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Get wild and scientific with PETRI DISH, an irreverent podcast hosted by two brothers exploring the dank corners of biology
Episodes
Monday Dec 16, 2019
Monday Dec 16, 2019
Hey everyone, this week we complete our discussion about cancer. Last episode we talked about what cancer is, where it comes from, and what the different types are. This week, Sean and Nathan talk about the risk factors associated with cancer, the current treatment methodologies, and the next-generation of treatments that scientists are working on!
Also featured in this episode is a promo commercial for another podcast called Songbirding, a chill podcast focused around listening to different birds singing -- if that sounds like your thing, then check it out!
You can contact us on twitter @dishpodcast and by email at petridishpod -at- gmail.com. Let us know what you think about the episodes, things we missed, or things you'd like us to talk about!
References:
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/research/car-t-cells
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/teratomas
https://www.pnas.org/content/72/9/3585.short
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/disparities
Monday Dec 09, 2019
Monday Dec 09, 2019
Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide and it is a biologically complex set of diseases, so Sean and Nathan dive in to the biology this week (and next week) on Petri Dish. Cancer affects almost everyone in the world, with millions of people diagnosed each year and almost everyone knowing someone who has had cancer. This episode, they talk about what cancer is, what the main theories are on the cause of cancer, and the different kinds of cancer out there. Next week we discuss current and next-gen treatments for cancer and risk-factors for cancer! Tune in!
Have questions? Want to yell at Sean or Nathan? Well, Nathan doesn't read the twitter, but Sean does! Tweet at him @dishpodcast, or email them at petridishpod -at- gmail.com. Check us out at patreon.com/petridish!
References:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-019-0420-5
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/9/3502
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0100937
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5501415/
Monday Dec 02, 2019
Monday Dec 02, 2019
Welcome back to Petri Dish! Hope Americans had a nice Thanksgiving break, and are refreshed and recharged for another episode. We're picking up where we left off last time with part 2 of Cannabinoids. We discussed the plant, compounds, and briefly covered what they can do to you last episode. But this episode, we dive deeper into the purported health benefits and hazards of THC and CBD. We talk about cancer, glaucoma, and more!
If you have any feedback, positive or negative, let us know! You can tweet at us @dishpodcast or you can email us at petridishpod at gmail.com. You can also swing over to our patreon for early releases and other stuff!
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4791144/
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmra1407304
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00415-012-6634-z
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0753332216321060
https://www.nature.com/articles/npp201751
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5616224/
https://www.nature.com/articles/nutd20139
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08897077.2016.1219438
Monday Nov 25, 2019
Monday Nov 25, 2019
Hello and happy almost Thanksgiving to folks in the USA! In honor of a holiday that features stuffing yourself, we're covering the muchies-inducing plant, Cannabis, and the chemicals it produces. With more and more locations around the world decriminalizing and legalizing marijuana, this is a great time to ask yourself "what the fuck does this shit actually do, like real science-wise"? This episode, the first half of a two-parter on cannabinoids, covers info about the plant itself, the chemical class of compounds that includes THC and CBD, your own internal endocannabinoid system, and a fast run-through on what the current science says about medical benefits of cannabinoids!
And tune in next week for the second part, where we dive into the current science of whether cannabinoids help with fighting cancer, treating glaucoma, and fighting addiction to other substances. If you like (or don't like, or really have pretty much any feelings about) what you hear, let us know on twitter @dishpodcast and/or via email: petridishpod -at- gmail.com! Also, feel free to hit us up on patreon at www.patreon.com/petridish !
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4740396/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6340993/
Monday Nov 18, 2019
Monday Nov 18, 2019
Hi Everyone! This week Sean and Nathan are joined by certified young person Griffin Allen, who has street-level knowledge about VAPING -- the recently-in-the-news drug delivery phenomenon that has seen an unexpected uptick in sending people to the hospital over the past year. How does vaping work, and how does it compare to traditional smoking? What can you vape? When people are sucking on USB drives, was that actually them vaping or are they just dumb? We'll get into it!
Remember though! We're not a medical advice podcast (those probably don't exist). Don't get medical advice from a podcast, people.
References:
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/9/1853/htm
https://academic.oup.com/ntr/article/19/10/1224/2631648#113610483
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44295336
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/health/vaping-illness-cdc.html
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/severe-lung-disease.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3930618/
https://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2019/10/26/0008-5472.CAN-19-2997.full-text.pdf
Monday Nov 11, 2019
Monday Nov 11, 2019
On this week's episode, Sean and Nathan explore the human side of outer space! What happens to our bodies in microgravity? What are galactic cosmic rays? Will Disney own the Lunar Gateway Space Station?! Listen to find out, more or less!
CORRECTION: Sean messed up! At a certain point, when discussing Van Allen Belts, Sean states that he thinks a portion of the International Space Station's flight path may slightly touch the edge of the inner Van Allen Belt. N O P E ! The ISS hugs the Earth pretty close, and never really gets nearby the Van Allen dudes. Try to like, actually read something next time, Sean.
