New podcast series: 'Population Genomics'

Research

New podcast series: ‘Population Genomics’

By
Colette Gallagher

March 8, 2023

Looking for something new and engaging to listen to on your ride to work? Check out the latest episode of Mayo Clinic's new podcast: "The Pursuit of Precision: The Science Advancing Individualized Medicine."

March 8, Episode 2: 'Population Genomics’

Did you know that any two human beings are 99.9% identical? Cathy Wurzer, a broadcast journalist from Minnesota Public Radio, talks with two experts in population genomics, a rapidly evolving field that looks at the large-scale comparison of DNA sequences of populations to investigate genetic variation within and between populations of people.

By studying genetic variations and other genomic regions, population genomics can provide insights into the history and evolutionary relationships of populations and the genetic basis of complex traits and diseases. Learn more about the drivers of disease and how genetics affects your risks across the population. Discover how researchers are moving population genomics from the research bench to clinical practice and its importance to individualized medicine.

Guests are:

Matthew Ferber, Ph.D., a clinical and molecular geneticist and director of the Mayo Clinic GeneGuide laboratory

“As we start looking at population genetics and genomics the idea of moving it from the research bench to routine clinical practice is an area that I think we’re very close to encountering. There is also a lot of activity beginning to percolate around doing large-scale studies for just a handful of genes that we know have a really, really, large effect within the population.”

Sir Rory Collins, FMedSci FRS, principal investigator and chief executive of the U.K. Biobank

“There are now 30,000 researchers using U.K. biobank data for all sorts of things that no one imagined at the beginning. One of the beauties of the model is it unleashes the imagination of all sorts of scientists who wouldn’t otherwise have been able to access data on this scale and this depth and they do things that are remarkable.”

Next episode:

March 22: "Molecular Virology and Novel Therapeutics for Individualized Medicine" featuring Michael Barry, Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic consultant in Infectious Diseases and Kathie Seley-Radtke, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.