Peranakan Ancestry

Episode 1: Tracing Peranakan Ancestry with Prof. Roger Foo (NUS Medicine)

You've probably seen those vibrant Peranakan shophouses in Joo Chiat – but how did this unique mixed-heritage community come to be in Singapore? To discover more, we speak with Prof. Roger Foo, the first Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan Professor of Medicine at the National University of Singapore. Prof. Foo was one of the researchers behind the Singapore Peranakan Genome Project. We unravel some mind-blowing research about heritage and the human heart. We also hear a bit about Prof. Foo's personal journey to becoming a doctor (hint: involves a hit medical TV drama). 

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Episode Highlights

We find out:

• Whether the science stacks up to legends about the origins of Peranakans in Singapore

• The sheer volume of data each of us possess in our genome - enough to stretch for 9000 km and fill up several thousand Bibles if written out!

• How you (yes, you!) could likely be a descendant of famous historical figures like Genghis Khan

• The mysteries of species evolution - is the fish in the wet market your distant cousin?

• How cells 'sing' different songs from the same DNA, leading to diverse bodily functions

• Groundbreaking current research on rewiring heart cells and the potential future of regenerative medicine

Timestamps

00:00 Preview
00:24 Intro
01:27 Prof. Foo's journey to becoming a doctor
06:56 Singapore Peranakan Genome Project
15:32 Genghis Khan and genetic isopoints
18:48 Is your 185th million grandfather a fish?
21:02 [Mid-roll ad] Bioethics: We could, but should we? at Science Centre Singapore
21:26 Paiseh question: what is DNA?
23:58 Epigenetics and heart health
28:02 Word association game
31:08 Outro

Guest Biography

Roger Foo is Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan Professor at the NUS School of Medicine, Vice Dean of Research, Director NUHS Cardiovascular Metabolic Disease Translational Research Programme, Cardiovascular Research Institute, Advisor to the NUHS Clinician Scientist Academy, and Senior Consultant Cardiologist, National University Heart Centre. He is an NUS med school graduate, and spent 20 years abroad on specialist training before returning to Singapore in 2013. His training was undertaken at Kings College Hospital, London, and Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. He was Wellcome Trust Fellow at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, and returned to Cambridge to start a group as British Heart Foundation Fellow and Consultant Physician, before eventually returning to Singapore. His lab was the first to publish an epigenomic map of the failing human heart. More recently, he has published an in-depth analysis of the human cardiac chromatin 3D organisation, elucidating its changes during the heart disease response. The lab deep dives into the heart epigenome in continuing aspirations to discover mechanisms of disease for new therapies or biomarkers. Today, he spends a lot of time mentoring young scientist, alongside growing research on heart disease prevention and targets for new drug development.

Correction

The episode misstates the number of Peranakans whole-genome sequenced by the Singapore Peranakan Genome Project. The study collected blood samples from 177 self-declared Singapore Peranakan volunteers, not 700. Thanks Colin Chee for spotting!

Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.

RISHII: Whoa!

JACY: That is mindblowing. 

RISHII: So you're saying that everyone, okay, not everyone, but a lot of the people who are listening to this podcast are probably related to Genghis Khan. [Editor's note: A 2003 study estimated that 16 million men were likely descended from Genghis Khan.]

PROF. FOO: Yeah, it's true. Yes, because if you can say that Genghis Khan has a descendant today, then he must be an ancestor to everybody today, if he has passed the [genetic isopoint].

[Upbeat electronica music playing]

RISHII: Hey there, welcome to Void Deck, a casual science podcast brought to you by Science Centre Singapore. We bring science out of the labs and put scientists in singlets. Each episode, we sit back with a local science changemaker and ask all the questions that you are too paiseh to ask. I'm your host Rishii, and today we're joined by my colleague Jacy, a science educator at the centre.

JACY: Hi everyone.

RISHII: Hi Jacy! Today's episode is on tracing Peranakan ancestry. You've probably seen those vibrant Peranakan shophouses in Joo Chiat, but how did this unique community come to be in Singapore? To discover more, we speak with Prof. Roger Foo, the first Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan Professor of Medicine at the National University of Singapore.

JACY: If you enjoy our content, hit the follow button and show us some love with a five-star rating. Thanks for tuning in and exploring the universe from the heartlands.

RISHII: Welcome, Prof Foo, to the podcast.

PROF. FOO: Thanks a lot, Rishii. Thanks for having me.

RISHII: Maybe we could start with just learning more about yourself. So as a child, did you always want to be a doctor?

PROF. FOO: So Rishii, this takes back quite a lot of years. I would have to say that it wasn't all that clear. I lived in a HDB flat and there was a really famous GP at the bottom of our block and my parents were in great adoration of him. And every time that we went to see him for our family health and so on, there was always a comment that, wow, this guy is doing great work. So yeah, I guess it developed kind of from there. So I worked hard, studied hard and got into medical school.

