Why do lobsters turn red? (when we cook them)
Hey. I'm Melissa.
Jam:I'm Jam.
Melissa:And I'm a chemist.
Jam:And I'm not.
Melissa:And welcome to chemistry for your life.
Jam:The podcast helps you understand the chemistry of your everyday life. And, guys, we have some bad news.
Melissa:What bad news do we have?
Jam:Well, Melissa's not about today's episode, unfortunately. Normally, she is in but we thought
Melissa:we'd start right out of
Jam:the gate and make sure to tell you guys, rip the band aid off cleanly. That most is just not excited about this episode, and we're very sorry.
Melissa:That is not true. Jam is lying to y'all.
Jam:I Kate.
Melissa:Mostly couldn't contain your excitement.
Jam:I was talking about it before we
Melissa:even pressed record, and I was like, I have to I have to get out in front of this. Yeah. Yeah. I even posted an Instagram and Twitter post about how excited I was. Yeah.
Melissa:Yeah. I was excited from the moment I got this question.
Jam:Nice. Interesting. When did you get this question?
Melissa:I got it recently. I went to the American Chemical Society, conference in San Diego.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And this question was emailed to me. And I opened it in the room of chemists, read it
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:Silently, and then read it out loud, and everyone also Got excited.
Jam:Interesting.
Melissa:Yes. It was the people in my lab group. I I opened the email, and I said, oh my gosh. Someone just emailed us this question, and they were like, oh, yeah. That's a good one.
Melissa:So Nice. I guess the listeners already know, but Jim does not.
Jam:Right. Right. Right.
Melissa:So the question is from Micah Vail, and he said, my question is why do lobsters turn red when you cook
Jam:I see. And what color are our options before? Like a like, they're like a brownish or something?
Melissa:They're like brownish, bluish, Blackish, like, not red. There's sometimes a little pink around the edges. Right. Right.
Jam:I've heard I I remember hearing that they're blue one point, but then, like, I've seen in the little tank, and they're not you know? They're blue. They're, like, just kind of definitely not red at all.
Melissa:I got so excited about This question, I think, partially because I had never wondered it, and that is the type of thing I should be curious about.
Jam:Right. Right.
Melissa:That's the type of thing I would normally think. Why does this happen? And it never occurred to me to think that.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:Which is part of what I love about this podcast is when listeners ask questions that I get, I think, oh, yeah. Why does that happen?
Jam:Right. Right.
Melissa:And I knew immediately it had to be a science y reason. It had to be a chemistry reason, so I I got really excited. I also used to work at Red Lobster. So I spent hours looking at lobsters Every day of my life, and I never wondered it.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:And I should have.
Jam:That's a very interesting extra tidbit there. You've you've experienced More, interactions with with lobsters than the average person by far.
Melissa:Yeah. I worked there for 3 years, and I never wondered. Kind of out of character for me. Maybe I was just so worried about giving excellent service.
Jam:Right. And maybe also if you think about it too much, you think about how These things are, like, living, and then they're dying. I mean, did were they
Melissa:live figuring it out? That a lot. Yeah. You would have to get I wouldn't do it. I never once, but you'd have to get the live one out of the tank and take it to the back.
Melissa:And I didn't want to experience that, so I would Beg my coworkers to do it.
Jam:Yeah. Maybe that's why you didn't think about it because you tried not to. You know?
Melissa:Oh, yeah. That's a good point. So the answer to this is actually pretty straightforward, or it seems like it's pretty straightforward, but, actually, it's a It's a beautiful backstory, which is what got me so excited about it.
Jam:Okay. Okay.
Melissa:So lobster's diets contain a pigment known as astaxanthin.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:Astaxanthin is red. It also gives salmon its pink color.
Jam:Oh, okay.
Melissa:So they eat Acetaxanthin. I think it's present in plants and other things that they eat.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And it it's in their diet somehow, and it's an antioxidant. So it's good for them to eat, and that pigment pigment will make its way from the lobster skin into the lobster shell.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:I don't know how it gets there. That's a biologist question. I just know that that happens. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Melissa:Some some magical body Bodily process that a biologist would know that I wouldn't.
