Episode description

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

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• Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com
• Artwork by Amrit Pal

Important, Not Important is produced by Crate Media