Mendelspod Podcast

Working at the Broad Institute early in his career, Michael Schnall Levin was discovering he was a biologist at heart. He’d begun his studies in physics then done his PhD in mathematics. But he'd wanted “to do math that had an application in the real world.” It was at the Broad that Michael came in contact with the new tools that were revolutionizing biology. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod.com/subscribe

According to scientists, 30,000 species per year are going extinct. That’s 6 an hour, 150 per day. Up to one half of all species could be extinct by 2050. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod.com/subscribe

Chris Mason is back on the program for our end-of-year special. He’s Professor of Genomics, Physiology, and Biophysics at Weill Cornell School of Medicine and the author of such an outstanding book that we had to have him on the program a second time this year. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod.com/subscribe

In a joint interview, Sean George, CEO of diagnostics firm, Invitae, and Christian Henry, CEO of sequencing tools company, Pacific Biosciences, say that “it was clear in the first five minutes of a phone call that they shared a vision for doing something big together.”What comes through the interview is that this partnership is built on a big vision: speeding up the adoption of whole genome sequencing into clinical medicine as the preferred method for genetic testing. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod.com/subscribe

There are some technologies that become so ubiquitous in biomedical research that their name turns synonymous with their use. This has been the case for the Luminex xMAP platform and multiple biomarker analysis. The product has been applied in just about every area of life sciences including infectious disease, STD, organ transplant rejection, vaccine development, cancer research, immunodeficiency, animal testing, agriculture, and others. (xMAP is a research use only product and not for use in diagnostic procedures.) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod.com/subscribe

DNA is a multibillion-dollar industry in 2021 and satisfies many life science applications, including drugs, reagents, siRNA, PCR, diagnostics, synthetic biology, and many others. Enzymatic DNA synthesis, or EDS, is a new approach to manufacturing DNA that is much more efficient and user-friendly and could disrupt the current market. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod.com/subscribe

If one was going to be a cancer researcher, surely one would want to be Christina Curtis. She’s an associate professor of oncology and genetics at Stanford, and she studies tumor evolution. She’s the Darwin of cancer research.Because scientists can’t see human tumors evolve in real life, in Christina's lab she creates what she calls "virtual tumors that recapitulate the size and spatial properties of an actual tumor. And evaluating patient data,” she says, "we have found that metastatic seeding could happen very early. That these tumors were born to be bad.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod.com/subscribe

"Scientists have been putting RNA into cells through a lipid delivery system for 44 years,” says Elie Dolgin. “And that’s ultimately the vaccine that has gone into millions of arms.”Elie is the author of a recent piece in Nature magazine, The Tangled History of mRNA Vaccines.  He joins us to talk about his quest to uncover the winding journey that led to the cure that is moving the world forward. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod.com/subscribe

“Why do plants make a host of chemicals they don’t use? One answer that has always intrigued me is that, unlike us, they can’t walk up and walk away from an environment they don’t like. Evolution has honed this space for over 400 million years.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod.com/subscribe

David Rimm, Professor of Pathology at Yale, was doing spatial biology since before it was called that. He’s known for counting. And he’s been going beyond—beneath?--the model of the cell in biology for years. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod.com/subscribe