#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