Hi, I’m Paul Knoepfler, stem cell and genetics researcher, author, & blogger. You may have heard about the new gene editing/genetic modification technology called CRISPR. It is totally changing how we scientists genetically modified cells and even organisms. What used to take years and potentially millions of dollars can be done in weeks or months for a few thousand bucks. In my lab we use CRISPR to do research on stem cells and cancer. Others are doing similar work for a variety of other conditions, while some are making new GMOs in record time such as plants, super-muscled cows or micro pigs CRISPR is transforming the way we do some of our science, but at the same time it is raising difficult questions that require public education and debate. For instance, are we ready to make genetically modified people (what I call GMO sapiens as a mashup of Homo sapiens and GMO)? Is it OK to do this for trying to prevent genetic diseases? What about for human enhancement via designer babies? Could we draw the line between the two? How does this technology even work and what are the risks? Are past works of art like Brave New World and GATTACA now appropriate to discuss as human genetic modification appears to be marching toward reality? Or is that just going to scare people? What about eugenics turbo-charged by new technology? How do we find the right balance in discussion of this revolutionary issue so that we do not freak people out, but at the same time we have a real discussion that doesn’t sugar coat things or dodge real potential issues? There’s a lot to talk about so let’s dive in. You might want to check out my blog at http://www.ipscell.com and my new book on today’s topic, [GMO Sapiens: The Life Changing Science of Designer Babies](http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/9542 You can also view my TED talk on human genetic modification and the possibility of designer babies.) You can also want follow me on Twitter @pknoepfler if you like for all the latest, I will be answering questions starting at 1 PM EST (10 AM PST, 6 pm UTC) Ask Me Anything!

Hi reddit, Twenty years ago, I left my tenured professorship of marine biology for Hollywood. I had a single goal — the cure for being boring (especially for scientists, some of whom need it bad). I found it in a narrative template I crafted and labeled as “The ABT.” It comes indirectly from the co-creators of the Emmy and Peabody award-winning animated series, South Park. In a 2011 Comedy Central documentary about the show, they talked about their “Rule of Replacing” which they use for editing scripts. They replace the word “and” with “but” or “therefore” to improve storytelling — so I turned it into the “And, But, Therefore” template (the ABT). It is now the central tool in my mission to keep people from being boring. I present it in my new book, “Houston, We Have A Narrative,” use it in my work with individual scientists, and have built my Story Circles Narrative Training program around it, which I now run with scientists from NIH and USDA. Together, with this marvelous narrative tool, we are fighting to make the world a tiny bit less boring of a place. I’ll be back at 1 pm EST (10 am PST, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask me anything! WRAP UP TIME: Hey Folks – The two hours is up, I want to thank ALLLLL of you for all the excellent and fun questions – hope I did a halfway decent job of at least getting to some of them. One last time, my webinar this week is the prime resource for everything I was talking about – the one hour webinar I did on Tuesday with Union of Concerned Scientists. Thanks very much to Reddit – I really appreciate this great opportunity! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfnxfNJRk7g&feature=youtu.be