Jam:Mhmm. And
Melissa:when the pigment is in the shell, it is actually bound to a protein, And I think the protein is actually called alpha crust crustaceanin, so, like, crustacean, cyanin. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Crustaceanin. And the red color, once it gets bound up by that protein, shifts to blue or black.
Melissa:So the pigment by itself, when it's free, floating around is red. But when it gets bound up in that protein, It shifts color.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:When we cook the the lobster, we've talked about this in the eggs episode. You gave one of the best analogies that you've ever given, the protein actually unfolds. That's what's known as denaturing.
Jam:Oh, right. Right.
Melissa:So when the protein, begins to get denatured, when you're cooking this lobster, It actually releases the pigment.
Jam:K.
Melissa:And when the pigment's not bound anymore, It's red again. So we drop our lobster into water, And the protein gets denatured. The pigment is unaffected, and so the primary thing we see as the protein breaks down is the pigment Staying and making that bright red color. Right. Right.
Melissa:And that's it? Sort of.
Jam:Oh, okay.
Melissa:So that's a good thing you can tell your friends at parties. Oh, did you know that The reason that lobster strain red is because this pigment is bound by a protein.
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:I was like, oh, that's interesting. And then I got into the heart of today's lesson Okay. Which is why Isn't the lobster red before? Like, why does binding that protein change the color of the pigment? Right.
Melissa:Right. And up until the early 2000, chemists actually didn't have an answer as to why that happened.
Jam:Dang. It's one of those, like, recent ish things that, like, when we were little, did know.
Melissa:And, actually, They might still not really know.
Jam:Oh, dang.
Melissa:I know. 1 of the papers came out in 2005, and I was 14 then. I was taking chemistry. So as long as I've been a chemist, this has been a question that's happening.
Jam:Yeah. Dang. Interesting.
Melissa:Okay. So let's talk about why this might happen when the pigment is bound. Okay. So just to review, we've talked about color a lot. But for things to be visible to us, their electrons have to be able to energy and be excited into an energy level within the visible region.
Melissa:And different Features about the molecule itself will dictate how those electrons can absorb energy, and that is what determines what we what color we see.
Jam:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Melissa:So pigments, organic pigments especially, have alternating double bonds that have That ability to absorb light in the visible region.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:Usually, it's about 8 is when it starts to become visible to us, usually in the red region. And the more alternating bonds, will sort of shift down the rainbow.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:When things are really dark like, greens, blues, blacks, those colors, they actually usually need an additional feature like a metal bound into it. So even chlorophyll has, magnesium usually bound into it. Chlorophyll that's green, that makes trees green and plants green. So other features, metals being bound and even the shape of the molecule, like how it's being held in Base, that's also known as the confirmation Mhmm. Can change this energy absorbance and the way that the electrons can move, and therefore, it can alter the color.
Melissa:Okay. And this is also a lot of what I did in my research. If you wanna go back and listen to the episode where I explained what my master's research was on, I was learning about photosynthesis and how we could make molecules that could absorb more of the region of light. So I would tweak molecules and change them to try to make them absorb more light.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:A lot of times, we would have to make Crystals out of the molecules that we grew and look at their three d arrangement in space. And if you change the way they were arranged In space, like, how close they were to another molecule, it could impact how electrons were transferred in the molecule and impact How long the electrons could be excited and also sometimes the color we saw.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:So that's a little bit of background on color, a very quick primer. You will learn more about color if you go back to some of our previous episodes about color. We recently rereleased A few of them that I think would be really relevant. Okay. Back to lobsters.
Jam:Okay. Sweet.
Melissa:So that was our primer on color. In 2002, Some chemist tested a wide ranging theory that when the pigment that astaxanthin then was bound into this protein that the confirmation changed. So literally, the pigment twisted, And the confirmation changed, and it was held there by the protein when it was bound into the protein. Okay. And they there is a theory that that was what caused the shift in color.
Melissa:So that is what caused the electrons to change the way they absorbed and to move to this dark bluish black where the protein, when it was bound to the astaxanthin, would bind. Okay. So they tested that theory, and they did find when it bound, it would shift and the confirmation did change. So in 2002, A paper was published that stated the reason for the color change in lobsters when the pigment was bound into the protein was due to this conformational Change. And that was the best information chemists had at the time.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So just
Jam:the way it's held, the shape it has a little bit, Was there main main reason, main thinking there?
