Hi, I’m Aastha, and welcome to Live Longer World, where I interview scientists on longevity and the frontiers of biology.
Today’s interview is a special one, with two great minds in biology coming together - Denis Noble and Michael Levin.
Denis Noble is a renowned biologist and pioneer in systems biology, known for his groundbreaking work on the electrical activity of the heart and his influential contributions to the understanding of biological systems.
Denis is an advocate for taking a systems integrative approach to biology, as opposed to the reductionist gene-centric view that has dominated the field due to Neo-Darwinism. The gene-centric view has failed us in advancing progress on many diseases, and we need to now take a systems based approach focused on functional networks within biological systems.
I’m sure most of you are familiar with Michael Levin already, given my ongoing podcast series with him. He is an American developmental and synthetic biologist at Tufts University, where he is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor. His research is focused on bioelectricity and he is my co-host for this podcast.
We discuss:
DNA is not the blueprint of life
Why biology’s reductionist approach is flawed
Everything that is wrong with Neo-Darwinism
Epigenetic inheritance
How to advance longevity and the cure of diseases
Watch on YouTube. Listen on Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Timestamps below.
Follow me on X @aasthajs for more on longevity. Hope you enjoy the conversation!
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Timestamps:
0:00 Denis as Mike Levin’s hero
0:10 Denis’s journey to systems biology; cell voltage is a global property of the cell
3:45 Advice to young researchers pursuing systems biology
7:00 “Absolutely everything is wrong with Neo-Darwinism”
14:10 Epigenetic inheritance
19:12 Genetic vs. other information used by organisms
23:48 Biology textbooks have to expand beyond DNA in 50 years
25:03 Epigenetic processes are ubiquitous
28:58 If not DNA, what is the blueprint of life?
36:15 Rewriting biology textbooks is fundamental
39:57 “A lot of time has been wasted” (in biology)
46:52 Darwin on the “Origin of Species”
55:38 “Unfortunate that Philosophy and science have diverged”
1:00:31 Importance of Functional networks; DNA does not predict disease
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