#4 - Ronan O'Neill [Genetics, Biotechnology, GMO]

Thought Club with Percy Grunwald

G’day and welcome to episode 4 of Thought Club. Do you know about genes? Are you curious how genetic services like “23 and Me” work? Maybe you’ve heard the terms epigenetics, GMO and CRISPR, but actually have no idea what they mean. Well, you’re in luck, because my guest today is my good friend, neighbor and all-round boney man: Ronan O’Neill.

About Ronan

Ronan is a biotechnologist, science communicator and budding medtech entrepreneur who I am lucky enough to have around to answer all my science questions. Ronan has a Master’s Degree in biotechnology and is interested in synthetic biology.

• Article by Ronan O’Neill: How blue light affects your brain and sleep
  
• Mini-podcast by Ronan O’Neill: Can MDMA be used to treat PTSD?
  
• Ronan O’Neill on LinkedIn
  

Mini-transcript

• 3:00 - Reading of genes as it relates to mapping genomes, what mapping a genome actually means and how it’s used by services like 23 and Me
  
• 30:00 - Epigentics: what it means and how it happens
  
• 45:00 - Writing or modifying genes: the history of GMO, what CRISPR actually is and what sort of genetic modifications modern science is actually capable of in 2018
  

Interesting Links

• 23 and Me
  
• Human Genome Project
  
• CRISPR & CRISPR/Cas9 - Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats
  
• Cell Biology by the Numbers (book)
  

Thanks for listening, go to bed!

Love,
P