our 2 part documentary analyzes the difficult relationship between russia and the u.s. and between their presidents how does their rivalry and their dangerous mutual admiration affect the rest of the world. bullies trump and putin starts august 3rd on d w. how do bees know which blossom to land on for the best nectar scientists studying flower to insect communication have an electrifying answer. animal testing is very controversial how viable are the alternatives. researchers are using a fresh method to study organ tissue in a new life. welcome

to tomorrow today. medical professionals have various ways of looking inside the bodies of their patients an x. ray machine passes radiation through the body to capture an image on film. ultrasound and on the other hand works with sound waves. and magnetic resonance imaging or m.r.i. uses magnetic field. but now there's a new method that allies doctors to see right through all of. this mouse can help researchers analyze all kinds of bodily functions from how blood vessels are nerve tracts run to how internal organs are constructed. it's possible because the mouse is tissue has been made transparent up to now this hadn't been possible with human tissue. but now chemist john john from the 1000000 university in munich has uncovered chemicals that can render

a kidney transparent within 2 weeks. she works with genetic engineering. the gene wants to understand how human organs work specifically how blood vessels nerve cells and live channels interact making them visible is the 1st step. we have to understand how they're coordinating. in normal how to case and dan if you could easily also see when something is wrong when there is lack of coordination if there are some cells supposed to be there are not there we can nor know why some diseases are cured. his aim is to determine the exact location of each individual cell to do this researchers have developed a microscope that can examine the whole organ the different colors of the laser make the individual structures such as vessels or nerve cells visible. when we go

to a microscope scan some days of scanning it's millions of imaging data out there is no way hooman being can on the life instead computer scientists have developed algorithms which enable an exact 3 dimensional image of the kidney to be generated from the data researchers can then study the organs cell by cell enabling them to recognize pathological changes detect cancer cells and observe the effects of medication to see if the drug in question is actually binding to the right cell the effects of the method could be far reaching my vision is that we will be able to generate organs on demand if someone needs a heart or a kid and we will just take some cells maybe skin cells generate millions and billions of cells from and the same person and create construct the organ and then transplant to the person. first attempts to produce parts of a kidney ah. are already underway but it will take some time before the researchers

are able to produce an entire order. in 2018 german laboratories tested drugs and cars magic's on nearly 1800000 rodents a she one thighs and rabbits and nearly 30000 farm animals supporters of animal testing say the 1000 organs of humans and animals function in a similar way but worldwide 95 percent of drugs test of the excessively on animals fail in human trials good alternatives that don't involve animal suffering actually be more precise. these are miniature artificial organs parts of the modular construction system that replicates human body parts. blood lungs and liver high quality and is using them to test new medication. does this system enables us to trigger a paradigm shift in drug development that is an organ a substance abuse organ on

a chip system means we're able to determine medication more quickly and cheaply and where it's needed to the patients 3 and one percent. in future this could eliminate the need to conduct so much testing on animals on average the development of a single medication currently takes 15 to 20 years that's largely because animal testing is time consuming costly and controversial and often the results can't be applied directly to humans unlike with the organ on a chip. to create these organs the research is cultivate skin tissue cells that then infected with a virus that introduces 4 gene sequences into the skin cells and reprogram some of them these then become i.p.s. or in joost pluri pota. stem cells through the addition of growth or differentiation fact is they can be transformed into any kind of cell and the human

body from the heart and lungs to skin and liver. this chip can combine 2 organ models you can see the organ compartments here and here they are connected by a common circulatory system the 2 little chambers here comprise the pump which functions like the human heart does mention here and this lets the organs communicate with one another and exchange neurotransmitters and with and observe this interactions or god of. their researches don't reproduce the entire organ only the parts all cells which should or could respond to a certain drug. liver cells for example a cultivated unused in an organ storage container at $37.00 degrees celsius mirroring the temperature of the human body that left to grow and develop in

lifelike conditions under the microscope the researches can see them function just like in the human body. unlike with animals or people we can look inside the chips at any time with a microscope and see what the liver does with the medication does it tolerate the drug or is there damage to my colleague johan shawn and then i can also see on the other organ here in the heart liver or pancreas whether these products have an effect whether they can be helpful in healing illness or maybe produce side effects it's all in the. major advantage is that the substances can be tested directly on human cells so in contrast to animal testing the research is can gather reliable evidence about the effects on people. that's because tests on rats and mice can only predict where the substance is