Hello Reddit! We’re Monica Moya and Elizabeth Wheeler from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and we’re using 3D bioprinting techniques and special “bioink” to manufacture human-compatible tissues vascularized with self-assembling vessels and capillaries. We’ve engineered the printed tissue with human cells so that they grow toward nutrients, harvesting the ability of the human body to respond and develop complex vascular networks. This effort is part of a larger research project aimed at replicating the human body on a miniature scale, what we’re calling iCHIP (in vitro Chip-based Human Investigational Platform). It includes research into recreating the central and peripheral nervous systems, the blood-brain barrier, and the heart. This is seriously a new frontier in biology. If we’re successful, iCHIP could be used to develop new countermeasures against biological agents without having to use human subjects. But in order to get the various systems to work together properly, the “human on a chip” will need adequate plumbing. It’s like a house with all these separate rooms, and we’re the plumbers. We’re really excited about the work, and we’re here to talk about it. Ask us anything! We will be back at 1 pm EST (10 am PST, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions. Update, 9:45am PST Hey we are just joining you now! Excited to see other geeking out with us about our science! We will start answering questions shortly! Thanks everyone! Update, 10:05am PST Here’s an article about our work: https://www.llnl.gov/news/researchers-3d-print-living-blood-vessels. It includes an animation that shows how the bioprinted vessels self-assemble vascular networks. Update, 12:15pm PST Thanks everyone for the great questions! Wish we could have answered all 300+ questions but we have to get back to the lab and continue our exciting work! Thanks again! Super exciting that our AMA made it to the front page of Reddit! Monica Moya’s biography: Monica L. Moya is a Research Engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Center for Micro and Nano Technology. She earned a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 2009. Her current research centers around using 3D printing to print living vascular structures for neural systems and tissue engineering applications. Select publications: http://www.pubfacts.com/author/Monica+L+Moya. Elizabeth Wheeler’s biography: Elizabeth Wheeler is a chemical engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a principal investigator for iCHIP, the In-vitro based Human Investigational Platform. She has expertise in medical engineering, microfluidics and bioinstrumentation. Select publications: http://www.pubfacts.com/author/Elizabeth+K+Wheeler.

Hi Reddit, I am Dr. Malika Ihle and I am currently a post doctorate researcher at the University of Sheffield in the UK. I conducted my PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology (MPIO, Germany), under the great supervision of Dr. Wolfgang Forstmeier and Prof Bart Kempenaers, who will both be joining me today! Prof. Bart Kempenaers is the director of the MPIO and head of the Department of Behavioural Ecology and Evolutionary Genetics; Dr. Wolfgang Forstmeier is a researcher in this department, principal investigator of the evolution of sexual behaviour in zebra finches. We are all researching why and how female birds choose their partner, on what criteria, and also why some females are faithful to their partner while others are not. We recently published an article titled “The fitness benefits of mate choice for compatibility in a socially monogamous species” in PLOS Biology. We wanted to understand why female zebra finches differ in their mating preferences: do they pick compatible partners instead of high-quality ones? We compared the reproductive success of birds that bred with their chosen partner, to the fitness of birds that were forced to pair with the chosen partner of another bird. We found that individuals of chosen pairs had 37 percent more offspring than individuals of assigned pairs, not because they were genetically more compatible but because they were behaviourally more compatible: they were better at rearing chicks together. Individuals of chosen pairs were also more faithful to each other; females were more inclined to mate with their chosen partner, and males were more willing to invest into paternal care. Overall, it seems that each specific bird was, rather idiosyncratically, attracted and stimulated by their specific favourite mate, a phenomenon that some people might more commonly call love. In this case at least, ‘love’ did have fitness consequences. We will be answering your questions at 1pm EST (10am PST, 6pm UTC) – Ask Us Anything! Want to read about all the interesting results in an inspiring literary form? Read the synopsis written by PLOS Biology editor Roland Robert: “The fitness benefits of love”. Want to be able to explain the study to your friends, family or children? Read my PLOSAble article “Benefits of being choosy”.

Hi reddit! We are the astronomy and physics writers for Science News (https://www.sciencenews.org/), a publication of the Society for Science and the Public (https://www.societyforscience.org/). This November marks the 100-year anniversary of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. To celebrate, we published a special issue of Science News focusing on how researchers are using Einstein’s theory today–from using it to magnify the cosmos to exploring quantum entanglement. About Andrew Grant: I am an award-winning physics writer for Science News. I have a bachelor’s degree in physics from The College of New Jersey and a master’s in journalism from New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. My story (“Entanglement: Gravity’s long-distance connection”: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/entanglement-gravitys-long-distance-connection) examines a big idea to expand the scope of general relativity that involves black holes, wormholes, holograms and a mysterious phenomenon called quantum entanglement. Physicists are exploring whether long-distance quantum connections are responsible for the geometry of space and time in the universe. About Christopher Crockett: I am the astronomy writer for Science News. I received by Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California, Los Angeles. After eight years of searching for exoplanets, probing distant galaxies and exploring comets, I realized I enjoyed talking about astronomy a lot more than actually doing it. After being awarded a 2013 AAAS Mass Media Fellowship to write for Scientific American, I left a research career at the U.S. Naval Observatory to pursue a new life writing about anything and everything within the local cosmological horizon. I joined Science News in early 2014. My story (“Using general relativity to magnify the cosmos”: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/using-general-relativity-magnify-cosmos?mode=pick&context=163) explores how scientists exploit phenomena predicted by the general theory of relativity to study the universe. We here to answer your questions about Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and how scientists are using it today! We’ll be back at 2pm ET (11am PT) to answer your questions! Ask us anything! EDIT: Thanks for the awesome questions! We had a blast. We’ll be checking in throughout the day to answer more questions. Until next time!

