Chapters:
01:15 In what may be the most Wendy Chung moment ever recorded, Wendy realizes AS AN UNDERGRADUATE that a simple and uninterrupted 20-year path of success and academic achievement will position her to emerge with research and clinical training complete just as the human genome project finishes. THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENS.
4:45 Wendy’s love affair with genetics began with… oranges.
10:27 Wendy’s scorecard on the HGP
15:42 Her studies on the genetics of obesity began with rodents and the discovery of leptin – a simple biological model that might explain what happens in Prader Willi but is inadequate to explain the obesity epidemic.
21:13 On the complex relationship between obesity and stigma: A genetic explanation for obesity can make people feel less to blame but, “people can feel like if there’s no treatment; you’re screwed.” But is there no treatment? Wendy is optimistic about behavioral treatments today and pharmaceutical treatments (down the road).
25:45: An “obese-istat”
27:50 Skeptical about the utility of PRS for obesity
Wendy Chung (MD, PhD) is the Kennedy Family Professor of Pediatrics in Medicine at Columbia University… and the Director of the Pediatric Neuromuscular Network Molecular Core, the New York Obesity Center Molecular Genetics Core, Columbia’s Clinical Cancer Program and DISCOVER program and…really it never ends. The busiest woman in genetics takes a few minutes out to talk to us about her early dreams (agricultural science; I kid you not) and the focus of some of her earliest human work: the all-too-human subject of genetics and obesity.