a toxic to humans just 43 percent of the time so most medications that were tested successfully on animals fail when drug studies and then conducted on humans up to 95 percent of all drugs trial. these 2 neuroscientists have developed another alternative to animal testing they can simulate on the computer how a medication or substance affects the conduction of stimuli in the brain. the nerve cells in the brain structures that we study are also affected by alzheimer's disease and epilepsy which is why it's important to better understand the mechanisms of such diseases in these regions of the brain and computer models are quite helpful in this case the cells of fly larvae formed the basis of their work biologist how men could 6 am and the structure very closely well paid to get

rich focused on the electrical characteristics then they compared them with the cells of other animals. here we have a worm cell that's a couple hundreds of a millimeter in length all the way to motor neurons to cuts a motor and i want to be who not to familiar middle lungs and wondrous which is one of us and what was really unexpected was that although the cells are extremely difference in size and in terms of complexity and shape they all behave the same way complexity to. one foreman for height and lies the cells they analyze come from animal tests conducted and published by other scientists. for giving from these and for each of these little dots here i'd have hunter do animal tests and that would have been impossible because we have $6000.00 cells here extols and. instead with the help of

this data the scientists have been able to create a computer simulation of the brain with all its nerve cells and neural pathways. very money on computers either computer delivers a mouse reproduction of all the details. about the cells are so well replicated expect sports can no longer tell the difference between the real cells and the artificial wondrously known to shine. as a result the opportunities for testing a virtually endless optimization a con man on the computer you can run through all kinds of combinations which you could never do in an experiment. to research as a noun developing computer models for human cells as well in future that could eliminate also only the need for animal testing but clinical studies on people tune . back in berlin research as can already replicate 11 organs

on a scale of $1.00 to $100.00 thousands now they're testing how they can be networked and their supply systems fully automated using approaches time. muscles which. can do everything that happens during studies we went into the foot on the chips you can take samples from of these chips and administer the medication we're kind of to this meeting. so i can tell it to apply the drug via the skin or administer it as a template via the bloodstream through the intestinal barrier. and we can also try to inhale it all the different kinds of applications you're familiar with from the pharmacy and from sprays through to shots and creams can be simulated here so i can comment on that question has ammonia. the research is estimate this system will be ready for use in one to 2 years. it won't be possible to completely replace testing on humans and animals in full seeable future due to factors such as

pain and emotion simulation but the chances are good that it could replace up to 60 percent of all animal testing. if outlet is right why are they laughing at me they say. do you have a science question you'd like us to answer send it to us in a video text or voice mail if we answer it on the show we'll send you a little surprise as a thank you come on just stuff. you can also check it out online r.t.w. dot com slash science or on twitter ass d w underscore science. boubacar dan from gamma asks just how closely related we humans and chimpanzees. are very closely some 98.5

percent of our d.n.a. base pairs are identical based on average findings from a range of analytical methods. and our genetic match with guerillas. it's just one quarter of a percentage point less than that. around it turns branched off from our common family tree earth or earlier but they still share 1007 percent of their d.n.a. with us so how do we explain the huge difference between humans and apes. some primates can scale trees in the rain forest. while another species exploits other planets. the human genome contains some 3000000000 base pairs of which just 40000000 differ from those of chimpanzees but this vital difference means that certain proteins in apes have other structures and possibly other functions in the body. but for all the differences there are also many similarities using tools to

eat food with for example. chimpanzees use twigs to provide delicious ants from their nests. and chimps are emotional creatures researchers have even found similarities in the sound of their laughter and ours. they understand symbols and can learn for example which one beats the other in a game of rock paper scissors. but chimpanzees will probably never be able to build computers although then again neither can most of us the famous primatologist jane goodall urges us to use our supposedly superior intelligence to start protecting the habitats of our primate cousins and the planet as a whole. dental a thing that humans share more than 98 percent of their d.n.a.

with gorillas and chemin thieves might sound like a loss when you consider that the human genome is made up of billions of d.n.a. base pairs the 2. 10 different still accounts for a lot of variation in. another example humans and pigs share 90 percent of the same genes. are most popular 4 legged friend shares 84 percent of our d.n.a. . and even the round worm has a 75 percent similarity. stranger still 60 percent of human genes also have counterparts in now on. both bon appetit.