Hi Reddit, we are Marina Klein and Jean-Pierre Routy Professors in the McGill University Faculty of Medicine, and clinician-scientists at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre where we study the pathology and epidemiology of HIV infection and viral hepatitis co-infection. We’re here on Worlds AIDS Day to answer your questions about human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). We’ll be here at 2:30 pm EST (11:30 am PST, 7:30 pm UTC) to answer your questions. Dr. Marina Klein is National Co-Director of the CIHR Canadian HIV Trials Network, and is an International AIDS Society (IAS) Governing Council representative for the North American Region. In addition, Dr. Klein leads one of the largest multi centre cohorts of HIV/Hepatitis C Virus co-infected in the world, including more than 1400 patients across Canada. The primary focus of her research is the study of the epidemiology and clinical aspects of HIV infection, particularly the impacts of HCV co-infection and antiretroviral and HCV therapies on the health of those infected by both viruses. Dr. Jean-Pierre Routy is Co-Director of the Immunotherapy and Vaccine Core group at the CIHR Canadian HIV Trial Network, and Co-Chair of the IAS Clinical Trails Scientific Working Group. Throughout his research career he has studied the pathologies of both cancer and HIV. His study of HIV infection has been concerned with study the interaction between the virus and the immune system, as well as understanding this pathology in the context of antiretroviral therapy, co-infection, and drug resistance. Edit: Moderator message. Drs. Klein and Routy are both in hospital today. Dr. Klein very much enjoyed participating but has now had to return to her duties. We haven’t heard from Dr. Routy, though he did have a very busy schedule this afternoon. If we do hear from him we will updated you. - Surf

Hi Reddit, we’re Tisha Wheeler and Elizabeth Mziray, and we work at global health agencies that are leading the global response for key populations in the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. My name is Tisha Wheeler, and I am a senior HIV/AIDS advisor for key populations at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), where I lead policy making, design, implementation, and evaluation of key populations HIV/AIDS programs. I am joined by Elizabeth Mziray, an operations officer with the World Bank, where she supports countries in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their HIV programs. She is the task team leader for the Bank’s technical support program in West and Central Africa that includes support for improving the scale, quality, targeting and coverage of HIV services for sex workers and their clients through integrated technical assistance and a capacity building program. We are here to discuss a special PLOS Collection titled “Focus on Delivery & Scale: Achieving HIV Impact with Sex Workers”. In our collections overview published in PLOS ONE we highlight the evidence that shows protecting sex workers from HIV/STI transmission is both necessary and feasible for controlling the epidemic. The eighteen papers published in this collection demonstrate the importance and scalability of existing interventions through four key themes: 1) epidemiology, data needs and modelling of sex work in generalized epidemics; 2) implementation science addressing practical aspects of intervention scale-up; 3) community mobilization and 4) the treatment cascade for sex workers living with HIV. We will be answering your questions on Wednesday November 25 at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6 pm UTC) – Ask Us Anything! NOTE: Richard Steen, first author on the PLOS Collection Overview, has joined the AMA from his medical mission in Tanzania.

