Natural born killers

Today I'm joined by another floor-mate of mine at UCSF, Bassem Al-Sady. Bassem's lab does beautiful and elegant work on how genes are silenced in cells ranging from yeast to stem cells. He explains all the mysteries that remain about this fundamental process and that aspects of it date back to the earliest types of cells. We also talk about his innovative teaching efforts and how to improve graduate education.

This week I'm so thrilled to interview Dr. Stephen Hauser, author of "The Face Laughs While the Brain Cries." He discusses a remarkable career as a physician-scientist, in which he uncovered a key role for B cells in the debilitating autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis. More remarkably, his perseverance led to the transformative drugs that are now available for this disease, emphasizing the importance of basic science for addressing long-standing healthcare challenges and the unique lens that practicing physicians can bring to biomedical research.

This week I'm so thrilled to interview Dr. Ron Krauss. Ron has make seminal contributions to our understanding of heart disease, including early work on cholesterol and his ongoing studies of statins. He explains why human nutrition is so hard and what is needed to provide more predictive dietary guidelines.

Synthetic biologist Kole Roybal joins us today. Kole is a leader in the emerging area of cell therapy, and has developed sophisticated ways of controlling immune cells for the treatment of cancer. He explains what led to these very recent breakthroughs and what he's excited about next.

This week I'm joined by Jay Levy, a world expert in HIV. Jay was one of the first people to isolate the virus and had made numerous contributions to our understanding of HIV and AIDS. He walks us through this fascinating history and the current challenges in this area.

I'm thrilled to interview Lewis Lanier this week, who recently stepped down as my department chair. Lewis has had a remarkable career in science and industry, including the early days of flow cytometry and the discovery of a new type of immune cell dubbed the "natural killer cell". He explains how these NK cells were found and why they're so unique and fascinating.

This week my guest is Dr. Susan Fisher, a world renowned expert in the placenta. She explains how truly remarkable the placenta is and how it overturns a lot of what we normally assume about the body.

I'm am so excited to welcome Dr. Shaeri Mukherjee to the show. Shaeri is my next-door neighbor at UCSF and has been dubbed the "bacteria whisperer". Her lab uses bacteria as tools to uncover fundamental insights into cell biology.

We're back this week with Seth Shipman from the Gladstone Institutes and the University of California, San Francisco. Seth has built molecular recording devices that can record data within living cells. He even used these methods to re-create one of the first movies put to film. This work has clear technological implications and is also providing insights into phage biology.

We're back this week with Polly Fordyce. Polly is an Assistant Professor of Genetics and Bioengineering at Stanford. She has built remarkable tools for studying transcription factors and enzymes, really accelerating what is possible and opening up new areas of study. She explains why hydrogels are so cool and how you too can use them in your research program.