The Olympics and The Future of Genetics with Olympian Ben Martin

In this week's episode we sit down with Canadian Field Hockey Olympian and Molecular Biology Ph.D. Candidate Ben Martin. Ben recently participated in the Rio 2016 Olympics with the Canadian Men's National Field Hockey Team. He shares with us his favorite moments of being a part of the Olympics as well as his love-hate relationship with the team's physiotherapist in order to stay in optimal shape for the Games.  Ben is also a Ph.D. candidate in Molecular Biology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada where his research focuses on answering a central question of chromatin biology: does histone acetylation occur as a cause or a consequence of transcription? In this episode we touch on: Ben's experience being a part of the Canadian Men's Field Hockey Olympic Team in Rio this past summer Why Ben has a love-hate relationship with physiotherapy How Ben was able to balance being a Ph.D. student while being an Olympic athlete Understanding Ben's research that focuses on genetic transcription (think coding) The science of epigenetics and the role it plays moving forward with studying our genome Ben's thoughts on genetic modifications including how CRISPR has changed the modifying game Ben's research and future after completing his Ph.D. You can learn more about Ben and his work by following him on Twitter at @bmart87 and through these websites: http://olympic.ca/team-canada/benjamin-martin/ http://www.med.ubc.ca/biochemistry-and-molecular-biology/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232611484_Histone_H3K4_demethylation_is_negatively_regulated_by_histone_H3_acetylation_in_Saccharomyces_cerevisiae