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The New Biology

The New Biology

Niko McCarty 3 Episodes Jun 12, 2026

The New Biology features long-form discussions with historians, technologists, and scientists who are working on some of the biggest ideas in biotechnology, from magnet-controlled medicines to virtual cells. Supported by Astera Institute.

Episodes

The Bitter Lesson for Biology — Adam Green on Virtual Cells and Scaling Laws Jun 12, 2026 5374 Markov Biosciences, a startup in San Francisco, is betting that biology is about to have its GPT moment. In this episode, founder Adam Green explains the "bitter lesson" for biology, the idea borrowed from Richard Sutton that large unbiased datasets and the right training objective tend to outcompete models with hard-coded rules and human priors. Adam thinks, in particular, that the virtu
Magnet-Controlled Medicines — Andrew York & Maria Ingaramo May 29, 2026 7656 Nonfiction Laboratories is building a technology called “magnetogenetics” that promises to control proteins inside the body — such as antibodies or enzymes — using small magnets. In this episode, co-founder Maria Ingaramo and scientific advisor Andrew York explain how they engineered a protein, MagLOV, that responds strongly to magnetic fields, why most prior attempts have failed to repli
Mark Budde - How to speed up wet-lab biology May 8, 2026 3452 Plasmidsaurus took plasmid sequencing from $600 to $15 and turned a "boring" service company idea into a hugely successful company serving 70,000+ scientists. In this episode, CEO Mark Budde and Niko McCarty get into the bigger question: what does it take for companies to automate and scale wet-lab biology methods in the same way that Plasmidsaurus did for sequencing? They cover the early

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