If you have other space stuff you know and want to tell us about, or if we got something else wrong, or if Nathan offended you, please contact us! On Twitter we are @dishpodcast, or you can email us at petridishpod at gmail.com. Please rate and review us on stuff, and consider supporting our work over at patreon.com/petridish!
References:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-42829-z
https://asbmr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jbmr.1647
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00198-012-2243-z
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41526-017-0013-0
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-319-50909-9_23-1.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-50311-z
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/space_radiation_ebook.pdf
Monday Nov 04, 2019
Monday Nov 04, 2019
Spooky episode 13 is just dropping just a few days after Halloween! This episode is about disease vectors -- specifically ticks, mosquitoes, and the diseases they carry!
Learn about how climate change is somehow going to make this stuff worse too! Find out which hemorrhagic fevers are percolating in those little critters.
Sponsors: RAGE SALON; SUCKERS - The Sexy Vampire Dating App
References:
https://sfamjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2672.2009.04598.x
Monday Oct 28, 2019
Monday Oct 28, 2019
This weeks episode is a spooky sci-fi romp about how we're hooking up brains to computers and minds to machines back to minds again! Except it is all real science! Tune in to hear Nathan and Andrei tell Sean he's crazy, learn what Elon Musk is doing with his latest company, and whether this technology is going to destroy humanity before CRISPR does.
For some visual references, I highly recommend this article by "Wait But Why": https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html
Quantum shit is not really Sean's expertise, but this article specifically was what we was referring to when he suggested photosynthesis may involve quantum stuff: https://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science/pdf/S1360-1385(18)30049-9.pdf
References:
https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/8/361/361ra141.full
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10489
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/703801v4.full
https://www.wired.com/story/brain-machine-interface-isnt-sci-fi-anymore/
https://www.cell.com/neuron/pdfExtended/S0896-6273(17)30703-1
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10489
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-41895-7
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-10957-z
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-maestro-of-memory-manipulation-20160623/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5681944/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4907333/
http://nerve.bsd.uchicago.edu/FB/NatureReviews.pdf
Monday Oct 21, 2019
Monday Oct 21, 2019
Part two of CRISPR and genetic editing! This time, we talk about what plants and animals we have already CRISPR'd! Also, we discuss CRISPRs in the context of human health. Then, at the insistence of Nathan and Andrei, Sean is forced to discuss the ethical conundrums that come up surrounding the democratization of genetic modification.
Nathan starts this episode out with a trigger warning about GMOs, but a less facetious trigger warning for this episode is that we discuss CRISPR and genetic modifications in the context of bioterrorism later in the episode (48:30-55:10), so if for whatever reason you find such things hard to listen to, you know which chunk to skip!
Sean mentions silkworms as an organism that has been successfully CRISPR'd, but missed a paper that wasn't just proof of concept -- they shoved in spider silk genes and make a hybrid silk, which is super cool! Stuff is getting CRISPR'd all the time, and new forms of CRISPR are getting engineered in labs all over the world, so this episode is pretty much immediately out of date, but whatever, whaddya gonna do.
If you have a gene you want to CRISPR, or want to yell at us for misrepresenting something, tweet us @dishpodcast or email us at petridishpod at gmail.com! Check us out on patreon.com/petridish for early release of episodes and some other kinds of stuff.
References:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0177966
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pbi.12832
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pbi.12927
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jipb.12620
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-34104-4
http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/174/2/935.full
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359511316309047
https://www.nature.com/articles/cr2013146
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6357/1303.abstract
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965174816301394
https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-016-1144-4#Sec1
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0106718#abstract0
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep13878
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6643211/
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0108622
https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3439
https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3473
https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/embj.201899243
https://www.nature.com/articles/cr20189
https://www.cell.com/molecular-therapy-family/molecular-therapy/pdfExtended/S1525-0016(16)45428-6
https://synbiobeta.com/crispr-clinical-trials-a-2019-update/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6414166/
https://academic.oup.com/jlb/article/3/2/413/1751234#98305641
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6058482/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05843-9
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4779287/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4278802/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41580-019-0131-5
Monday Oct 14, 2019
Monday Oct 14, 2019
Tenth episode of Petri Dish! Going to be honest, didn't think we'd make it this long. Sean and Nathan have a special guest for this episode, Andrei Daye. He's a dude who has read some stuff about CRISPR-Cas9 and how it is a --r e v o l u t i o n a r y-- technology, and wanted to know more! In case you hadn't heard, CRISPR-Cas9 is the hot new way to genetically modify DNA, and has been used in labs for all sorts of research including the controversial CRISPR-ing of those twins in China!
But this episode (part 1 of 2) is about the nitty gritty of how CRISPR works and what its limitations are. Something Sean didn't get to go into but wanted to (Nathan rushed him) was that there are other members of the Cas endonuclease family that are proving to be very useful, like Cpf1, Cas3, Cas13 -- not to mention that Cas9 from different bacterial species can have different properties! So much stuff to know!
References:
https://www.nature.com/articles/cr201776
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-06129-w