Hi Reddit! I am a James Bryant Conant Award recipient in Teaching Chemistry and a nationally recognized leader in STEM education. I am certified to teach chemistry, biology, physics, general science, mathematics, college level forensics and general chemistry, but have a passion for food chemistry. I recently presented at the national conference of the American Chemical Society (ACS) on the Chemistry of Cooking: A look at Solution Chemistry. I am usually in Syracuse, New York—I have a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry and chemical education from Syracuse University. Right now, I am in Washington, D.C. at the Department of Energy’s Office of Science on a year-long Albert Einstein Fellowship. I love food chemistry and cooking, so I’m excited to be here on the week of Thanksgiving. Ask me anything about kitchen and cooking chemistry tricks for Thanksgiving – especially for desserts, my favorite. Some stuff I love talking about: how to temper an egg for home-made chocolate crème pie, how to prevent your gravy from being too oily or too clumpy, when to use baking soda versus when to baking powder (it expires!), what can you use to substitute for ingredients you realize you’re missing on Thanksgiving morning, how to speed up that turkey defrosting, how to tweak the recipe for a boxed cake mix to make a much better homemade cake just by using some kitchen hacks, the timing of making mashed potatoes, and more. But of course, I’m here for your questions, so ask away. I’ll be back at Noon Tuesday ET (9 am PT, 5 pm UTC) to answer your questions! EDIT: I worked on many questions tonight but there are so many more coming in as I type. I will continue answering questions tomorrow and hopefully you will get responses from me or other redditors.

Hi Reddit! We’re David Zeevi and Tal Korem, graduate students working on personalizing nutritional recommendations by prediction of postprandial glycemic responses. AUA! Obesity and diabetes are practically pandemics; but the dietary recommendations aimed to deal with these conditions are pretty much uniform across all people. Does this make sense? Are people that similar? In our research, we chose to focus on one quantification of the human response to food - the postprandial glycemic response (PPGR) When we digest our food, carbohydrates are broken down to simple sugars, and these are absorbed into the bloodstream, causing an increase in blood glucose levels, which later return to normal, usually with the help of insulin. That same PPGR is linked to obesity, diabetes risk and management (people with the disease try to lower their PPGRs), cardiovascular disease, and many other ailments. But it has an amazing added value - it allows us to immediately measure a response to every food eaten. So instead of prescribing a diet and waiting for months to see how it worked, we can test individual meals and analyze a person’s response to them immediately. In our study (video abstract), we profiled 800 people, and found out that they respond very differently to identical meals, which raises the question of effectivity in non-personalized dietary recommendations. We then showed that many personal factors associated with this difference in response: anthropometric measurements (height, weight, etc.); blood test results; and also the composition and function of the microbiome. What we did next was to integrate all of these personal factors and more, as well as what the person actually ate, in terms of fat, protein, etc., into a prediction algorithm that could accurately predict PPGRs to unseen meals. And then finally, we performed a diet intervention study, in which we prescribed subjects with personally tailored diets created with our predictor, and demonstrated that they can reduce PPGRs in a clinical setting. About us - we’re both graduate students at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. We’re interested in the link between nutrition, microbiome, and glycemic control. Aside from this project, we are also developing methods for microbiome analysis. We’ll be back on November 23rd, at 1PM ET (10 am PT, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions! EDIT: Thanks so much to everyone who participated and asked questions. We had a great time going over your clever insights and doing our best to answer them! We did our best to answer as many as we could. Special thanks to Surf_Science for the initial invitation and for moderating this session. We look forward to bringing you new and exciting research in the future!

The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) conducts scientific ocean drilling expeditions throughout the world’s oceans in search of clues to Earth’s past. The current expedition is Expedition 359: Maldives Monsoon, aboard the U.S. vessel for scientific ocean drilling, the JOIDES Resolution www.joidesresolution.org. On this expedition we are exploring the story of climate change and of times past (paleoclimatic changes). Using core samples from off the coast of the Maldives the scientists aim to reconstruct paleoceanographic evolution over the past 23 million years. Drilling will provide cores required for reconstructing changing current systems through time that are directly related to the evolution of the Indian monsoon. As such the drift deposits will provide a continuous record of Indian monsoon development in the region. One important outcome of Expedition 359 is ground-truthing the hypothesis that the dramatic, pronounced change in the style of the sedimentary carbonate sequence stacking was caused by a combination of relative sea level fluctuations and ocean current system changes. The scientific objectives are to: - explore the variation in regional monsoon systems over multi-million year time scales - learn how scientists reconstruct the causes of fluctuations in ocean currents and triggers of evolution - learn how sea level respond to a warming climate - learn about magnitude and rate of past sea level change A team of 30 scientists from around the globe are on board for two months to work on these questions. Hand-in-hand with the amazing technology required to drill deep into the ocean floor, we are collecting the core samples that hold clues to answer these questions. Join us to ask us anything about this intriguing science, how we got here, what we hope to discover, and our lives on board the ship! Update: Thanks for joining us, we really enjoyed the questions. Some of us are now finished with our 12 hr shift and we’re signing off. Please continue to send questions, visit our website at www.joidesresolution.org, follow us on twitter @TheJR, instagram joides_resolution, and like our www.facebook.com/joidesresolution page!

