Lex Fridman Podcast #133 – Manolis Kellis: Biology of Disease
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Oct 25, 2020 
Manolis Kellis, a computational biologist at MIT, shares expert insights into the complexities of human disease and genetics. He discusses how genetics plays a crucial role in understanding and treating diseases, highlighting the significance of perturbation experiments over traditional model organisms. Kellis also tackles the interplay between genetic variations, lifestyle factors, and public health, emphasizing the need for collective efforts to improve health outcomes. His exploration of cutting-edge genomic technologies, like CRISPR, reveals exciting advancements in disease research.
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Genetics-Driven Biology
- Human genetics now drives basic biology due to vast mutation information.
- This shift allows us to study perturbations and build disease models.
Perturbation Studies
- Animal models simplify perturbation studies by isolating single-gene effects.
- Human studies are more complex due to millions of natural genetic variations.
Modern Disease Research
- Modern disease research analyzes large datasets of genetic variants and phenotypes from unrelated individuals.
- This allows relating variants to molecular and cellular variations to understand disease mechanisms.