{"id":12774,"date":"2019-09-18T13:34:47","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T17:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/?page_id=12774"},"modified":"2022-02-07T20:44:33","modified_gmt":"2022-02-08T01:44:33","slug":"biogenesis-s1-ep1-kwadwo-owusu-boaitey","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/news\/biogenesis-s1-ep1-kwadwo-owusu-boaitey\/","title":{"rendered":"Season 1, Ep. 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>Kwadwo Owusu-Boaitey<\/strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-12844 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Kwadwo_BioGenesis_nologo-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"Person smiling in lab\" width=\"904\" height=\"509\" srcset=\"https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Kwadwo_BioGenesis_nologo-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Kwadwo_BioGenesis_nologo-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Kwadwo_BioGenesis_nologo-332x187.jpg 332w, https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Kwadwo_BioGenesis_nologo-508x286.jpg 508w, https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Kwadwo_BioGenesis_nologo-420x236.jpg 420w, https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Kwadwo_BioGenesis_nologo.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 904px) 100vw, 904px\" \/><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first season of BioGenesis centers on the theme of surprises. The <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/biogenesis-podcast\/surprises-ep-1-kwadwo-owusu-boaitey\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">inaugural episode<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> features Kwadwo Owusu-Boaitey, a soccer player-turned MD\/PhD student studying tissue regeneration in flatworms. Owusu-Boaitey was struggling to find an effective means to map the stem cells in these peculiar critters when he stumbled upon a novel tool that would allow do just that, and probe how the flatworm can regrow its entire body.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/676211837&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to BioGenesis <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/biogenesis\/id1478910563\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">iTunes<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/biogenesis-podcast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SoundCloud<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/music\/listen#\/ps\/Ikraku56fbrjqitzioiltriij6m\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google Play<\/a>,<\/strong> or <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/2N2WsGHpydr1NbmfuIcbsN\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Spotify<\/a><\/strong> and never miss an episode!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><div id=\"accordion-1\" class=\"accordion no-js\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<h3 role=\"button\" id=\"accordion-1-t1\" class=\"accordion-title js-accordion-controller\" aria-controls=\"accordion-1-c1\" aria-expanded=\"false\" tabindex=\"0\">\n\t\t\t\tTranscript\t\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\n\t\t<div id=\"accordion-1-c1\" class=\"accordion-content\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n\t\t\t<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Kwadwo Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> Planarians are these tiny flatworms, maybe the size of your fingernail. They look almost cartoonish \u2014 they have these googly eyes \u2014 and they\u2019re aquatic. They\u2019re amazing because they can regrow all of their body parts.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;Something Elated&#8221; begins]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Conor Gearin:<\/strong> Welcome to episode 1 of BioGenesis \u2014 where we get to know a biologist, where they came from, and where they\u2019re going next. I\u2019m Conor Gearin \u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Raleigh McElvery:<\/strong> \u2014 And I\u2019m Raleigh McElvery, and we\u2019re your co-hosts.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Gearin:<\/strong> That\u2019s right, so every episode \u2014 and there will be three this season \u2014 we\u2019ll be introducing you to a scientist.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>McElvery:<\/strong> Specifically, a grad student, who is jointly affiliated with our respective institutes, the MIT Department of Biology and Whitehead Institute. We\u2019re trying to put a face to the research by showing you the people behind the biology. And each of these personal stories will have a theme.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;Something Elated&#8221; fades out]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Gearin:<\/strong> In our first season we\u2019ll be talking about surprises, whether that be a sudden change in career trajectory, or an unexpected finding in the lab. Which is where those flatworms from the beginning come in. They\u2019re a focus in Peter Reddien\u2019s lab here at Whitehead Institute, where researchers like Kwadwo are studying regeneration. But we\u2019ll let him start from the beginning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;My Luck&#8221; begins]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> My name&#8217;s Kwadwo Owusu-Boaitey. I&#8217;m currently in my third year of my PhD in the biology department here at MIT and I&#8217;m a fifth year overall in my MD-PhD program. I was actually born not in the United States but in Ghana, in West Africa. And then my family immigrated to the U.S. when I was like two and a half or almost three years old. My dad is actually in medicine. He grew up kind of in a small village and did medical school in Ghana and then got the chance to do a residency here in the U.S.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;My Luck&#8221; ends]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>McElvery:<\/strong> Starting off in high school, Kwadwo had his sights set on pro soccer.