EP 25 · 29:42

Applications: CRISPR into yeast for scalable pharma production

From Plants, Quantum Sensors, and Predicting Cancer Evolution

Episode
9/23
A plant missing enzyme solves a 50-year biosynthesis mystery, entangled atomic clouds push quantum sensing beyond the SQL, and ALFA-K predicts how aneuploid cancers evolve under treatment.
Transcript

752 words · auto-generated from the episode video

29:42>> that factory, we have the blueprints. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> So, we can just take any a yeast cell >> and give it the instructions to build the small factory, >> which now removes the need to grow the plant or any of that life cycle process. We literally can just have a single function yeast cell that focuses on producing this outcome. Period. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> And then we can just scale up the number of yeast cells. Yeah. >> And we just It's one step, no life cycle. You can do it in the lab. And this is how you get the industrial grade industrial volume to of production. >> Exactly. So it's making this very cheap because all you have to do is grow yeast, which we know how to do. That's like bread and beer, right? So this

30:24synthetic biology approach can completely revolutionize >> how we grow these class of compounds, >> right? And it's a whole class. It's not just that particular one. >> This is the first enzyme that we found that does this now. We've got a blueprint on how to even approach this problem. Right? >> Right. We can scale up. >> We can do all sorts of really cool stuff. So securine is the one that's a particularly a specific candidate that would help as it relates to leukemia therapy. Yeah. >> But what you're saying is securine is one of only one of the outputs of this many factor. >> There's so many alkaloids out there, >> right? That >> could be using this one-step process.

31:05And a onestep process is just really good because it's just much more manageable. It's a single factory. You don't need two. You don't need the second one to find the intermediary. and da da da da da, you know, >> very very very interesting. >> So, I I thought I thought this was a very cool like, you know, botany doesn't get a lot of love, but this was a very cool um cool one. >> Hey, all the botists out there, you're always going to get some love on this channel. You're always going to get cuz that was and again, it's there's levels to this, right? It's not only the observation, it's showing how that observation is functionally happening. The the the mechanisms by which that process arises. uh then getting with

31:46that understanding now it's let's see how we can apply this to other areas of research again it it feels very much like a platform >> uh because you can generate any number of different alkaloids >> with this factory >> um it's it's funny you know the old town that I'm from in North Carolina that area used to be called like it's tobacco used to be the big agriculture uh so like even in Durham they call it tobacco district they convert part of these old massive tobacco factories into like you know co-working spaces and all this and that. I will have everybody know that the collapse of the tobacco industry and the RTP was not due to these many

32:27factories. We weren't there yet. However, I mean I'm it's it seems like there is like if nicotine is one of these alkaloids that could come out of this factory. >> Yeah. >> That seems like a place that some people who are trying to line their pockets are going to run to. Um, I don't know what the economics are around nicotine production, so that might be totally off base, but there's a million different use cases you can see for this. A great story number one, starting off with botany, which we don't always cover. >> No, >> but we want to give some love. >> Uh, we're going to jump into >> one of the most popular parts of the show, the rundown. We are not able to cover every breaking science research story week to week because there's just

33:09so much science happening. globally. So, we take the rundown as an opportunity to give you a little taste of what else is happening in the world of science without going into a deep dive. But before we get into the rundown, just a quick little couple of housekeeping notes such as, "How are you, my friend?" >> Pretty good. >> We had our Super Bowl festivities yesterday. >> Yes. >> Uh, one of the most entertaining Super Bowls in recent memory.

From the episode
  1. EP 25

    Plants, Quantum Sensors, and Predicting Cancer Evolution

    A plant enzyme breakthrough, entangled quantum sensors, and cancer evolution forecasting.

    A plant missing enzyme solves a 50-year biosynthesis mystery, entangled atomic clouds push quantum sensing beyond the SQL, and ALFA-K predicts how aneuploid cancers evolve under treatment.