#113 – Manolis Kellis: Human Genome and Evolutionary Dynamics

Manolis Kellis is a professor at MIT and head of the MIT Computational Biology Group. He is interested in understanding the human genome from a computational, evolutionary, biological, and other cross-disciplinary perspectives.

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Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

OUTLINE:

00:00 – Introduction

03:54 – Human genome

17:47 – Sources of knowledge

29:15 – Free will

33:26 – Simulation

35:17 – Biological and computing

50:10 – Genome-wide evolutionary signatures

56:54 – Evolution of COVID-19

1:02:59 – Are viruses intelligent?

1:12:08 – Humans vs viruses

1:19:39 – Engineered pandemics

1:23:23 – Immune system

1:33:22 – Placebo effect

1:35:39 – Human genome source code

1:44:40 – Mutation

1:51:46 – Deep learning

1:58:08 – Neuralink

2:07:07 – Language

2:15:19 – Meaning of life