Melissa:Yes. And when I first heard that, I thought, that's Surprising to me that it would shift that much because when I'm thinking as a chemist, Red is, like, on the far left side of the visible region, and bluish black is on the far right side. Right? Like, these are These are on opposite sides of the spectrum.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:And so it's hard for me to imagine that just twisting the molecule would make such a difference that it would shift all the way across the visible region.
Jam:Yeah. Right. Right.
Melissa:It doesn't seem like it would make that much of a change. So my thinking was maybe the protein was absorbing the light somehow, but I don't know a lot about proteins Really? Or how how they would absorb light? That's really a biochemist field more. So I thought, is it Binding in and making a really large conjugated system that would make it highly colored, I'm kind of confused about that.
Jam:Yeah. And
Melissa:I guess Some other chemists are thinking the same thing because, you know, I've said before, when as a chemist or a scientist, you have the best information that you can gain access to, and that's what you function under. But you should always update your understanding, and you should always dive deeper whenever you can. And when new formation that's based in facts come out, then we're gonna update our understanding of this.
Jam:Right. Right.
Melissa:So computational chemists, I guess, were curious about the same things I was curious about, And they did a calculation, and computational chemists are incredible. They're very smart. They're like programmer meets chemist meets I don't know what really smart person. And they can get computers to predict outcomes of reactions. Actions.
Melissa:And these are very, very highly powered supercomputers that have high computing power.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So some computational chemist tried to predict how much the color would change based on this confirmation shift and the binding. Mhmm.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And computational calculations revealed that the twisting could really only be Responsible for about a third of the color shift.
Jam:Okay. So on, like, about a third away across that spectrum?
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:So it end up in, like, Yellow or
Melissa:Yeah. Yellow or maybe light green.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:So They theorize that when the proteins were bound up, a lot of times in the three d arrangement, The pigments would cross each other sort of in x formation. And they thought maybe that that Aggregation, the way that the proteins would come together, was responsible for the color change. That was the newest piece of information that they could come up with.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And at that aggregation, where the molecules were arranged in space together, not just 1 individual molecule, but the way that 2 were crossing each other. That was the reason for the color change.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And that was the best information we had At the time in 2005.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:But even more recently in 2013, they Actually found that the way those molecules were crossing together is a very weak association, And they attribute the color change to possibly an even more complicated molecular concept known as electron transfer.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And that would be responsible for the rest of the color change, that other 2 thirds of the way across. Okay. So, really, scientists at this point in 2021 think That the reason that lobsters aren't red to begin with is because this Astaxanthin is bound into a protein, the confirmation changes, and something else about its environment and nearness to Other molecules allows something at the molecular level to happen that makes this color shift from red all the way over to black. Dang. Blackish blue.
Jam:Dang.
Melissa:Isn't that wild?
Jam:Yes. Yes. Man, that's you're right that it was simple, and then it wasn't at all simple. And then it got really complicated.
Melissa:Got so complicated. But here's why I like this. Uh-huh. I think this story of lobsters captures so much about what it means to be a scientist.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:Like, each one of these people spent a lot of time. They did different characterizations. Characterizations, they did different calculations. They used the information and the knowledge that they had and the computing power that they had in the early 2000 To contribute a piece of information to the puzzle. Mhmm.
Melissa:And each time the technology developed, our understanding developed, We used it to apply to the situation and tried to learn new things. And each person Only was zoomed in on a tiny piece of this, but when you put it all together, you have a deeper understanding of what's happening.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:And I also love it because a lot of times, things are presented in science class. Like, we have this figured out. So it would be so easy to for me to say, oh, this is why this happens is because the pigment binds and it turns black because the confirmation changes, And just leave it at that. Like, we understand it perfectly Yeah. But we don't understand it perfectly.
