#90 – Dmitry Korkin: Computational Biology of Coronavirus
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About this episode
<p>Dmitry Korkin is a professor of bioinformatics and computational biology at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he specializes in bioinformatics of complex disease, computational genomics, systems biology, and biomedical data analytics. I came across Dmitry’s work when in February his group used the viral genome of the COVID-19 to reconstruct the 3D structure of its major viral proteins and their interactions with human proteins, in effect creating a structural genomics map of the coronavirus and making this data open and available to researchers everywhere. We talked about the biology of COVID-19, SARS, and viruses in general, and how computational methods can help us understand their structure and function in order to develop antiviral drugs and vaccines.</p>
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<p>EPISODE LINKS:<br />
Dmitry’s Website: <a href="http://korkinlab.org/">http://korkinlab.org/</a><br />
Dmitry’s Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/dmkorkin">https://twitter.com/dmkorkin</a><br />
Dmitry’s Paper that we discuss: <a href="https://bit.ly/3eKghEM">https://bit.ly/3eKghEM</a></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast.</span> If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to <a href="https://lexfridman.com/ai">https://lexfridman.com/ai</a> or connect with @lexfridman on <a href="https://twitter.com/lexfridman">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman/">LinkedIn</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://medium.com/@lexfridman">Medium</a>, or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/lexfridman">YouTube</a> where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/artificial-intelligence/id1434243584">Apple Podcasts</a>, follow on <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2MAi0BvDc6GTFvKFPXnkCL">Spotify</a>, or support it on <a href="https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman">Patreon</a>.</p>
<p>Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.</p>
<p>OUTLINE:<br />
00:00 – Introduction<br />
02:33 – Viruses are terrifying and fascinating<br />
06:02 – How hard is it to engineer a virus?<br />
10:48 – What makes a virus contagious?<br />
29:52 – Figuring out the function of a protein<br />
53:27 – Functional regions of viral proteins<br />
1:19:09 – Biology of a coronavirus treatment<br />
1:34:46 – Is a virus alive?<br />
1:37:05 – Epidemiological modeling<br />
1:55:27 – Russia<br />
2:02:31 – Science bobbleheads<br />
2:06:31 – Meaning of life</p>