TWiT.TV — with Leo Laporte & Friends

Running time: 1:12:03

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Host: Marc Pelletier

Guest: Dr. George Church, Professor of Genetics and Director of the Center for Computational Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA; Founder & Principle Investigator of The Personal Genome Project

This episode is a Part II, the first being FiB episode 25. In that episode, we started off talking about Dr. Church's pioneering work on the Human Genome Project, and then got sidetracked with his cool upcoming experiments that will involve looking for DNA/nucleic acids on Mars for NASA.

Well, I wanted to have him back to discuss two technological revolutions that are currently happening in biotech. The first is the personal genome. Why do I call it a revolution, as opposed to an evolutionary technological step? Because it changes how we make medical decisions: from being based on statistics and family histories, to decisions that are based on our true molecular anatomy, our own genome. The second revolution is the new field of synthetic biology: creating tailored organisms, not by simply adding or subtracting a single or a few genes as for GM foods, but redesigning organisms from scratch. Dr. Church has been a key player in both these revolutions and his insights are just about the best out there.

Get involved:

Participate in the Personal Genome Project

Donate to the Personal Genome Project

This episode of Futures in Biotech was sponsored by Invitrogen. Save 15% on selected High Fidelity PCR enzymes with the purchase of a Zero Blunt TOPO cloning kit, and other selected TOPO kits. See TOPO ZeroBackground high fidelity. Quote RTPCWU for US or RTPCWC for Canada when ordering.

Thanks to Cachefly for providing the bandwidth for this netcast.

Also thanks to Will Hall for the great opening and closing themes!