Melissa:It seems like there's still some mystery going on about it.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:And I think that that mystery and the humility to be able to admit that we don't know things is something that scientists needs to grow scientists as a whole need to grow in. And I think if we did more of that, there would be more space in our developing classrooms for young children and, You know, who are in their science classrooms to spend more time wondering because I talked about this in the episode where I talked about my master's research. But Whenever I got to my master's research and we talked about how we were trying to do artificial photosynthesis, I asked the question, Why can't we just do it exactly the way the plants do? And the answer was that we didn't know how the plants did it.
Jam:Right. Right. Yeah. It's like and we really didn't know every part of that, then we could. But it's like, we don't.
Jam:Right. Yeah. That's crazy.
Melissa:I've but it gets presented like, here's photosynthesis. Here's how it works. This happens, and we understand it.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:But there is mystery. And And in that mystery, that means there is room for us to learn more and to get young scientists excited about the way they can contribute to the field.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:So I really, really love this story because it's both interesting and relevant to everyday life, and It reminds us that as scientists, we need to be humble, and we need to admit what we don't know and that there's so much more going on It's hard for us to understand even though we have done so much. Yes. And I think that's beautiful.
Jam:Yeah. Dang. Well said.
Melissa:Yeah. So this really got me very excited, as I mentioned. Maybe more excited than I've been before because it felt to me like it had Every element that I love in a in a chemistry story, I was like, this is such a good one.
Jam:All the parts of a good mystery.
Melissa:Yes. Everything that you love in a good mystery. So then I was gonna ask you, to try and tell it back to me, and then I have some fun lobster facts.
Jam:Nice. Okay. 1 for 1, this is tough. A lot of the chemistry explanations are tough, and I end up, know, messing up language or words you taught me or whatever. But what it is hard is anything that's, like, loud layers like this.
Jam:I'm like, oh, man. 1st time hearing it. And that some of you guys who listen to the podcast, you've probably heard us explain that before, but, like, I literally am learning it along with you. And so, My apologies if anytime that it's, like, complicated like this. If my explanation doesn't really help you very much because I'm Struggling?
Jam:Den, I'm very sorry. It's meant to be helpful to you, but, my guess would be it's not always as helpful as hearing it from the chemist herself.
Melissa:But Well, that that's part of why we do the 1 two punch.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:And that's the listener's opportunity to send us in a really good A really good, of their own analogy. Remember we have the person who said about the Greek god
Jam:that have
Melissa:the baby and then switch back? Yeah. Those are really good ones. So and she was really nice, and her husband emailed us after and said, My wife was so excited, and I was like, that's so cute. I love that.
Melissa:So if you, yeah, if you think jams is more confusing, You can one up him Yep. And prove that you would be a better cohost by sending us all of your ideas.
Jam:And then it'll be your problem. Now you're the cohost.
Melissa:I'm just kidding.
Jam:So the first thing I thought of in terms of just an analogy is I thought of something that to me is complicated to lots of people, it's complicated. And Many stories of involving this end up being more complicated than we expect is cars. So, you know, what happens with most of us rather than, like, a color change, like, seeing something change, like, the lobster changing color so drastically when we cook it
Melissa:Right.
Jam:Is you're hearing a noise of some kind? Something is happening that's different. I'm hearing a noise by car I didn't normally make. And how often it is that you start as you start, either you, yourself, are exploring this, which I would never try myself because I would not fix it. But
Melissa:How'd make it worse? Yeah.
Jam:You take it to a mechanic or whatever. They start looking, and it might seem at first like it's one thing. And then they might mess with that a little bit, and it's, like, well, you know what? This thing over here is also not doing the right thing. You know what?
Jam:This thing over here is also not doing the right thing. And before you know it, you're replacing a lot of stuff, but all those things together Contributed to whatever caused the very obvious change to me, which is just the sound.
Melissa:Yes. That's a good one.
Jam:A new sound that I didn't hear before. But Yes. And in the case of lobster, it's so obvious that color changes. Yes. But all things that are happening under the surface are a lot more complicated and interesting and crazy.
Jam:But there's one very simple change we noticed as regular folk that do not have laser vision or molecular vision. We just
Melissa:see regular vision. My dream.
Jam:Yeah. We just see, hey. Isn't that thing red now? And then when we try to explain it, or, hey. Why is my car making a clinking sound?
Jam:Or why is it humming a little louder than normal? Then we, are forced to be faced with our lack of understanding.
