Alright, so in this second part, we're talking about genetics. Now, genetics has obviously been around for many, many years. And you know, it's sometimes been a very hot topic sometimes hasn't always kind of been just research and development. And it has made a number of good breakthroughs. But in recent years, that particular one called CRISPR, is actually being developed, and particularly the CRISPR cast nine, because, you know, that is obviously based on CRISPR. But this CRISPR cast nine sort of gene editing tool has really, really opened up the sort of wealth of the ability of people to actually do this gene editing.

So, in kind of think about it, as you know, previously, genetics you know, you were always able to edit genes, but it was very, very expensive, you know, only very large corporations or companies or research labs could actually do this. You know, it's kind of like back in the 80s where You know, only very few companies or big universities had, you know, computers or mainframes, they took up entire buildings and very, very big, very, very expensive. Not many people had access to them with CRISPR cast nine, this takes the ability to edit genes and hugely reduces the cost and complexity of actually doing it to the point where it only cost a few hundred dollars to do and, you know, can be done by students at university level. So, as you can imagine this, you know, huge reduction in price and complexity. And complexity means that a huge array of new people can use the tool, do more research and sort of just push the field forward.

So it, you know, difference between having maybe 100 companies in the world that aren't a supercomputer to having, you know, literally billions of people all over the world having access to computers and being able to make apps and programs with them, you know, obviously, you're going to get a lot more, you know, push forward in that industry. And the same thing is happening with genetics. Right now, now, along with this new ability of CRISPR, cast nine, another potential, even bigger development is something called gene drives. And this was developed recently as well. And this is where you essentially, you know, you might edit someone's genes and you know, maybe you change your baby from having, you know, green eyes to blue eyes or whatever, you know, your genetic alteration might be, maybe it's not on human, maybe it's on an animal or, you know, mosquito, whatever it might be, you're changing that things, genes, usually that trait, you know, the baby with the blue eyes would basically end once that person dies, but with Gene drives, what that has the ability to do is to force that, you know, animal or human to when they actually have a child or offspring, that gene gets forced onto that child.

So even if, you know, traditionally you would have, you know, perhaps green eyes were more dominant Over blue eyes. And if you had someone that had blue eyes and someone that had green eyes and they had a child, you know, the baby would have green eyes because it's a more dominant gene. Gene drives essentially overtake that in anything else. And they forced that. So if this person with blue eyes has been made to have blue eyes with a gene drive their offspring, their child would forcibly have blue eyes as well as that gene drive, regardless of whether, you know, green eyes were traditionally you know, the dominant gene. So it forces this trait to continue on.

And then you know, that child if they that had another child would, of course, have blue eyes as well. And it forces this trait on throughout the entire species eventually, as you know, everyone eventually breeds with everyone. Obviously, that would take a long time in someone like human species like humans, but for mosquitoes, they've, you know, estimated this might only take maybe one or two years, for the entire species to essentially be forced, whatever. This is. Gene edit that they do might be. So this is an exceptionally powerful technology that can allow people to actually alter an entire species the world over in, you know, even a few short years.

And, you know, obviously, that's some pretty far reaching consequences if it's something like mosquitoes, or maybe bees, or, you know, other types of animals that all interact with plants and other animals and humans. So it's a very big responsibility. And it's a very big, you know, technology that has actually been developed. And there's a lot of people that are quite scared of it, and rightfully so. Currently, there seems to be, you know, a bit of a stop on the technology at the moment, you know, people are sort of stepping back and saying, you know, what are the benefits and the pros and the cons of doing this and they're discussing this and having conferences about it and all this sort of stuff. So they're being very, very responsible about it, which is excellent.

Obviously, you don't want someone to just randomly go and, you know, change and edit James In, you know, tigers or horses or cows or something like that, and then have that propagate throughout the entire species the world over without anyone else having a say. So it's very good that they're taking their time on this, but it is a fantastic new technology that has just recently been developed. Another fantastic side to genetics is actually computational power. Now, previously, when you want to wanted to sequence you know, someone or some things DNA, it would take a long, long time, a lot of computing power and cost a lot of money. Now, with the advent of, you know, cloud computing, and much faster computing, you know, that sequencing of the DNA is much quicker and again, just makes it, you know, available to a much broader audience. On top of that, we're now seeing, you know, more sophisticated computer programs to analyze that sequence data, you know, AI and machine learning as well.

You know, using that technology to again, make that even quicker. All these sorts of, you know, technological advancements are building on, you know, the traditional gene editing and, you know, gene sequencing that was already there before enabling new things, enabling us to better understand the actual genome of a plant or human, meaning we can actually edit things a lot better and more confidently, and this has actually led to a lot better, you know, ability of geneticists to actually edit food. Now one of these foods that actually has been genetically altered already is called golden rice. And golden rice has been genetically edited to produce more beta carotene and what this does is not only sort of turn it a bit of a golden color, hence the name, but it means that it has actual more vitamin A and vitamin A deficiency has been sort of noted as a huge you know, killer of children under five the world over especially in poor countries that actually kills over half a million children under five every year.

And so their hope with this is that whilst you know surely can't feed the Children enough vitamin A, hopefully they can get more of this golden rice into their diet, increase their vitamin A, and hopefully, you know, stop them from dying. And this is a fantastic result that has been rolled out there has been some opposition to it. But you know, I won't try and convince you one way or the other. I will point to this fantastic video on GMO and you know, gene editing of food and stuff. It goes through both sides and explains a lot of things in very easy to understand detail. So if you are interested in that topic, feel free to have a look at that video.

It's a excellent resource, I think. And hopefully that makes things a little clearer as well. So I hope it's clear that genetics is you know, a very, you know, well set up industry already and there are a lot of jobs, especially in the research and development area. But you know, there's also some other new sort of uses and cases coming into it. There's companies like 23andme, who use your DNA to sequence it and then give you information about it. There's other things companies that do the same thing except give you information on, you know, perhaps your ancestors or things like that.

Lots of sort of new novel cases and businesses popping up that obviously also need employees to work at it. So lots of different types of positions, both in research and in traditional business are available for now, these are just sort of the starting businesses that are coming out of labs from genetics, and are expected in the future. There's even more diverse businesses out there, who knows, you know, perhaps one day there'll be a clinic or business that you can go to and you know, get a shot or something, can it changes your eyes blue or changes your hair color, and you know, it's your genes on the fly? It's very, very possible. Obviously, a lot of research and testing developing would need to be done. But, you know, this is the sort of future that you know, isn't actually too far out.

It's not science fiction anymore. They have proven it can be done. And it's, you know, I think quite a fantastic future. The next part that we'll get into now is even more exciting, I think, than either nanotechnology or genetics. And that's actually machine learning. So, I haven't covered this in a huge amount of detail yet but in this next part, I will because it is still very, very important.

I'll talk to you then.