Hi, I’m Aastha, and welcome to Live Longer World.
Today’s interview with Dr. Ken Robinson is the third in my series with Dr. Michael Levin where we interview significant people in the history of developmental bioelectricity.
When Michael Levin was an undergrad, he compiled a bibliography of everything that had been written in bioelectricity and sent it to Ken Robinson, a pioneer scientist in the field. Ken looked at it and remarked: “ I was so astonished that it was so absolutely complete and I wondered what had motivated this guy to put this all together.”
In this interview, we speak with someone who inspired Michael Levin further into bioelectricity.
Ken Robinson has a long list of accomplishments in the bioelectricity field, covering the role of electric fields in guiding cell migration and more generally the function of electrogenic epithelia in embryogenesis. This is about a ~1 hour conversation in which he talks about his background, the history of the field, and his time in Lionel Jaffe's lab.
Watch on YouTube. Listen on Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Find the links, papers referenced and timestamps below.
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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:38 Ken’s background - From physics to bioelectricity
6:10 Bioelectricity in the era of the “genetic code”
10:27 Ken’s first experiments in ion movement using light
23:25 Proton pump and its significance
26:07 Neurons respond to electrical signals
36:26 Working in Lionel Jaffe’s lab
47:39 Mike Levin as an undergrad
48:49 Membrane potential left-right asymmetry in cells
52:59 Epithelia is powerfully electrogenic
57:49 Advances for bioelectricity
59:27 Underrated people in the field
Bioelectricity in the era of the Genetic Code with Dr. Michael Levin