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Gearin:<\/strong> And I mean, he was pretty good. Actually, he was part of the Olympic Development Team for a while.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> Yeah. Like lots of 17-year-olds that play sports, I think oftentimes you think that that\u2019s something you want to do for the rest of your life.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Gearin:<\/strong> Until junior year, when he ended up doing a big research project on steroids and public health, inspired by his love for the sport.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> And so I worked with someone in the medical field and just spent the year learning about what steroids did your body and how they worked.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;Lamb Drop&#8221; begins]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> I knew biology was the class that I liked the most. And a lot of what I liked about it was that I just couldn\u2019t see anything, especially in molecular biology. You could learn about a world that was completely invisible to you.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;Lamb Drop&#8221; fades out]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>McElvery:<\/strong> So here he was, with these two big passions for research and sports. One complemented the other to a certain extent, but it became time to choose between them as he submitted his college applications.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> I remember having some conversations with my dad. My senior year of high school, all I was thinking about was soccer. My dad was like: Kwadwo, what kind of colleges do you want to apply to? And I was like: I think I will apply to colleges where I can play soccer. And then he&#8217;s like: Oh, that&#8217;s awesome. What do you think you want to do afterwards? And I was like: Oh, probably sign a contract in Europe. And my dad was like: OK, what fraction of students who go to college to play soccer get the chance to do what you think you want to do? And I was like: It&#8217;s probably not the super high. And he said what I think is still to this day one of the most loving things I&#8217;ve heard him say. He\u2019s like: I think you should also consider other passions and interests that you have.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Gearin:<\/strong> So, which did he pick?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>McElvery:<\/strong> He ultimately picked research.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;Lamb Drop&#8221; fades in]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> Yeah. one of the colleges that I applied to was UMBC, the University of Maryland Baltimore County.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Gearin:<\/strong> His older brother went there as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> He was part of a scholarship program there called The Meyerhoff Scholars program. The program is all about helping students who come from underrepresented backgrounds pursue research careers. And so I applied the end of the fall and early spring. we were all encouraged to look up laboratories that existed on UMBC&#8217;s campus.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;Lamb Drop&#8221; fades out]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Gearin:<\/strong> He ended up working with a professor that studied inherited forms of breast cancer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> So we studied BRCA-1 associated breast cancers. It\u2019s a common form of genetically-inherited breast cancers. And so our lab was interested in what kind of factors affect the development of cancer even before it starts. So I ended up working on a project where we were really interested in how not the mammary epithelial cells themselves \u2014 the cell types that eventually become cancerous \u2014 but how the cell types around them could affect whether or not those cells became cancerous.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;My Luck&#8221; fades in]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>McElvery:<\/strong> But he was still curious about, you know, making a difference, translating his research into something people could really use. So as a junior, he walked across the street to shadow doctors at the Greenbaum Cancer Center.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> The Cancer Center kind of serves a lot of local community members. I remember people I actually knew coming in for treatment. And I was like, oh wow this is really serious, these diseases really affect people. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>[<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;My Luck&#8221; fades out<\/span>]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Part of the way it worked was I would go to these tumor board meetings where there are lots of breast cancer doctors, like radiation oncologists and surgical oncologists and medical oncologists and geneticists and pathologists and a whole staff team that were all concerned with: what was the best form of treatment they could provide to all the patients are we going to see during the day. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;Colrain&#8221; begins]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And I remember just feeling totally immersed in a world that was both over my head \u2014 like I don&#8217;t understand all the clinical jargon \u2014 but I&#8217;m studying a lot of breast cancer in my lab, so a lot of it is familiar to me. But one of the coolest things that happened was that the things that we were working on in the laboratory sort of got brought to the front of my mind when I was sitting in this clinical environment. A lot of the things that end up being really transformative in medicine really come from basic science curiosity like trying to figure out how something works and how a system works. And so when I was going into my junior year I was like I know I want to be at the bench and do a PhD and do science. But do I also want to do an MD-PhD program?