TEDMED 2010 – Day 4 – Ozzie Osbourne, Greg Lucier, AJ Jacobs, and More

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TEDMED wrapped up with a morning that opened and closed with musician Jill Sobule, and was filled with talks ranging from Astronaut Scott Parazynski, Life Technologies CEO Greg Lucier, to musician Ozzy Osbourne, who got his whole genome sequenced by Knome.
Up first was a stellar tour by Jay Walker (founder of Paypal.com) of the first ever anatomical atlas of the brain. Jay had been jumping on stage throughout the conference, showing medically-focused pieces from his extensive private ‘library of imagination.’ The artifacts and books he showed us this morning were a lot of fun. The first ever sketches of the actual anatomy of the human brain were artistic drawings of a man in various settings and positions, with this skull cut in half. The attention to the setting in the drawings was almost comical, with the skull cut man leaning seductively against a wall, splayed out on a table, and more.
Shortly after Jay, Scott Parazynski, astronaut and mountaineer, gave a talk describing his story of spaceflight, attempts to climb Everest, and where he thinks the industry of space is going. Most interesting, was his commentary on the future of private space flight. He gave a nice summary of the developments, citing Virgin Galactic’s new spaceport in the New Mexico desert and SpaceX’s contract with NASA to bring cargo to the international space station. He described the intensive medical tests that NASA requires its astronauts to undergo and yet, also admitted that for normal space flight, you don’t really need any of that. The feeling he gave was that NASA’s requirements to be an astronaut were less for the actual space flights themselves but rather to ensure that the astronauts would be healthy to serve NASA for an extended period of time.
AJ Jacobs, author of various gimmicky books that describe his attempts to do outlandish things like read the entire encyclopedia and live exactly as the bible suggests talked about his latest effort to be the ‘healthiest person possible’. He underwent nearly every medical test he could, tried all sorts of diets, and ate as healthily as possible. His biggest ‘insight’ is that the principles behind being healthy are incredibly obvious in that you should eat less and move more. Though that’s not the most revelatory thing we’ve heard, at least his talk was enjoyable and full of jokes.
Next up was Greg Lucier, CEO of Life Technologies who used TEDMED to announce an incredible new DNA sequencing product built off their $700 million (or so, w/ all costs included) acquisition of Ion Torrent, a technology that allows you to sequence DNA directly, by threading through a chip and quickly identifying which nucleotide goes through the chip. This exceptional platform is able sequence a full genome in the course of hours rather than days, at a fraction of the cost. We nabbed an interview with Greg that we’ll put up as a separate post. Be sure to take a look for a glimpse into the future of DNA sequencing. The most interesting bit of his talk is that though their technology is wickedly fast, they’re still using semiconductor technology from 1994. They’ve got a series of wells that they pull DNA strands though and these wells are currently very far apart, at least in the world of semiconductors. They wanted to start conservatively since they wanted their technology to work but after validation, it’s theoretically an easy move to bring these wells closer together and more wells on a chip equals faster sequencing. In other words, this technology could quickly evolve from being faster than anything else out there, to faster than itself.
And the last talk of TEDMED 2010: Ozzy Osbourne, Prince of Darkness, who recently got his whole DNA sequenced by Knome. They brought him on stage for an interview with a scientist from Knome and we took a tour through Ozzy’s DNA as they highlighted some SNPs and new sequence variations that might give Ozzy some of his quintessential traits. We have a feeling there’s going to be a lot of crap news coverage on this one, because they mentioned that Ozzy has some variations in common with Neanderthals. Really, however, this doesn’t mean very much and is just kind of fun. A lot of us probably have the same variations. The most important thing that came out of this discourse, we think, is the potential of celebrities getting sequenced to bring conversations about genetics to the cultural forefront. When talking to Ozzy while looking at his genes, questions around why he might have had a drug addition or lived a riskier life, from a genetic basis were asked. These sorts of nonjudgmental, biology focused conversations about sensitive topics like alcohol addition are exceptionally rare in popular culture. The audience loved going through Ozzy’s genes and we think, if say, Brad Pitt were sequenced, similarly important conversations would take place.
Jill Sobule closed TEDMED with another song, and we hung around for a bit to grab an interview with Dean Kamen (we’ll post it shortly). Overall, TEDMED 2010 was spectacular. It always feels a bit uncomfortable being so hyperbolic about an event, but really, there’s nothing else out there like it in the world of medicine. Stay tuned over the course of the next few weeks as we get together videos and more stories from TEDMED 2010.