RISHII: Oh, okay. Okay. Wow. I mean, I guess we should thank that GP that played such an inspiring role. Can I check with you, if I’m right, you are a senior cardiologist consultant. So what made you choose this path?

PROF. FOO: So Rishii, that one's also not too difficult. When we were in med school, there were a few of us put together in something known as anatomy dissection table. This is the part where we do dissection over a human body. And the group of us were really fascinated with the heart and we drove each other into the craziness about hearts, always.

Then going further, when we started seeing patients using the stethoscope, that's also the thing that is most used by cardiologists, listening to heart sounds. And then came the interpretation of ECGs. So at every step of the way, there was always intrigue, at least for me in my mind, about cardiology and how the heart functions. So it was quite clear that I would take up that route of cardiology.

RISHII: Oh, wow. I just want to go back to the part where you just casually mentioned dissection of the human body. So what was that like, you know, the first time? Was it queasy?

PROF. FOO: Yeah, Rishii. Okay, so it really is interesting. The word is cadaver, right? So these are bodies that have been donated for the education and training of doctors. They got us into a room. At that time, this is how it happens. All 300, I think, of us students, first day at the dissection hall, we put our hands on each of our cadavers. Ten of us share one. And then we do a swearing. Today we have a white coat ceremony for incoming medical students.

In those days, the white coat was in this cadaver room. And then the smell of formalin just hits you. Even today, if I were to smell it, it's something that you will never forget.

RISHII: Wow. It's like an initiation ceremony of sorts. We understand that you were a huge fan of Grey’s Anatomy when you were growing up. I think a lot of people listening to this were probably, maybe, a big fan of it as well. So was it anything like the TV show?

PROF. FOO: The ER or the A&E in the UK really was like that. On one of my first weeks being on call in King's College, London, this is in the depths of South London, there were gunshot wounds that were coming in. There were broken legs. There were drunkards that were punching doctors. I got kicked and punched before. So it really is Grey's Anatomy.

And also having to familiarise myself with all the slang terms for different types of drugs because here we only read it in textbooks and we don't get exposed to it. And we don't even have, lesser knowledge, know how to treat patients that come in with drug overdose. But there it's like bread and butter. And if you know London, South London in the days of the 1990s really was quite dark still. So it was quite an initiation.

RISHII: Wow, that sounds like chaos. You should have your own Grey's Anatomy show. But you were saying that it was really intense and you had to deal with gunshot wounds and all of that. This was really in the early stages of your career. How did you even get through the day without just being traumatised?

PROF. FOO: Oh, I was very traumatised. I mean, to be fair, Singaporean right, Chinese boy in a very comfortable, sheltered society of Singapore being now exposed to all this kind of horror that I'm describing to you, which was very real, I have to say, to remind you, it was really quite bad. On the weekends, like Saturdays and Friday evenings, ambulances will basically rove around that area to pick up drunkards from the street and bring them in.

And sometimes they are so over the hill that you don't even know what's the cause for their unconsciousness, etc. It can be really quite hairy and bad. I remember times when I would just run to the toilet and close the door. Oh my God, even bringing that up now... Just for a few minutes to chill myself in that room, in that small toilet room. But I mean, we go past it.

It was interesting because I got to see another side of the world, I guess, or of life, right? And also got to interact with all sorts of different people of different walks of life.

RISHII: Wow, I wasn't expecting that level of intensity. This sounds a lot worse than the TV show itself. But thank you so much for sharing that. I think that's very exciting from our point of view. But like you said, it was deeply traumatising as well at that time.

Moving on to a later stage in your career, you've also took part in many interesting projects. And one of it would be the Singapore Peranakan Genome Project. Could you tell us more about that and what exactly is this project about?

PROF. FOO: Yeah, sure, Rishii. So that was the nice part about coming back to work in Singapore because about the year 2012-2013 when I came back, it really was boom time for genomics. And here in Singapore, there was so much resource that was being poured in. That was the key reason why I realised I cannot not come back to Singapore now. This is a huge opportunity. So the Peranakan project was conceived on the back of the Singapore Genome Project.

So the government has put aside money. In fact, today it's still doing it to sequence the population. So there are many people who maybe some of you listening have already been whole genome sequence. In fact, I invite you to go for your whole genome sequence if you like. There is a population level sequencing project. And at that time, I mentioned to your colleague Jacy here that there was a scientist in our institute whose expertise is on this topic called genetic admixture.

So he was very keen to study the genetics of each person and look for the mixture of ancestry. And he's from China and he's trained in the US. And he's at that time fairly unfamiliar with Singapore, but familiar enough to have tasted Peranakan food and realised there's this really interesting culture. So he reached out to me.

