested in the minutia of how does the virus get in, how does it replicate.

We're interested in all those little details.

But the reason we're interested in them is because it translates to public health, to what's happening in people.

And what can we do to help mitigate the disease burden, the suffering among people.

- [Frank] It was an all-hands on deck approach, and it turned Chapel Hill into a lab bench to bedside place of research.

- Lots of interaction, especially as people moved in from other research areas, where they maybe didn't understand quite how coronaviruses worked, but they had some ideas about lung biology, or clotting, or other aspects of disease processes.

And they needed to talk to people like Ralph, so that they could really make sure that they're thinking about the nature of the disease process correctly.

Is the virus in the brain?

Well, would you expect that to happen?

Or, is the virus targeting different tissues?

And a lot of these things we're still trying to get the answers to.

- [Frank] Baric's work saved countless lives and gave the world hope at a time it was desperately needed.

Because of that, Baric was given the O. Max Gardner Award, the highest honor for a faculty member in the UNC system.

- And when the pandemic happened, he and his team were able to move into action right away, because they had this knowledge of these viruses.

So not only could he understand the virus, and work at the basic science level.

But what Ralph does, it's really amazing, is that he also cares about applying that knowledge to developing vaccines, developing treatments, helping people avoid these diseases.

He cares about individuals and populations, and that's what's really public health.

- And what he has done, he and his colleagues have done, will change the course of human history.

Certainly right now during COVID-19.

But his work in infectious disease prepares us for the next challenge in this area, that will surely present itself.

And I hope it is many, many, many, many years from now.

But we will be better prepared because of Dr. Baric's work.

- You don't achieve these awards on your own, right?

It's, I'm fortunate enough to work with a large number of extraordinarily competent and proficient professionals who care deeply about human health and have dedicated a tremendous amount of their time and energy to not only build their credentials, but to make me look smarter than I really am.

[laughs] Quite frankly.

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- When you think about it, ants are models of efficiency.

Steady lines going in and out of their hole in the mound.

But, what's underground?

Adrian Smith at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences shows us what scientists discovered.

- This is one of my favorite objects in all of science.

It's a cast of an underground ant nest made in metal.

It's something that exists thanks to this person, Walter Tschinkel.

He invented the field of ant nest architecture research.

- There you are.

- [Adrian] And pioneered the methods to do it.

- It's a beauty.

Don't you think?

I've never been a person that wanted to be in the center, in the mainstream of science.

That's not my nature.

I tend to be on the periphery.

To look at things that other people aren't looking at.

- The structure of underground ant nests was largely unknown until researchers figured out what material they could pour into the ground that would fill the nest, harden, and then could be dug out of the ground.

And the first nest casts weren't metal, they were actually this material here, which is dental plaster.

- So I bought some dental plaster and made a nest cast of a fire ant nest.

And because of its structure, it all came out in this big glob of dirt.

And then I took it home and washed the soil out.

And I was really surprised because it turned out that I hadn't envisioned it right at all, that it was really quite organized in space.

So at that point, I realized that nest casting had the potential of showing me stuff that wasn't really easily seen from just excavating a nest.

- [Adrian] After that first fire ant cast, the second plaster cast Walter ever made became his most famous.

It's permanently mounted to a wall in a biology building at Florida State.

- Okay, well this is the plaster cast that got me hooked on doing nest architecture.

It's a Florida harvester ant nest.

And it is still the biggest one I've ever cast.

So, I guess it was a lucky thing 'cause it really did hook me.

So what was impressive was the scale of that thing.

Mounting that cast was a big job, so I was looking for a stronger casting material.

I knew eventually I'd have to go to molten metal.

So the question is, how do you melt metal in the field, right?

- [Adrian] Walter answered that question by building his own portable kilns.

For the past 25 years, he's been using them to study ant nests here in the Apalachicola National Forest in Northern Florida.

For this cast, the metal being used is scrap aluminum from a failed scuba tank.

After about 90 minutes of heating, fueled by only charcoal and a passive draft chimney, the metal is liquid, and hot enough to pour.

- [Walter] Okay.

- [Adrian] The first step is lifting the red hot crucible out of the kiln.

- [Walter] Come on, don't do that.

There.

[Walter grunts] - [Adrian] Using a loop at the bottom of the crucible, a second metal hook allows the vessel to be tipped, and the molten metal to be poured out.

- [Walter] Okay, here we go.

- [Adrian] If you listen close, you can hear the crackling of the surrounding vegetation as it ignites from the intense heat.

[vegetation crackling] Once it cools and hardens, the digging starts, and the shape of the nest begins to be revealed.

- Oh my God!

It's all the way out here.

Yes, still another one.

Ah, got it.

There you are.

That's a beauty, don't you think?

They often have these chambers with the holes there 'cause they expand the chamber all the way around.

