Episode 146: Gaurav Venkataraman discusses memory in DNA and RNA
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What is the central question about where memories are stored?
Yeah, no.
Hello and welcome to Elucidations, an unexpected philosophy podcast. I'm Matt Tegman, and with me today is Garav Venkatorama. A co founder of Trisk Bio in London. And he's here to talk about memory in DNA and RNA. Gaura Venkat Raman, welcome. Thank you, Matt. It's great to be here. Okay, so if you asked me where I thought memories were stored, and I'm not like, you know, an ancient Greek philosopher, but I'm like a contemporary Matt Tyeman, I would think that it was stored in the brain. But Apparently, uh uh you've done a little bit of research to suggest that the story's a little bit more complicated than that. So what like maybe we could just start by talking about what are some like indications that the story might be more complicated than that?
Yeah, sure. So the complexity of the story probably starts around the nineteen fifties. That's before what's called what was known as the synaptic memory hypothesis had really taken hold, um, which states that memories are stored in the synaptic weights between neurons. That's the connection shrink, the kind of thing the neural networks are predicated on. Um
Like is storage even the right word for this? Or is it more like there's an action happening in the system? Or is like is that the right metaphor? Aaron Powell That's a great question. And like
I don't think anybody yet knows. So the the term that people use for memory storage is the n-gram. Like where's the n-gram, which would be like the the neural substrate of memory. And so the question is, and this was very hotly debated in the 50s, like, well, is it a molecule? Is it like a strand of DNA, a strand of RNA, a certain protein, maybe like prion, that somehow is long-lived and therefore like the brain can use it as a memory? Is it something like more dynamic? So in modern parliaments, it's not that like sort of it's um a firing pattern that's sort of kept in working memory, and that's like something more dynamic. Is it something like intracellular, like a like calcium waves inside of neurons that's serving as a memory?
How did 1950s planarian experiments challenge the synaptic‑memory hypothesis?
I think um it comes down to sort of a almost a philosophy of mind question or a cognitive science question to say, well, is the brain something that's sort of just constantly dynamically responding? to the environment, or is it something where you're sort of accessing abstract representations of things, and those representations are somehow molecularly or neurophysiologically encoded? You might have seen like several years ago there was this instance of what people call the Jennifer Anniston neuron, in which some neuroscientists have a haircut Neuroscientist. Well it was I uh I read this like many years ago, so I may be butchering it, but there was this neuroscientist at UCLA called uh Itzak Fried and in collaboration with Christoph Koe, who was um there at the time now at the Allen Institute, they were doing some electrophysiology experiments in patients that were undergoing neurosurgery.
And so they would do recordings of neurons and show people pictures of various things like apples, their grandmother Jennifer Aniston. And what they reported, again, this is uh many years after the I've read it, was that like in certain people there was like a specific neuron that fired every time they sh were sees shown a picture of Jennifer Aniston. And so the perhaps conclusion there is that, you know, th that neuron was like representing Jennifer Aniston in the brain.
Right. So it's at least an indication maybe that a recall is happening or I don't know.
Sure, something like that. Like so you can interpret it up and down the stack, right? You could Yeah, absolutely. On one end you could say, yes, like that's a Jennifer Anderson neuron, and your brain is basically like a computer that then uses the representation of Jennifer Anderson to like compute. Or you could say, Yeah, well, there's like some phenomenological thing that's happening and like that neuron was like the exhaust fume of the process that was set in motion by looking at the photo of Jennifer Anderson.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central question about where memories are stored?
0:15–2:15
2
How did 1950s planarian experiments challenge the synaptic‑memory hypothesis?
2:15–5:23
3
Why might RNA (especially non‑coding RNA) be a candidate for memory storage?
5:23–10:53
4
What evidence links RNA granules at synapses to computational processes in the brain?
10:53–17:44
5
How did the team use RNA‑sequencing and theoretical modeling to test the RNA‑memory hypothesis?
17:44–25:19
6
What did the kinetic‑proofreading model reveal about speed‑accuracy trade‑offs in RNA computation?
25:19–33:53
7
How do findings about RNA memory relate to trans‑generational inheritance and other species (e.g., octopuses)?
33:53–39:17
8
What are the broader implications of viewing RNA as a software layer for biology and technology?
39:17–39:34
Speakers
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