FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe
FutureBites is a podcast exploring promising and exciting pathways to a better future. Hosted by Dr Bruce McCabe, a futurist and keynote speaker who travels the world presenting his unique insights and research on the future to corporations, governments, and audiences in all industries. In each FutureBites episode, Bruce meets with an inspiring leader in science, technology, economics or the social sciences to talk about ideas, game-changers and opportunities to create a better future.
FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe
CRISPR and the Future of Food - with Rodolphe Barrangou
Welcome to the first episode of FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe. In this episode, Prof. Rodolphe Barrangou of North Carolina State University joins Bruce to talk about CRISPR and gene-editing and the future of food!
CRISPR is short for CRISPR-Cas9. The CRISPR-Cas9 system and a family of related tools have brought faster, cheaper, more accurate, and more efficient methods to genome editing. They are unquestionably one of the top technologies changing the world right now.
Professor Barrangou was involved early in the process of proving out the science of the role CRISPR played in nature. He proved experimentally that CRISPR was responsible for the immunity effect in bacteria against phages.
He has since co-founded five CRISPR-based companies spanning human therapeutics, food and agriculture. He is editor-in-chief of the CRISPR journal, and runs the CRISPR lab at NC state where he is working on transforming the future of food and agriculture.
The episode explores how much editing could take place in agriculture through 2050 should we choose, the almost unlimited new editing opportunities opening up (not least of which is playing a key role in making the planet sustainable), what must happen before we can create that future, resistance and changing societal attitudes, the unique experimental challenges and stupendous skills shortages compared to the application of CRISPR in human therapeutics, and more. The future of food and agriculture is an exciting place!
To read the whole interview, check out the FutureBites episode transcript.
Learn more about Bruce's work as a futurist speaker.
See you in the future!