So, ta-da.

- [Adrian] All of these casts are done in pursuit of trying to understand the biology of these organisms.

And oftentimes, the casts themselves reveal many unanswered questions.

- Figuring out how relatedness in taxonomy is related to architecture is a major challenge.

And there's no really obvious, no really obvious answer to it.

I'd made a cast at Ant Heaven where I work, and I was, I had my head down, I was digging it out.

It wasn't a very deep one, just you know Camponotus sericeus.

And all of a sudden I just jerked, but my attention with jerked by, there was a guy coming toward me.

And it was a deputy sheriff in his green uniform, and his gun, and all that.

I thought, oh God, what's he gonna challenge me 'cause I'm digging here in a national forest?

No, he said, he wanted to know what I was doing.

So I told him.

Oh, he says, oh you're the guy.

He says, you're the guy with all those metal casts of ants.

And I said, yeah, I'm the guy.

So he says, hang on.

I gotta get my cell phone, my kid is gonna love this.

So he took pictures and videos of me.

So yeah, it gets around.

[dynamic music] - [Announcer] Wanna take a deeper dive on current science topics?

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- At last check, there were 1.8 million phone apps.

And, as you know, some are for dating.

And, while it's not a phone app, there is a dating service for polar bears.

It's the captive breeding program run by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

And it's how the North Carolina Zoo found its new polar bear.

- Yes.

So as a zoo that's credited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, our polar, a lot of our animals are actually part of something called the Species Survival Plan, or an SSP.

So it's essentially a dating service for animals, right?

So we look at all of their genetics and try and find out the best situation that we can set it up for breeding success.

We had Nikita and Anana here for a few years.

We did everything that we could to set them up for success for breeding opportunities.

And unfortunately, this is something that I like to say to everyone, polar bear dating is complicated, even in the wild.

So even if, we tried to set up the stars and have it align, but we were not successful with Anana and Nikita.

So that is why Payton was approved to come here.

And he's gonna be paired with Anana as a breeding pair, and Nikita will go off and be paired with another female.

Polar bears are solitary in the wild, outside of breeding season.

So we're very fortunate that we do have the two different habitats that we can separate them outside of that.

When it does come time for breeding season, we go through a process of introductions, to where they'll start to, you know, they can smell each other, hear each other.

We'll set it up that they can see each other with like a, what we call a buffer stall, in between them.

[chiming music] We look for things like flirting from her.

She'll sit and she'll watch.

And she does, she bat's her eyes.

And she seems more confident.

When we're seeing things out of her that she's confident sitting there, she's not afraid of him, she's okay turning her back, and she doesn't feel like he's going to do anything.

And then we're looking for him, what they'll do is they'll bring presents.

Like he'll bring food over, or toys, or want to sit and lay and watch her.

When they're laying next to each other they'll mouth at each other, sort of like play things.

So that's what we were looking for.

The rest of the year, male polar bears are pretty terrifying, the females are afraid of them, 'cause they're twice the size of a female, and could hurt them.

So we're looking for nice, calm, flirting, dating behavior from polar bears.

So the females actually are only supposed to cycle once, and that's for about a week period.

So breeding season could start as early as February.

Out in the wild, the males are tracking the females.

They can actually, they have a very heightened sense of smell, that's probably their strongest.

And they can smell a female for miles and miles away without seeing her, just by the smell that she's leaving in the snow and ice from her feet.

So the males will actively go out there and look for females that are not attached to a male, or anything like that.

And do what's called a guarding behavior.

So once he finds a girl, he'll court her.

He'll do things like protecting her, and looking for any other males that he can combat and look all big and tough.

And guard and stay with her until that point when she does cycle for that week.

And then they breed for that week, and then they go their separate ways.

And that's it.

It's a completely new pair.

So all of our history so far has been Nik and Anana.

And we know how Nikita acts, and we know how Anana acts, and we're learning Payton.

So it can be a completely different situation.

They could like each other longer, and wanna stay, get together longer than Nik and Anana did.

So we just have to do our best to learn this pair now.

Well, the population worldwide for polar bears is 25,000.

They are, certain populations, are going through a decline.

The ones that we're seeing decline in are the ones that are in seasonal sea ice areas.

So that means that the ice, they rely on the ice in the wild.

They have to get out there to be able to hunt seals.

They use it as a platform to look for mates.

And it's where they need to be.

They are perfectly adapted to live out and hunt on the ice, they need it.

So in those areas where the sea ice is seasonal and it melts away at a certain time of the year, they're landlocked.

And they're going through long periods of fasting at that point.

So, we're trying to breed them so that we can maintain a population within a zoo setting.

And in the future, we don't run out of bears in the wild.

We never wanna see a point that there's ever, that there are no more polar bears, right?

