GMOs

Guest:

Brett Ryan Bonowicz, Filmmaker
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (4:00) Where is the "fiction" in your science fiction?

Listen (4:47) Upcoming screenings

Listen (3:51) Learning where to draw the ethical lines

Listen (3:43) What would a biotech company look like with Steve Jobs or Elon Musk as CEO?

Listen (2:42) Would you personally try a service like GenePeeks?

Listen (6:53) Tackling the topic of GMO's next

In today’s interview, we talk with filmmaker, Brett Ryan Bonowicz. He’s the writer, director and producer of The Perfect 46, a new film exploring the future of direct-to-consumer genetic testing. Whereas our industry often gets demonized by Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters that are full of special effects and fancy sets, Brett’s film seeks to ask tough ethical questions and show the industry in a more nuanced way.

“I knew I wanted to get into science fiction. And I knew I wanted to get into discussions that didn’t have definitive answers, where I could explore a lot of grey area where each person was right in their own way,” he says in explaining why he chose his topic.

While the film is set just barely into the future, and there is no company existing today like the one in the film, the screenplay unfolds in a very plausible way. A geneticist creates a website called "The Perfect 46" that pairs folks with their genetic match for having children.

To better describe his interest in portraying events that might be right around the corner, Brett calls his work “science-factual,” a term he says he borrowed from some Walt Disney work.

Brett was first attracted to the topic in 2008 when he read about 23andMe in Time Magazine and subsequently used their service. Watching his film and talking with Brett gives us a chance to see the industry from an outsider’s perspective.

The film’s next screening is at Stanford on August 4th, accompanied by a panel discussion with local life scientists.

Podcast brought to you by: See your company name here. - Promote your organization by aligning it with today's latest trends.

Guest:

John Dupre, Professor, University of Exeter

Listen (2:19) Why should scientists think about philosophy?

Listen (8:47) Antireductionism

Listen (6:04) Have molecular biologists suffered from reductionism?

Listen (9:20) Underestimating the problems of biology

Listen (2:01) Are biologists getting the message?

Listen (5:29) Do you think much about the GMO controversy?

When a researcher is doing basic science, what is meant by that? Indeed, what is science? Ernest Rutherford, a British chemist and physicist at the turn of the 20th century remarked, “all science is either physics or stamp collecting." Is this true? Can all science be reduced to physics or does a discipline such as biology need to be studied in its own way? We can ask more specific questions pertaining to life science. What is a genome? And is the tree of life really a tree? And furthermore, are these questions really that interesting?

Here to answer these questions and kick off a new series, "Philosophy of Science," is John Dupre, a philosopher of biology and professor at the University of Exeter in Southern England. John is an antireductionist. In today's interview he argues that molecular biologists have been limited by a system of science inherited from physicists and other scientists that has been overly reductionist. For example, he says that biologists have relied too much on certain models of the cell without remembering that these are abstract models.

"The real nature of the parts is really shaped by the sort of system that it's participating in," he says.

It's true that we've recently seen biologists become more concerned with "systems" and move away from the overly gene-centric view of biology. The power of new tools and cheap computing are now opening up new possibilities to look at the vast network of connections that transpire in biology. However, John questions whether the new systems biologists aren't just more reductionists working at large.

Should scientists be studying philosophy? John answers, " . . . some scientists need to think more about what they're doing than they're often given time to do."

We finish with a question about the public controversy over GMOs.

Podcast brought to you by: Chempetitive Group - "We love science. We love marketing. We love the idea of combining the two to make great things happen for your marketing communications."

Guest:

John Cumbers, PhD, Synthetic Biologist, NASA Ames

Listen (4:03) Synbio in UK

Listen (1:45) Intrexon IPO and consumer space

Listen (5:30) Crowdfunding and its discontent

Listen (2:39) GMO OMG

Listen (4:52) Trouble in the DIY space?

Listen (3:21) Resveratrol yogurt

Listen (4:06) Highlights of upcoming SynBioBeta conference

Joining us to kick off a new SynBio Series is John Cumbers, founder of SynBioBeta. Cumbers and his team puts on the annual conference for the synthetic biology community in San Francisco each year. The next one is scheduled for Nov 15, 2013. In today's show, John previews the upcoming conference and reviews some of the events of the past year: the Intrexon IPO, the crowdfunded Glowing Plants Project, and other happenings in this exciting space.

Podcast brought to you by: Chempetitive Group - "We love science. We love marketing. We love the idea of combining the two to make great things happen for your marketing communications."

Guest:

Dan Graur, PhD, Professor, University of Houston Bio and Contact Info

Listen (3:09) Study of biology overtaken by hype

Listen (4:55) Scientist vs. technician

Listen (6:34) Public unaware that all they eat are GMOs

Listen (3:58) Do you have a role as a scientist to reach out to the lay audience?