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:And it's not a simple answer in so many Those situations
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:Which is sad news for our wallets when it happens to our cars, but interesting news for our brains when it's with locksters.
Melissa:Well, also, I think you can think of it too as, like, you the sound starts happening.
Jam:Mhmm. So
Melissa:your car is running fine. The sound starts happening Because all the things went wrong, the mechanic fixes them, and then it goes back to running fine. So the pigment starts out as red.
Jam:Right. Right. Right.
Melissa:And then it turns blackish blue, and you're like, oh, this isn't good.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:And then we free the pigment, and it's red again, which for the pigment, Probably good. For the lobster, might not be as good. That's not where I thought you were going. I thought you're just gonna say we turn the car on, And it goes. And then we turn it off, and it stops.
Melissa:And it's as simple as turning the key, but in reality, it's complicated because this machine's doing all this stuff for you. Right. Right. Yeah. That also makes I mean, I guess the main part's still true about the cars being complicated.
Melissa:But, yeah, I
Jam:was thinking about when a
Melissa:change happens that we're, like, Having to investigate. You know? Yes. Yeah.
Jam:But so back to the lobster, to try to do my best to explain the actual Pieces of it is that, there's a pigment in it's part of its diet. Did you say it's from a plant that Lobsters seed?
Melissa:I think it's from a plant.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:Yeah. I'm pretty sure.
Jam:They don't just eat pigments on their
Melissa:own. Well, who See, lobster's
Jam:you know, lobster's love, take minced boy.
Melissa:I I can honestly say I don't know Anything about the day to day life of a lobster. Yeah. And that's how they that's
Jam:how they prefer. They like to live this aloof, chill life Until we pull them out of it. So
Melissa:What if when we ate blueberries, our skin turned blue? Like, verruca salts.
Jam:Oh, yeah.
Melissa:Was it verruca here turned blue?
Jam:I think it was. Yeah. Think it was her.
Melissa:That's what happens to them. They eat plants, and their shells turn red.
Jam:Yeah. I mean, there is that that can happen with us with, Like, what is it? Like, carrots and tomatoes like that? Or some vegetables, if you eat just in insane amount of them that it turns you orange.
Melissa:That's true. Yeah.
Jam:But so they're okay. Yeah. So the Eelav, this stuff has this pigment in it, And the pigment gets it's in their skin and then goes into their shells and is there. But as it finds its way into their shells and stuff, it becomes, What did you say with the proteins? It becomes bonding?
Melissa:Yeah. With proteins, they usually have I think it's through intermolecular forces, but they usually have a shape that's just right for the molecule to fit into and all of the bonds that it needs. So I think it's tech or all of the molecules it needs to do intermolecular forces. I think it's a lot of times hydrogen bonding. I don't know for sure.
Melissa:But when it, I usually say binds Bines.
Jam:Bines. To the
Melissa:Okay. Protein. Yeah.
Jam:I knew that was I needed to get that word correct, and then I I didn't hold on to it. So binds
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:Intermittent forces are at play just like they always are. And
Melissa:Yeah. Most likely. I mean, that's what I think it is.
Jam:These proteins that are in the shell of The lobster Mhmm. They sort of bind around these pigment molecules. And, and so that is kind of where the action is happening. The the more Interesting, mysterious part. Because we know that once the proteins denature when we cook it, that that undoes that, and it becomes red.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:But what's happening here that makes that pigment be blackish bluish?
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:And that's where all those other Rabbit holes happen. Correct?
Melissa:Right.
Jam:Okay. So one of the things you said was that when it binds, the you said the word composition?
Melissa:Oh, confirmation. Confirmation. So, like, it's conformation, not like confirmation that you do in Sunday school or whatever?
Jam:Right. But Conformation, the
Melissa:shape. Formation of it.
Jam:The formation Formation.
Melissa:Way it's Arranged in space, the three d arrangement of the molecule because you can rotate around single bonds. Single bonds can twist around really easily. That's known as a conformation. Mhmm.
Jam:So
Melissa:The actual shape of it.
Jam:Got it. So the hypothesis There, for a while, the guess was the changing of how it's conformed, how it's formed, the shape of these molecules Must be being changed a little as it's being, held by the protein
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:Bind bind by the protein, and, that is changing the color.
