The Biotech Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

As exciting technologies emerge, we need to ensure that policies and regulations are in place to ensure practices remain safe, sustainable and help the transition towards a circular economy.  Dr Ian Hodge, professor of rural economy at Cambridge, describes how we can manage agriculture in the future; from offering subsidies to introducing carbon credits. 

Many crops currently grown in the developing world are limited by their nitrogen potential rather than their water or light potential. Difficult supply chains and high costs make using nitrogen fertilisers difficult in these regions and the use of these fertilisers brings about its own issues. 

Professor Giles Oldroyd aims to engineer nitrogen fixation into many crops, allowing them to utilise the abundant source of nitrogen straight from the air and therefore improve yields whilst reducing nitrogen leaching. 

AI is often described as a hugely exciting and media-friendly field in computer science, however, parts of it often forget the goals we are trying to achieve. Intelligence Amplification, or IA, is a more realistic goal, where computers are used for augmenting intelligence rather than replacing it. Dr Yoav Freund takes us through this fascinating field and outlines its possible applications in medicine specifically.

• Photo courtesy of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing
• Simons Institute future of ML panel: https://simons.berkeley.edu/workshops/agenda/3751/panelopen-problemspotlight-talks
• Yoav Freund  link: https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~yfreund/

One of the biggest challenges to medicine is non-adherence. From micro-needle injectors to once-a-month oral pills; Dr Giovanni Traverso tells us about some exiting prospects coming out of MIT which challenge this issue.

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This week Dr Jason Moore tells us about the exciting strides forward that AI is taking; might everyone one day have their own machine learning 'toolbox' at home? Jason is the creator of PennAI, an accessible, user-friendly artificial intelligence system and he explains how machine learning will change the future of medicine and many other fields of science.

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Jason Links

• BMI Podcast http://bmipodcast.org
• Epistasis Lab http://epistasis.org/ 
• PennAI http://pennai.org/   

Episode synopsis:

00:00 - Intro
01:28 - Machine learning in biology
08:04 - The history of computation in medicine
13:33 - AI's role in diagnostics
20:13 - Issues of bringing AI into medicine
27:04 - Understanding AI algorithms
28:45 - The PennAI system
44:38 - Exciting areas of AI in biology
48:40 - Advice
51:54 - Extro

By striving to produce burgers which taste, look and smell the same as farmed beef from cultured stem cells in a lab, Mosa meat aims to change the way we look at agriculture. This week we talk to Dr Laura Jackisch from Mosa meat about the techniques used and the impacts that this technology can have on our future.

Full synopsis:

00.00 - Intro
01:40 - Cellular agriculture
7:10 - The components of a lab-grown burger
14:00 - Combining muscle and fat effectively
22:15 - Reinventing what we can eat
23:08 - The barriers holding back cellular agriculture
26:17 - Scaling up
30:25 - Social challenges
42:51 - Doubts and career advice
48:11 - Extro

The founder of CCm technologies, Peter Hammond, talks to us this week on carbon capture machines, along with their use in producing organic fertilisers to improve soil health.

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Episode synopsis:

00:00 - Intro
01:14 - Developing ideas
14:37 - The components of a healthy soil
21:51 - Traditional fertilisers
24:44 - Measuring soil health
25:47 - Organic fertilisers
30:47 - Carbon sources 
35:12 - Targeting climate change
50:30 - Extro

Soil is one of the most powerful carbon sequestering tools known to man, and protecting it will lead to greater food security with higher nutritional content, better water quality and of course can also play a huge part in reducing global warming. This week Dr Ratan Lal, winner of the 2020 world food prize, talks passionately about his life's work with soil and how we need to harness this incredible ecosystem for good.

Episode synopsis:

00:00 - Soil and its qualities
6:32 - Soil is alive
11:01 - Giving back to our soils
14:59 - Measuring soil health
16:20 - Soil degradation in impoverished areas
19:35 - What drew you to soil science
24:20 - Regulating soil erosion
25:01 - Soil and its role in carbon sequestration
36:17 - Biogeochemical cycling
41:35 - Advice
44:40 - Extro

From the delivery of the mRNA vaccines into cells to the delivery of chemotherapy directly to tumours, it is fair to say Professor Bob Langer has revolutionised modern medicine. Bob is the 4th most cited individual of all time and having founded over 40 biotechnology companies including Moderna, Bob is, without doubt, one of the most influential scientists alive today.

Full Synopsis:

00:00 - Introductions
2:12 - Angiogenesis inhibitors and drug-delivery systems
5:50 - Conventional wisdom and challenging sceptics 
13:52 - How to go about solving a problem
20:20 - Changing the world
22:14 - Pursuing your passions and academia
28:54 - Setting up a company and using impact as a metric
35:28 - The Moderna vaccine and nanoparticles
42:08 - Advice for young scientists and the exciting areas of research today

A professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Greg has theorised interesting genetic ideas such as the 'Kerplunk Model'  and more recently has been influential in coordinating effective Covid testing strategies. Today we talk about the heredity of traits, the importance of robustness in evolution and the current state of scientific publication. Greg also writes a monthly blog called The Genome's Take, which I highly recommend reading.

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Full Synopsis:

00:00 - Intro
01:53 - Heritability, and twin studies
11:28 - The 'Kerplunk model'
19:31 - Environmental effects on genetics
22:88 - Model organisms and working with Walter Gehring
29:25 - Canalisation and robustness
38:38 - Career choices and the future of genetics
43:17 - Covid testing regimes
51:34 - The problems with scientific publication and publishing preprints 
1:02:06 - The Genome's take blog and book recommendations
1:05:11 - Extro