[dynamic music] - [Announcer] Hey parents, teachers, and homeschoolers, looking for lesson plans?

you'll find free interactive ones about all types of science, covered by "Sci NC" online.

- The Venus flytrap is a rare carnivorous plant only found in wetlands in North and South Carolina.

That's it.

It eats insects, but how does it know what insects to eat, and when to eat them?

Our friends at Science Friday explain.

- [Laura] A lot of people think Venus flytraps are a tropical species, when in fact, they're native only to a small region of North Carolina, and a little bit of South Carolina.

You'll see sort of their white dots, their flowers, scattered over the landscape.

- [Elsa] I think people are often surprised to find that it flowers.

It's lovely, but it doesn't strike you as anything amazing or unusual, the way the rest of the plant is.

This is the one plant that lives on dry land and has snap traps.

So of course, that's the thing that's gonna get all of the attention.

- [Laura] But there was very little research about how they actually live in their native environment.

- [Elsa] My name is Elsa Youngsteadt, and I study urban ecosystems and plant insect interactions.

- [Laura] And I'm Laura Hamon, and I study the pollination of Venus flytrap.

- An immense amount of research has been done on the traps.

They have little trigger hairs, and when an insect, or spider, potential prey enters, the first time it touches a trigger hair, nothing appears to happen.

But the plant goes on alert.

And then the second time it touches a trigger hair, within 20 or 30 seconds, that's when the trap slams shut.

Most of what we know about it comes from laboratory and greenhouse situations.

But these other aspects of its ecology are really important, especially now that there's concern about its conservation status.

- They grow within about a 70 mile radius of Wilmington, North Carolina.

So it's threatened by a lot of development in the area.

Venus flytrap depend on fire.

So without fire, Venus flytrap gets overgrown by taller plants.

So, in areas that aren't managed, it might not be getting the regular fire that it needs.

And finally it's threatened by poaching.

A lot of people still go out and collect these plants, and subsequently it's a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act.

- So we started out a few years ago with two main questions.

One of which was, who pollinates Venus flytrap?

Because there was no information to date on that.

The second thing we wanted to know was, do they ever eat their pollinators?

There's this idea out there that carnivorous plants should, in general, avoid eating their pollinators to avoid harming their own reproduction.

And we all headed out in the field together to see what flytraps were doing in the wild.

It's just an enchanting, beautiful environment.

- [Laura] But the cool thing about this habitat is it's one of the most diverse habitats in the world.

It's known for having a very high concentration of species in a small amount of space.

You get a lot of different plants that you couldn't find anywhere else in the world.

- [Elsa] We spent a bunch of time wandering around patches of flowering flytraps, capturing whatever insects or spiders we could see on the flowers.

- [Laura] Thankfully, catching pollinators is often pretty easy.

'Cause when it insect's on a flower, it's focused on getting pollen or nectar, so you can bag it then.

We also collected insects from the traps.

So we pry the traps open with a pair of forceps, and then just scoop out whoever's in there.

- And we took all of those insects back to the lab, and swabbed the pollen off of their bodies to see if Venus flytrap pollen was there.

Flytrap pollen is big and multi-lobed, very distinctive from other kinds of pollen.

So we had a few sort of top candidates that included a little green sweat bee, a couple of species of beetles.

But there was very little overlap between the species that we caught on flowers, versus what we pulled out of traps.

- Usually it's crawling things.

So the name flytrap is kind of a misnomer.

They actually don't eat a lot of flies.

- [Elsa] So one of the next steps is this follow-up, to see if more pollinators would actually result in more flytraps in the next generation.

- So I hand-pollinated certain flowers with extra pollen, and checked to see if they produced extra seeds.

And they did.

- Which means more pollinators would mean more seeds, which really reinforces the idea that these plants shouldn't be eating their pollinators.

They're already limited by the number of visitors that they have to their flowers.

But that still leaves open the question of, what is the mechanism?

- There are sort of three main hypotheses, or three main mechanisms.

One is that, distance between the flowers and the traps could be a strategy to avoid eating their pollinators.

So we're going to test the hypothesis by manipulating model Venus flytraps so that the flowers are closer to the traps, and seeing if you get a subsequent overlap in the pollinator and prey communities.

- But there's also the potential for some interesting differences in scent, or the differences in the color.

Maybe those cues are actively attracting different species.

There are cases where a rare plant is so rare that it fails to attract pollinators.

Or there cases where a plant may become rare because its pollinator community is itself threatened.

So plant conservation and insect conservation kind of go hand in hand.

- It's an important sort of charismatic species that I think a lot of people would get behind.

But people forget that there are plants growing in their environment and there's still so much we need to know about how they actually live.

[dynamic music] - And that's it for "Sci NC" for this week.

I'm Frank Graff.

Thanks for watching.

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- [Announcer] Additional funding for the "Sci NC" series is provided by GSK.