Melissa:Right.
Jam:Because it's affecting how the electrons take in energy and the energy levels, they where they put off light that we can see. But it seems that that couldn't be the only explanation.
Melissa:It was calculated That that can't be the only explanation. It seems that that conformational change, according to the computational chemist, Only accounts for about a third of the color change. Right. Right. Right.
Melissa:And the rest of it is sort of still a mystery.
Jam:The the next thing that was brought up was that the other oh, man.
Melissa:This part is kind of confusing, so I don't I don't think you have to explain it.
Jam:Okay. Okay.
Melissa:I think this part is still up in the air. So initially, the idea was the the Proteins are close it's like a 2 proteins bind 2 of these molecules. They're close together, and they form an x was
Jam:My
Melissa:understanding based on the paper, the pigments form an x, and that they thought that that association between the molecules made it.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:So that the color was changing. But then some other scientists did some research and felt that, Experimentally, the association between these 2 molecules was pretty weak, and it actually didn't account for the rest of that. And they think it might be something else, something some type of electron transfer. So yeah.
Jam:Yeah. Okay. Okay. So there's The other things you said, the the other hypotheses, explanations, and stuff, but that are still up in the air.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:But either way, we know that then when we do cook these lobsters, It denatures the proteins, which Mhmm. Lets the pigment pigment go free, be itself as it was before, And so then it's back to being read.
Melissa:That's right.
Jam:And did I miss something In there.
Melissa:I don't think so.
Jam:Okay. Other than the
Melissa:part, they're super hard. Yeah. But I wanna say also, if I miss something, if you know of a more recent article than this 2013 one where they could confirm what else was making the change. Please reach out and let us know. I could not find a more recent article on this topic, but if you if you're a lobster scientist, If you're more up to date on the ins and outs of this protein and this pigment and why they interact, we wanna hear from you.
Jam:And this is probably unlikely, but if you yourself are a lobster and you'd be kind enough to explain it to us without the use of science and just kinda tell us what's going on there, then that, I think, would be fine too. I'd be okay with that. So
Melissa:That would be amazing. Yeah. Okay. So
Jam:For the reason, when
Melissa:you said
Jam:when you said if you're a lobster scientist,
Melissa:I just, in that moment, imagined, what if you just stopped right there?
Jam:If you're and if you're a lobster so that's why
Melissa:Also, what if I just said if you're a lobster scientist? Like, what if you're a lobster who's also a scientist? Yeah. That really makes me wanna get, like, a little lobster in a lab coat with goggles on. So cute.
Melissa:If you're a cartoonist, we wanna see that. That would be adorable.
Jam:Yes. But you gotta make sure the lobster in that cartoon is not red because we want it to be alive.
Melissa:Yes. We wanted to be alive, and we wanted to be cute.
Jam:Yes.
Melissa:I really hope someone does that. Okay. I have no artistic skill, but I can dream up ideas. I just can't make my hand do it.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:Okay. So you've earned some fun facts.
Jam:Okay. Sweet.
Melissa:The 1st person who did a good job of explaining this I found on the Internet was actually someone who studies, shell disease in lobsters. And I guess it's easier to identify If the lobsters are a specific color, and so he manipulates the color of the lobsters to be able to study the shell disease. So he showed us a lobster that lacks the ability to produce proteins that can twist the pigments. Oh. And those lobsters are only red even when they're alive.
Melissa:Weird. Because they just don't have the protein. Yeah. He showed us lobster, and he said, this lobster's mom also is this color because they can't make the proteins.
Jam:I was
Melissa:like, those proteins seem like they could be important because I feel like the not having the red color Means that they can blend in. But if you're bright red
Jam:Bright.
Melissa:I don't know. Maybe that far down in the ocean, though, Light sort of changes, so I don't know.
Jam:Yeah. Maybe it's not quite as, like, being, like, with other animals where it'd be like, oh, you can be spotted They buy a predator way easily. Right.
Melissa:May
Jam:maybe it's not quite as much of a concern for lobsters. I don't I don't know.
Melissa:Right. Or maybe it is a concern, and that Species dies off rapidly, and that's why we don't see that very often.