Listen (2:27) What was your reaction to gene patent decision?

Listen (1:43) Thoughts on clinical genomics

Listen (2:04) Twitter and the Very Angry Evolutionary Biologist

We're happy to welcome Dan Graur, Professor of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Houston, back to the program. Dan and his colleagues caused a stir in the world of genetics with their publication "On the Immortality of Television Sets," a sarcastic and witty criticism of the ENCODE Project and ensuing claims about the death of "junk DNA."

In today's interview, Graur says that he's always been a critic of bad science. He sees a trend where technicians and tools folks are masquerading as scientists.

"What happened in recent years," he says, "is that we have a huge influx of people who are not versed in the basics of population genetics and molecular evolution, and such. They are all essentially people who know how to write computer programs, who believe that science is not driven by questions, but it's driven by a sort of high tech natural history--the data will tell us what is in there."

Is not biology an information science? Does not the new biologist need to be a bioinformatician as well? Graur says we do not need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to basic science. (We'll be pursuing this question in an upcoming series, "The Bioinformatician Bottleneck")

Graur is currently working on a book about GMOs for the lay audience. He also shares his thoughts on gene patents, clinical genomes, and that marvelous "time waster", Twitter.

Podcast brought to you by: See your company name here. - Promote your organization by aligning it with today's latest trends.

Guests:

Eric Rey, CEO, Arcadia Biosciences

Listen (6:46) Nitrogen Use Efficiency

Listen (6:38) Where are you finding commercial success?

Listen (2:14) Tilling - a non transgenic platform

Listen (5:43) Best PR comes from being open and honest

Listen (2:05) Understanding GM backlash

Listen (6:13) Food labeling

Arcadia Biosciences is a company in Davis, California that has been developing GM (genetically modified) plants for farmers for over ten years. Their lead product, NUE or nitrogen use efficiency, has been licensed out to agricultural partners around the world. Arcadia CEO, Eric Rey, joins us to explain where the company has found success in those ten years. He discusses Arcadia's science, their business model, and insists the best strategy for overcoming the challenge of GM backlash is in being "as open and honest as possible."

Some of the strongest resistance to genetically modifying crops comes from Eric's home turf, Berkeley, California, which he's quick to remind us is "not the bastion of conservative thinking." Eric finds it ironic that those who are willing to consider the facts about climate change have a hard time doing the same about the GM products his company is producing. Concluding the interview, Eric takes on the recent political push to require labeling for GM foods.

Podcast brought to you by: Chempetitive Group - "We love science. We love marketing. We love the idea of combining the two to make great things happen for your marketing communications."

Podcast brought to you by: See your company name here. - Promote your organization and align it with today's latest trends.

Guest:

Lee M. Silver, PhD, Princeton University Bio and Contact Info

Listen (5:56) What is at stake for biotech in the 2012 election?

Listen (2:05) What do you say to those who insist science should not be on the dole?

Listen (7:39) What is your take on the recent report by Obama's Bioethics Panel?

Listen (6:14) California's Prop 37 a "stupid" thing

Listen (5:56) Controversy over bird flu virus not an easy one

Listen (11:54) GenePeeks offers better filtering at sperm banks

Listen (1:13) Is the consumer genetics movement over?

Lee Silver is an expert on biotech and public policy at Princeton University. He is the author of several books including, Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Remake the American Family. No time is better to get the thoughts of the renowned author than election season.

Silver has been outspoken about biotech policy differences between the Bush and the Obama administrations, and we ask him to extend his thoughts on the upcoming election. He also weighs in on California's Prop 37 requiring the labeling of genetically modified foods. Lee says it's a "stupid" thing. That even if the law is passed, it is not even doable.

Other topics include the controversy over the modification of the bird flu virus and whether the science should have been published, and GenePeeks, Silver's new company that is creating virtual children.

Podcast Sponsor: IDT- gBlocks(TM) Gene Fragments Synthetic biology for any lab

Guest:

Sean Myles, PhD, Ass. Professor, Nova Scotia Agricultural College Bio and Contact Info

Listen (2:29) Honey crisp apple a mistake

Listen (6:33) Genetics and crop breeding

Listen (3:26) Pesticides or GMOs?

Listen (6:12) Cultivated grapes not having enough sex

Listen (8:03) A future with more varietals to choose from

Listen (3:32) Especially inspired by the phenotype of the wine grape

Sean Myles is interested in the sex life of wine grapes and apples. At the Nova Scotia Agricultural College he is focusing on using genetic data to detect and dissect the effects of domestication and breeding on crops. Sean talks about how genetics is changing the future of wine making. While he is not genetically altering plants himself, he discusses the tradeoff between pesticides and GMOs. Sean received his PhD in Genetics from the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig Germany. His undergraduate was in English Literature. His wife is a winemaker in Nova Scotia.