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;Colrain&#8221; fades out]<\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;Lamb Drop&#8221; begins]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gearin:<\/strong> So how does it work when you decide so how does it work when you decide to pursue an MD and PhD simultaneously? How do you divide your time between the clinic and the bench?<\/p>\n<p><strong>McElvery:<\/strong> So you do two years of med school, four years in the lab, and then finish up your last two years of med school. And<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Kwadwo was particularly interested in MIT\u2019s joint MD-PhD program with Harvard, since he\u2019d already spent two summers as an undergraduate at MIT Biology, getting lab experience at MIT\u2019s Summer Research Program.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;Lamb Drop&#8221; ends]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> And really the way that I was kind of thinking about it at the time is that there are smart people everywhere and people are really brilliant everywhere. But just choosing an environment where people are also like a humble was one of the things I was like kind of guiding a lot of my thinking.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>McElvery:<\/strong> OK so it\u2019s 2014, he\u2019s picked a program, when do we get to the surprise part?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Gearin:<\/strong> Right, so it\u2019s coming. Pretty quickly, Kwadwo was drawn to Peter Reddien, a member of Whitehead Institute. He\u2019s also an investigator with Howard Hughes Medical Institute.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> I&#8217;m kind of a big believer that oftentimes what dictates success is not like how smart you are but being sort of in the right environment. One of the things that stood out to me about Peter was that a lot of our conversations were about things in science really deeply but also things outside of science, too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Gearin:<\/strong> Peter is concerned with understanding how organisms regenerate missing body parts. And so that\u2019s where the strange, aquatic flatworms called planarians with the googly eyes come in.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Algo Rhythm Natural&#8221; begins<\/span>]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> It really oftentimes feels like science fiction cause they&#8217;re just weird animals, planarians. Scientists have known about them really for centuries even since the 1800s. People have done really beautiful detailed studies where you could cut worms reportedly into up to 200 pieces. And as long as they&#8217;re kept pretty healthy now you have 200 different worms. And you and I can&#8217;t do that, and most other animals can&#8217;t do that. And so it makes them both almost like a feat of imagination, but also this really interesting system to study, to ask how does the animal regrow its body parts, and why can&#8217;t some animals do it, and why are others really exceptional at doing it?<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[&#8220;Algo Rhythm Natural&#8221; ends]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the projects I&#8217;m working on in the lab is trying to understand how the stem cell population in our animals \u2014 like how it&#8217;s spatially organized, where different types of stem cells exist and if there&#8217;s a logic to how particular stem cells are distributed throughout the animal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Gearin:<\/strong> Kwadwo is studying these cells that are particularly pliable because they haven\u2019t assumed a specialized role yet. And if he can map out where they exist in the flatworm, it would give the lab a clearer picture of how planarians can regenerate their whole body. It might even shed light on human development, too.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> Like for you and I, our gut can regenerate and turnover and we know exactly where the gut stem cells are or the primary gut stem cells. We know where they exist and we know how that makes sense for how the gut can regenerate. We know \u2014 the skin can also regenerate, and we know where the stem cells exist, we know the cells they give rise to, where they exist, and so we can understand how the skin regenerates and how it functions because we understand its structure. I sort of worked on this project probably like maybe 10, 11 or maybe 12 months ago around this time last year. Our lab does a lot of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in situ<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> hybridization. So I spent a lot of time doing different <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in situs<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to try and figure out how different pairs and populations of stem cells, trying to map them near one another. And it didn&#8217;t yield as much fruit as I thought it was going to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>McElvery:<\/strong> Kwadwo was starting to feel like he needed a new tool to make the project work. Something that would let him figure out what genes were turned on and off in the animal without destroying the tissue by grinding it up so it could be fed into a sequencing machine. So he decided he needed to have a chat with Peter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> Yeah. It was actually during one of our two week meetings. So he meets with everyone in the lab every two weeks and we actually had our meeting in the worm room like where we keep all of our worms. I remember us sitting in a chair and he was standing up washing his worms \u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Gearin:<\/strong> That\u2019s just something you do every week in this lab, wash your worms \u2014<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> And I was like: Yeah, honestly Peter, I feel like I&#8217;m going to need a new technique to make this work. And he&#8217;s like: Oh, well have you like looked at the STARMAP thing yet? And I was like: Not yet, but I\u2019ll go take a look at it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Algo Rhythm Natural&#8221; begins<\/span>]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Gearin:<\/strong> The funny thing was, Kwadwo\u2019s advisor had actually sent him a paper a few months ago describing a new technique, STARMAP, that would let him do exactly what he\u2019d been hoping to try \u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> Identify lots of cell types but figure out where they exist inside the animal without breaking everything up.