Found My Fitness - Rhonda Patrick

Podcast Notes Key Takeaways

• CRISPR is a subset of editing; editing is a subset of genome engineering; genome engineering is gene therapy
• “Shrinking our agricultural use, possibly by 10 or 100 fold is feasible to do with synthetic biology and other new tools.” – Dr. George Church
• Advances in reading and writing DNA double at least once per year; most of the exponential increase has occurred in the last 10-20 years
• Cons of synthetic biology: lack of equity in access to technology and treatments; head in the sand approach to new technologies – FDA does not review; ethical considerations
• Preventive medicine in genetics: genetic counseling preconception would be helpful to understand the future of offspring (as opposed to spending millions over a lifetime in gene therapy if disease is present)
• Aging studies in dogs (as opposed to rodents) are good parallel to outcomes in humans because they’re large, live in human environments, have similar emotions, and bonding
• “What’s natural is a moving target – a lot of things that were demonized or villainized in the past are now taken for granted, for example, some of us might remember how cell phones with were demonized as melting your brain or getting radiation to your brain.” – Dr. George Church
• Gene editing therapy has the potential to reduce medical load, improve agriculture, alleviate some poverty burden (if there’s less disease), eliminate disease animal-human transmission, eliminate or reduce germline disease
• There is no way to have zero risk – status quo is risky, but we should start small in animal studies and then progress to human studies

Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.org

George Church, Ph.D. is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and of health sciences and technology at both Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Church played an instrumental role in the Human Genome Project and is widely recognized as one of the premier scientists in the fields of gene editing technology and synthetic biology. 

In this episode, we discuss:

• 07:13 - History of the Human Genome Project
• 15:20 - Manufacturing cell phones (with biology)
• 17:34 - Genome Project-Write
• 20:03 - Writing a human Y chromosome (from scratch)
• 20:48 - What if you could eliminate viral disease?
• 22:51 - De-extinction and reinstating lost traits and genes
• 27:06 - The Vertebrate Genomes Project
• 29:47 - AlphaFold and other AI tools
• 41:27 - CRISPR vs. Base Editing (emerging tools of genetic engineering)
• 49:40 - Why multiplex editing will change the world
• 52:18 - Molecular flight recorder
• 53:31 - Preventing viral spillover and enhancing livestock
• 57:40 - PCSK9 gene therapy for cholesterol
• 01:00:30 - Is aging an evolved program?
• 01:05:21 - Treating aging with a combination gene treatment
• 01:09:04 - Does animal research help us understand human aging?
• 01:11:40 - Human organoids as a model and therapeutic
• 01:13:34 - Could engineered transplant organs become better than the originals?
• 01:16:17 - Embryo editing controversy
• 01:28:41 - Gene editing for space travel
• 01:30:40 - Can synthetic biology alleviate poverty?
• 01:34:07 - Is in vitro fertilization and embryo selection practically similar to editing?
• 01:39:12 - The occasional cost of brilliance
• 01:45:45 - Eradicating disease with Gene Drive
• 01:48:55 - Technologies to solve Lyme disease
• 01:51:57 - Dr. Church's experience with narcolepsy as a bridge to creative insights
• 02:00:42 - Why George encoded his book in DNA

Watch this episode on YouTube

Show notes are available by clicking here

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