You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shortwaiver is Regina Barber here. And Emily Kwong with our biweekly science news roundup. This time with a back-to-back visitor, our colleague, one of my heroes, Sasha Pfeiffer. Are you happy to hang out with us again? It is so fun to be back with you. And in the studio, we've never been in the studio all three of us together. Sasha, our first topic is to get you ready for summer. It's about a potential new sunscreen ingredient. How diligent are you with sunscreen? I am so diligent. And as all of us age, I think we start, you know, get more and more concerned about our skin, which does not do good things as you age. So I am pretty religious about sunscreen. Yeah, I also put sunscreen on my face religiously every morning, been doing it for a long time. But I don't know if you know this. I'm also pretty artsy. I mean, for a science person. I've seen you draw and paint. You're good. And you were in a band. I was in a couple bands. But how artsy do you think you two are? I'm so artsy. It's shocking. I'm on a science podcast. Like, I don't know how I ended up here. Well, this is probably the normal trajectory, but I'm less artsy than I was as a kid and I feel like I need to return to it a little bit more. Same. You're going to want to, after you hear the study, because it may help you stay young. Oh, I'm all for that. Yeah. So we're going to continue to talk about the arts, and we're going to round out the topics with a look at a cheaper, more sustainable wood to make art with. A new marimba material. So that's that percussion instrument. Interesting. So these two topics connect so nicely.

We did it on purpose.

Today on the show, whether you're playing in or outside this week, we have science news for you.

You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

All right, Sasha, we have so much to get through.

Yes.

Where do you want to start?

Let's start since it's summer, which means sunscreen season, with your sunscreen story.

Yeah, Sasha, it's been over 25 years since the FDA approved a new ingredient for sunscreen in the U.S. But there is a promising candidate, a molecule called Gadassol. It's found in some

fish and coral reefs, but if we want to incorporate this molecule into human sunscreen,

we're going to need to make a lot of it. And a new study out this week in the journal

trends in biotechnology takes us a big

step closer. A molecule and fish and coral that is almost like built in sunscreen. How does that

work? So it absorbs UV rays, protecting fish from getting sunburned. That's how chemical

sunscreens protect us humans. Researchers discovered Gadisolol in codfish eggs around 40 years ago,

but it's also found in coral reef ecosystems, zebrafish, and salmon eggs. And in this study,

researchers did a whole series of engineering experiments to make more of this superpowered molecule.

I'm going to note that I'm really good about wearing sunscreen, but the few times I've gotten slightly burned, I'm in the water. And so it's interesting that the

fish had this protection. They figured it out. So what kind of engineering experiments were done

in this study? Well, they turned to the workhorse of biology labs everywhere, e-coli bacteria.

Ugh. Yeah. And they programmed the bacteria to pump out a bunch of gadgassol, which is a lot

easier and more sustainable than trying to harvest it from other sources like fish eggs.

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