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>McElvery:<\/strong> The developer of STARMAP, Xiao Wang of Stanford, had actually already given a talk about her new technique at Whitehead, so Kwadwo watched a recording of the lecture.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Algo Rhythm Natural&#8221; fades out<\/span>]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> And I was like oh my gosh this is like a wonderful technique. I remember coming back and being like: Oh my gosh this is what we need to do. So the past couple of months for me have been ordering new reagents for this technique designing the new components that I&#8217;m going to be needing and actually running the essays.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>McElvery:<\/strong> The sense that we got from talking to Kwadwo is that he\u2019s someone who thinks a lot about his community and doing his part. This time, though, the community came through for him.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;Colrain&#8221; begins]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Owusu-Boaitey:<\/strong> I think it like not just science but like human experience generally works that way. I think it&#8217;s the same whether you&#8217;re trying to find an antibody in a freezer box or whether you&#8217;re trying to figure out how your project is going to advance. I think science totally works as a communal effort. And the more that structures are set up to allow you to hear what other people are thinking, hear how other people are thinking and hear what other people are working on. And I think it&#8217;s actually like a lot of science advances and thrives.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;Colrain&#8221; ends]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Gearin:<\/strong> So that\u2019s it for this week. For our next episode on the theme of \u201cSurprises,\u201d tune in next week to hear from one grad student who moved from Mexico to the US, determined to major in psychology until she found a surprising new passion that reminded her of something out of science fiction.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>McElvery:<\/strong> Find us on iTunes and Soundcloud or on our websites at MIT Biology and Whitehead Institute.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[&#8220;Something Elated&#8221; begins]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Gearin:<\/strong> Thanks for listening.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[&#8220;Something Elated&#8221; fades out]<\/span>\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<h3 role=\"button\" id=\"accordion-1-t2\" class=\"accordion-title js-accordion-controller\" aria-controls=\"accordion-1-c2\" aria-expanded=\"false\" tabindex=\"0\">\n\t\t\t\tCredits\t\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\n\t\t<div id=\"accordion-1-c2\" class=\"accordion-content\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n\t\t\t<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Produced by Raleigh McElvery and Conor Gearin.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music for this episode came from the Free Music Archive, Blue Dot Sessions at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sessions.blue\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">www.sessions.blue<\/a>, and Podington Bear at <a href=\"http:\/\/soundofpicture.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">soundofpicture.com<\/a>. In order of appearance:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cSomething Elated\u201d \u2013 Broke for Free<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cMy Luck\u201d \u2013 Broke for Free<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cLamb Drop\u201d \u2013 Blue Dot Sessions\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cColrain\u201d \u2013 Blue Dot Sessions\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAlgo Rhythm Natural\u201d \u2013 Podington Bear<\/span>\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t<\/div><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a class=\"cta-btn\" href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/biogenesis\/id1478910563\" rel=\"noopener\">Subscribe to BioGenesis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kwadwo Owusu-Boaitey The first season of BioGenesis centers on the theme of surprises. The inaugural episode features Kwadwo Owusu-Boaitey, a soccer player-turned MD\/PhD student studying tissue regeneration in flatworms. Owusu-Boaitey was struggling to find an effective means to map the stem cells in these peculiar critters when he stumbled upon a novel tool that would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":12807,"parent":83,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-12774","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Season 1, Ep. 1 - MIT Department of Biology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/news\/biogenesis-s1-ep1-kwadwo-owusu-boaitey\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Season 1, Ep. 1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Kwadwo Owusu-Boaitey The first season of BioGenesis centers on the theme of surprises. The inaugural episode features Kwadwo Owusu-Boaitey, a soccer player-turned MD\/PhD student studying tissue regeneration in flatworms. 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