Raising Health - Journal Club: Hunting the Eagle Killer

Journal Club: Hunting the Eagle Killer

04/20/21 • 27 min

In 1994, 29 bald eagles were found dead at DeGray Lake in Arkansas. This mass mortality event kicked off a search for the culprit which has last over 25 years. On this episode of the Bio Eats World Journal Club, host Lauren Richardson talks to Susan B. Wilde of the University of Georgia about her group's work finally identifying the eagle killer, and revealing a complex web of ecosystem dysfunction. Solving this mystery required a fresh point of view, a wide range of techniques and technologies, and an international collaborative effort.

Susan B. Wilde, Ph.D, Associate Professor of Aquatic Science at the University of Georgia, joins host Lauren Richardson to discuss the results and implications of the article "Hunting the eagle killer: A cyanobacterial neurotoxin causes vacuolar myelinopathy" by Steffen Breinlinger, Tabitha J. Phillips, Brigette N. Haram, Jan Mareš, José A. Martínez Yerena, Pavel Hrouzek, Roman Sobotka, W. Matthew Henderson, Peter Schmieder, Susan M. Williams, James D. Lauderdale, H. Dayton Wilde, Wesley Gerrin, Andreja Kust, John W. Washington, Christoph Wagner, Benedikt Geier, Manuel Liebeke, Heike Enke, Timo H. J. Niedermeyer and Susan B. Wilde, published in Science.

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Journal Club: Sourcing the Secrets of Climate Adaptation

Understanding how plants have adapted to natural climate change over millions of years provides a playbook of evolutionary strategies to help us prepare for and respond to man-made climate change. On this episode, host Lauren Richardson talks to Thomas Juenger, Associate Professor at the University of Texas in Austin and co-senior author of the recent article “Genomic mechanisms of climate adaptation in polyploid bioenergy switchgrass”, published in Nature. They discuss how studying native plants — like switchgrass — can inform crop improvement strategies, the import role of switchgrass as a possible future source of biofuels, how advances in sequencing technology have unlocked the secrets hidden in plant genomes, and more.

Thomas Juenger, Ph.D, Associate Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin, joins host Lauren Richardson (@lr_bio) to discuss the results and implications of the article “Genomic mechanisms of climate adaptation in polyploid bioenergy switchgrass”, by John T. Lovell, Alice H. MacQueen, Sujan Mamidi, Jason Bonnette, Jerry Jenkins, Joseph D. Napier, Avinash Sreedasyam, Adam Healey, Adam Session, Shengqiang Shu, Kerrie Barry, Stacy Bonos, LoriBeth Boston, Christopher Daum, Shweta Deshpande, Aren Ewing, Paul P. Grabowski, Taslima Haque, Melanie Harrison, Jiming Jiang, Dave Kudrna, Anna Lipzen, Thomas H. Pendergast IV, Chris Plott, Peng Qi, Christopher A. Saski1, Eugene V. Shakirov, David Sims, Manoj Sharma, Rita Sharma, Ada Stewart, Vasanth R. Singan, Yuhong Tang, Sandra Thibivillier, Jenell Webber, Xiaoyu Weng, Melissa Williams, Guohong Albert Wu, Yuko Yoshinaga, Matthew Zane, Li Zhang, Jiyi Zhang, Kathrine D. Behrman, Arvid R. Boe, Philip A. Fay, Felix B. Fritschi, Julie D. Jastrow, John Lloyd-Reilley, Juan Manuel Martínez-Reyna, Roser Matamala, Robert B. Mitchell, Francis M. Rouquette Jr, Pamela Ronald, Malay Saha, Christian M. Tobias, Michael Udvardi, Rod A. Wing, Yanqi Wu, Laura E. Bartley, Michael Casler, Katrien M. Devos, David B. Lowry, Daniel S. Rokhsar, Jane Grimwood, Thomas E. Juenger & Jeremy Schmutz published in Nature.

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The Power of Patient-Centric Healthcare

Today we are re-running an episode exploring a question that seems super straightforward, but that on closer examination reveals incredible complexity, and that is "how do we put the patient at the center of the healthcare system?” It almost seems counterintuitive, since aren’t patients always the center of healthcare? But healthcare is a strange industry, in that it is built with the fundamental goal of serving patients, but in many ways, the patient isn’t always the end customer of the system. In fact, the patient — and the patient’s voice — can often be lost or overlooked in the enormous, complex, convoluted business flows between a huge system of providers, in elaborate clinical work flows, in insurance coverage and reimbursements, and in high level policy debates.

In this episode, a16z general partner Julie Yoo and deal team partner Jay Rughani talk with Freda Lewis Hall — a physician who was formerly Pfizer’s Chief Patient Officer and Chief Medical Officer; and who among many other roles was appointed by the Obama Administration to the Board of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. They discuss what happens when you rethink the entire healthcare system from the patient’s point of view, from drug development to clinical trials to care delivery. What tools and new approaches can we use to truly put the patient at the center of the healthcare system? And how do we update our Flintstones healthcare system to match our Star Wars medicines?