Chemistry World Podcast

Author: Chemistry World

Join the Chemistry World team for interviews, news and in-depth discussions of issues facing the chemistry community. Get in touch with your thoughts by tweeting @ChemistryWorld
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Language: en

Genres: Chemistry, Science

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AlphaGenome & the RNA world hypothesis | The chemical breakdown podcast
Wednesday, 11 February, 2026

This week, we discuss the new deep learning model AlphaGenome and visit the very beginning of life on Earth with Mason Wakley and Neil Withers. Google DeepMind has released a new deep learning model that can predict the effect of small changes to DNA sequences up to one million base pairs in length. What does this new tech mean for our understanding of the human genome? And, how did life start on Earth, before the first cell came to be? We discuss the RNA world hypothesis and breakdown the chemistry it's built on.