Jam:Right. Yeah. It is not an advantageous mutation maybe.
Melissa:Right.
Jam:And
Melissa:then he also said that if the lobsters don't eat that pigment, they are just only blue. So they don't have any red coloring at all to them. Normally, lobsters have, like, a little bit around the edges. You can tell.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:And he held up a Straight blue lobster, and it was
Jam:Wow.
Melissa:Kinda cute. So he doesn't feed them the pigment, so he can more easily study the disease, but he also has that 1 pink one.
Jam:Got it. Got it. Weird, dude. That's interesting. Yeah.
Melissa:He held them up on camera, and they were actually pre q. So if you wanna go click the links in our our references and check them out, we encourage you to do that.
Jam:Nice.
Melissa:So this the color really depends both on their diet and their ability to make the protein.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:Okay. So that's everything I have for you today, but I also wanted to say my happy thing first. Okay. So I I'd said already, I got this email when I was at the American Chemical Society conference in San Diego.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And that was so fun.
Jam:Nice.
Melissa:That was my exciting thing this week. I got to meet other people in my field who are so kind and encouraging, and I was able to share my research with peers in my field, which I haven't been able to do ever Mhmm. In this field, so that was really exciting. And, I wanted to tell our listeners That this summer, I will be at BCCE giving a talk about chemistry for your life. So if you're a chemist, A chemistry educator.
Melissa:If you're gonna also be at the BCCE conference this summer, please please please reach out. I'd love to do a chemistry for your life meetup at BCCE Because I was sad that I didn't take the opportunity to meet with chemists that listen to the podcast at the American Chemical Society meeting.
Jam:Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:So that's why I wanted to go first. If anyone dips out at the end, I wanted to really talk about that real quick before we get into personal life stuff. Nice. Nice. So that's something that's happy that happened to me this week, but I wanna know about your life,
Jam:But you and I, like like you said, we haven't talked in a little while. We don't have to hang out. You were out of town. You were ignoring me and trying to,
Melissa:I wasn't. And stuff
Jam:like that. I'm just kidding. But
Melissa:I mean, I wasn't ignoring you any more than I'm ignoring everyone else. No. Just kidding. Honestly. So
Jam:because of this podcast, it actually forces most to have to hang out with me. So it's pretty pretty great.
Melissa:It's true. I've seen you more you're the only person that I've, Quote, unquote, hung out with, if that's even what you can call this Yeah. Since, I think, mid March.
Jam:Yeah. There we go. So freaking out Privileges. Pretty well my favorite. So I often update you and listeners here about any Happenings with my cast iron life.
Melissa:Oh, yeah.
Jam:So what happened recently is I have been if you're new to this and you're like, this is the 1st time I'm hearing us, some sort of cast iron update, listen to our cast iron episodes, which are probably about a year ago or a year and a half or something like that.
Melissa:And recently, you shared you made your 1st steak.
Jam:Oh, that's true. I did share about that recently. Yeah. That's true. So this was a sort of sad one where I started having a lot of flaking On No.
Jam:My smaller cast iron pan, which is the one I use most often. It's about an 8 inch or 9 or 10 inch one. And, Flakes of polymer. Flakes of polymer coming off pretty consistently. At first, I was just trying to heal those sections by, you know, doing some more re seasoning and stuff, which some people say, just do that.
Jam:Don't reset it because if it's just a little bit of flaking, It might just be some sort of imperfection in a few layers down, and it'll all be okay in
Melissa:the end. Cover it up if you if you make a solid polymer above it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Jam:But what I was noticing is that I keep kept having chipping in other areas too.
Melissa:It was a uniform problem.
Jam:Kept happening over and over. I couldn't heal one area faster than another one would chip. And
Melissa:Man.
Jam:I know.
Melissa:I wonder what happened. If you heated it up too hot or
Jam:Well, here's my theory. This is not science. This is what we call, stuff I found on the Internet. And, basically, flaxseed oil is one of the oils that tons of people have been loving, recommending people to use for a while. Yeah.