Hi Reddit! I am Richard Gibbs, a human geneticist, who researches genetic variation using DNA sequencing at the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine. Human genetic diseases are usually dichotomized – contrasting disorders caused by rare, single gene defects that are mainly found in children (such as Mendelian diseases) versus adult, common complex diseases that have can have subtle genetic contributions from multiple changes (such as cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative diseases, and immunological diseases). My team works to build better ways to sequence and interpret genomes, to translate that technology into the clinic and to better understand the link between rare and common disease. I believe that we are experiencing a social revolution by the propagation of the knowledge and awareness of genetics and genomics in society. I will be back at 1 pm ET (10 am PT, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask me anything! I am Stacey Gabriel, I have worked at the Broad Institute (formerly the Whitehead Genome Center) for the last 17 years. I joined the Broad after completing my Ph.D. in Human Genetics at Case Western Reserve University where I discovered genes for a congenital disorder, Hirschsprung Disease. This work drove my interest in disease gene discovery via human genetics and with an ultimate desire to drive discovery in more common diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and others. During my time I have led the Broad’s contribution to several important international efforts to build genomic resources to enable disease gene research. These include the Human Hap Map project, The Cancer Genome Atlas, the 1000 Genomes Project and the NHLBI Exome Sequence Project. I also serve as a Co-Principle Investigator (along with Eric Lander) on a very large grant from the National Genome Research Institute which has established us over the past 25 years or so as a Large-scale Sequencing Center. We operate one of the world’s largest fleets of MPS (massively parallel sequencing) DNA sequencers, generating data for ~ one new human genome every 15 minutes! This data is used by researchers at the Broad and all over the world to make discoveries about human disease, the human genome, and hopefully will fuel initiatives like the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative. I will be here answering your questions for about an hour starting at 2:30 pm ET (11:30 am PT, 7:30 pm UTC). Richard Gibbs here (1,30 pm ET): thanks for some terrific questions! Back to work but I hope to drop in later for a short while. I know Stacey Gabriel is joining in a few minutes. Thanks again. Thanks everyone….was a lot of fun to read and think about all these questions and heartening to see the interest in modern genetics and genomics! Bye RG

Hi Reddit! I’m a biological anthropologist who works with wild orangutan populations in Indonesia. In particular I’m interested in what we can learn about the reproductive physiology of male and female orangutans using non-invasive methods. In other words, I observe mating behaviors and collect their urine - a job which once earned me honor of being in Popular Science’s list of worst science jobs! This lets me learn about their nutrition, reproductive states, health, and lots of other interesting things without harming them. In the bigger picture, primate studies help us learn more about our own human evolution and reproduction. I’m also the executive director of the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Program in Indonesia. I conduct my research here but I’m also passionate about conservation. Orangutans are endangered and experts think they may become extinct in the wild within 20 years. However, the worst fire in 20 years has recently hit the region and is critically threatening orangutan populations. You can see some of the heartbreaking photos that my husband Tim Laman took here. The fires threaten a third of the wild orangutan population. Considering the already dire situation this is very concerning. I’ll be back at 12 pm ET (9 am PT, 5 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask me anything! Edit: Thanks everyone for a great AMA! I have office hours now but if I have time I’ll try to answer a few more questions. This was fun!