Kevin McKernan – Medicinal Genomics – Pioneering the Study of Cannabis Genetics and the DNA-Based Measurement of Microbial Risks

Finding Genius Podcast

Richard Jacobs

Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.4 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2018

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Everyone probably hears online that no one ever dies from cannabis, but there have been cases of people dying from what grows on cannabis," says Kevin McKernan, who founded Medicinal Genomics in 2011 with the goal of sequencing the cannabis genome. In doing so, he quickly recognized that there were microbes on the plant that needed to be screened for. Since then, Medicinal Genomics has been developing quantitative PCR tools that use DNA to measure microbial risks in a way that traditional methods have been unable.
So, what's wrong with the traditional Petri dish method, which is the primary method used in the food industry today? For one, we don't know how to culture about 99 percent of the microbes that exist; this is problematic for the Petri dish method as it relies fundamentally on culturing microbes. In addition, many of the microbes that are most harmful do not grow in large quantities, making it nearly impossible to identify or quantify colonies of microbes via culture techniques. To address these issues, McKernan believes that species-specific testing is needed, which can only be done using DNA-based quantitative PCR.
Medicinal Genomics also sequences cannabis genomes outside of the microbiome, which is helping breeders to not only identify plants that are optimal for breeding, but to also prove that a plant existed at a particular time, thereby protecting themselves against cannabis patents that might emerge in the future. Medicinal Genomics is protecting breeders in this way by hashing and stashing cannabis genomes on the Dash blockchain.
To learn more, visit medicinalgenomics.com.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Almost Here, Around the Corner of Future Technology Podcasts with Richard Jacobs.
0:07.6	Future technologies are always to transform our lives for better or worse or the focus of this podcast.
0:13.3	Almost here means these technologies are now here and starting to be used.
0:17.8	We're just around the corner, from Bitcoin to artificial intelligence, 3D printing, blockchain, virtual reality, and more.
0:32.2	Coming to Dallas, Texas, September 14th, 15th, and 16th, 2018, the Blockchain and Future Tech
0:39.5	Expo.
0:40.6	This is going to be a gigantic conference of over 5,000 people.
0:44.7	We're going to be talking about blockchain and its applications.
0:47.6	We're going to be talking about quantum computing, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence,
0:52.0	and several other future technologies that are poised to and
0:56.4	actually changing our lives as we speak. Here's why you should attend. As you may know,
1:01.7	early adopters are the ones that investigated and profited from things like the gold rush
1:06.7	in the 1800s, from the dot-com boom in the 1990s, from the internet boom in 2005, from the
1:13.5	smartphone explosion in 2007, from the real estate boom that ended in 2008, and of course,
1:19.5	from the Bitcoin boom that started in 2012. Early adopters act now, they don't wait until
1:25.0	later. They go out west first and they're covered wagons. They
1:28.4	find the biggest gold nuggets. If you consider yourself an early adopter and you want to find
1:33.5	the biggest nuggets, then you owe it to yourself to attend this upcoming conference. Blockchain
1:38.2	is going to affect how we control and store our medical data, how we send money around the world,
1:43.9	how we bank, and more.
1:45.8	But artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and cybersecurity will play a pivotal role
1:50.7	in our lives as well.
	...

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