Jam:But one of the problems people have found after they use it for a long time is that once you get a lot of layers of seasoning, It's really, really hard, these this laser seasoning. The laser polymer are really, really hard. Yeah. But, apparently, when you get a lot of them, it get it starts to get Brittle, and then, like, a lot of it can come off, which I don't know if those are the right words, but it is very strong. But somehow, when you have a lot of it, it We'll just break off in chunks, like whole pieces just come off.
Melissa:Sting. I feel like that would be something that a surface Or materials chemist would be able to shed more light on, or maybe a polymer chemist.
Jam:Yeah. So I had to start over interesting. On that pan. And
Melissa:Did you use flaxseed, or did you decide to go back to good old
Jam:So I moved on to where where the current Cast iron Internet community is going, which is grape seed oil.
Melissa:Grape seed. That's what it was. Yeah. And Wow.
Jam:I did a few layers of seasoning, and guess what? This is, like, just slightly on topic. Instead of looking Deep jet black like flaxseed oil does after you've done a lot of seasoning layers on it.
Melissa:It's bright red like lobster.
Jam:It's bright red. Yeah. It looks a little bit brown.
Melissa:Oh, yeah. Interesting.
Jam:It looks especially brown next to my very black Pan that I did not have to redo, that has flaxseed oil only.
Melissa:What's the nonstickiness like?
Jam:So far, solid. Just as just as good as old black seed, in my opinion. So
Melissa:We probably need to do a reseason. I don't know that we need to really sand it down or anything, but I think we probably just need one Solid coat on top of everything because Yeah. Our nonstickness has been a little it leaves something to be desired.
Jam:What I was saying your husband about is that I just do I don't ever sand anything. I just do the self clean oven Yeah. Setting. And it makes the starting over thing so easy without having to, like, Getting the Work. Yeah.
Jam:Yeah. Sand things off and put particles of polymer onto the air and
Melissa:Well, our oven doesn't have a light or a window, so I very much doubt that it has a self cleaning option. Yeah. Yeah. So
Jam:Is that a window? Really?
Melissa:No. Interesting. Has a solid metal door. You don't know how I, as a baker, Struggle with that.
Jam:Yeah. I've never experienced that before. I don't think.
Melissa:Yeah. I mean, we live in an apartment, so it was probably just the cheapest model that they could get Right. In bulk. But
Jam:Right. Right.
Melissa:This is not the event that I will have in my forever home. I'll tell you that.
Jam:Right. So all you listeners, thanks for listening to that really boring explanation that 5 of you
Melissa:I liked it.
Jam:5 of you liked it and Melissa, but that's just the latest sort of chapter in my cast iron Like
Melissa:And write in. We wanna hear about your cast irons.
Jam:Yeah. Definitely. We know some of you guys had to have been as affected and convinced by the science of cast iron as Melissa and I were.
Melissa:Yeah.
Jam:Tell us what you've been up to.
Melissa:Yeah. Please do. Well, thanks. I didn't know that grape seed oil was a thing. I think I was thinking of something came before flaxseed oil, but I don't know what.
Melissa:Yeah. But that's I'm maybe canola is what I was thinking, but I'm so happy. I'm glad that you updated me on the information. I'll look for grape seed oil.
Jam:Yes. Yes.
Melissa:So thanks for your updates, Jim. And thanks to all of you listeners for coming and learning about lobsters. And This really made me so happy. Mhmm. So thanks for bringing me joy in the middle of my dissertation Demise.
Jam:Well, thanks for teaching us. And listeners, thank you guys for the questions you write in. And if you have a question or an idea or a thought about something that could be chemistry in everyday life. Please reach out to us on Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook atchem for your life. That's Kim, f o r, your life to share your thoughts and ideas.
Jam:If you'd like to help us keep our show going and contribute to cover the cost of making it, Go to kodashfi.com/chem for your life or click the link in our show notes to donate the cost of a cup of coffee. If you're not able to donate, you can still help us by subscribing on your favorite podcast app or reading and writing our review on Apple Podcasts. That also helps us to share chemistry with even more people.
Melissa:This episode of chemistry for your life was created by Melissa Colini and Jam Robinson. References for this episode could be found in our show notes or on our website. Jim Robinson is our producer, and we like to give a special thanks to v Garza and s Navarro who reviewed this episode.
