GOOD NEWS: What The Hell Is CRISPR?
Back in Episode 51, Quinn & Brian asked: Are we thinking about CRISPR all wrong (and what the hell is it)?
This is one of our most popular episodes, probably because it features one of our coolest guests: C. Brandon Ogbunu, an evolutionary systems biologist with a unique perspective on data and disease, and how both were influenced by evolution and ecology.
We’ve talked about CRISPR before on the show, but if you’re not familiar, here’s a brief and overly simplistic overview of this potentially world-changing technology: it’s scissors for DNA. It’s still a very young technology — it was only patented in 2012 — but it has the potential to do everything from eliminating genetic diseases from our lineage to making our food supply more efficient and productive to creating a real-life Jurassic Park. But what can’t we do with it? And, perhaps more importantly, what shouldn’t we be doing with it? That’s what we’re going to find out today.
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INI Book Club:
- From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America by Elizabeth Hinton
Links:
- Learn more at vivo.brown.edu/display/cogbunug
- Instagram: @big_data_kane
- Twitter: @big_data_kane
- Read C. Brandon’s writing: medium.com/ogplexus
Connect with us:
- Subscribe to our newsletter at newsletter.importantnotimportant.com
- Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ImportantNotImp
- Follow Quinn: twitter.com/quinnemmett
- Follow Brian: twitter.com/beansaight
- Like and share us on Facebook: facebook.com/ImportantNotImportant
- Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com
- Artwork by Amrit Pal
Important, Not Important is produced by Crate Media
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