I mean, we work in the same building and he asked if we would like to carry out Peranakan project on the back of the population sequencing project. So we managed to persuade the leaders of the population project to give us a thousand samples to sequence Peranakans. So we ended up sequencing 700* Peranakan and studying the genetic admixture. [Correction: the study collected blood samples from 177, not 700, self-declared Singapore Peranakan volunteers.]

JACY: Wow, that's so cool. So maybe for the laypeople who don't really know so much about DNA and sequencing, could you explain a bit about what exactly is admixture?

PROF. FOO: Okay, nice Jacy. So the DNA is taken out of, well in this case, we take it out of the blood. So we extract the blood from these volunteers, participants, subjects, and then we isolate and harvest the DNA out. And we, actually it's just biochemistry. It's put into a sequencing machine and the sequencing machine reads the genetic output, the genome of the individual.

JACY: So something like deciphering a recipe in a sense.

PROF. FOO: Yeah, absolutely. So in each one of us, we are made up of millions and gazillions of cells and the cells each contain blueprint, which is our DNA.

RISHII: How do you even like read these results? Is it like very technical or like it just tells you like, 20% Malay, 50% Chinese? Does the system break it down in such layman terms or is it very technical?

PROF. FOO: No, no, actually it's very simple. There are four bases that are called nucleic acids also in our DNA system. It's exactly the same DNA that all living things are made of. So like plants, insects, the whole world, right? Bacteria, every living thing has DNA. And the DNA is made up of four bases or nucleic acids in different or in fermentation and sequence, hence sequencing the term.

And the way that it's sequenced comes out telling you which base is in which position. And if you wanted to, it's possible to take that result and print it out into an encyclopaedia of yourself. Oh, wow. So for example, if you went to the Wellcome Trust Museum in London, there is in a cupboard the whole genome of a human being.

So that human being gave his blood and had himself sequenced and now it's printed out into something like 50 volumes of his genome. So if you open each book, 50 volumes of them, right, you will see the letters ACGT representing the four bases. And of course, it's like hieroglyphics, right? You are reading A, C, G, T, G, G, T, T, G, A, C, G.

So it's basically a long string of letters. I am told that statistically, if you stretch out the letters, it will run for 9000 kilometres. And if we think that there are 3 billion bases per genome, then that's several thousand Bibles. So that's your fifty volumes.

RISHII: And that's just one person. One person's genome.

JACY: That is a lot of information.

RISHII: To fill up a library. 

JACY: Yes. So I assume that in this project you took all this information from different people and then you compared them and then you found more about their heritage and their ancestry. So going back to the Peranakan Genome Project, how did you manage to convince the Peranakans to participate? What made them want to donate their blood and DNA for this?

PROF. FOO: Oh yeah, Jacy, that part is really fun. So the Peranakan people in Singapore are a very tight-knit community and we, or somehow or other, we know of a few Peranakan friends who are quite prominent in that community. I suppose I can mention his name. One of them is Peter Lee, who is very prominent in even hosting some TV shows around histories around this area, right? Southeast Asian history.

So it wasn't hard before someone like Peter Lee and a few of the others floated this project up to the community and they gathered around it with great force, all wanting to participate and contribute their DNA.

JACY: Wow, that's nice. They must be very proud of their heritage.

PROF. FOO: Yeah, you're right. They are. I mean, they're also very keen to find out about this kind of ancestry questions.

JACY: So tapping on that, how did they respond to the results of the research?

PROF. FOO: Yeah, it's interesting. So I better be careful what I say. A lot of them were interested to know whether there really is so-called Malay ancestry in their genetics. There's always this, they are much better at telling this story themselves. I mean, I'm not Peranakan myself. There's always this legend that there was a Chinese princess that came from China and from her, with the local Malay leaders, gave rise to the Peranakan that we have now today.

There's also another legend that a lot the Chinese merchants that came from China hooked up with local indigenous ladies and then had the Peranakan culture and so on. So I think in a way, the genetic experiment or project, I guess, revealed some of these.

If you believe the science that came out of it, which we do, of course, then it's saying that there really is Malay ancestry in Peranakan quite clearly, quite distinctly.

RISHII: So based on your study, which legend do you think corresponds to your results the most?

PROF. FOO: The one that involves a female Malay ancestor. So the research reveals, and it's published and peer-reviewed, etc., reveals that about six to nine generations ago, a Malay female ancestor exists in this Peranakan people. But don't forget that this was taking the bloods of individuals that are self-declaring as Peranakans.

So it's really more, at the end of the day, a lot of this is an agreement that this is more cultural than a hard and fast rule. You can't say you are not Peranakan because you don't have this. Because a lot of them are practising Peranakans today culturally. But in the general analysis of the entire 700* people [correction: 177 people], most of them have 5% amount of Malay ancestry in genetics in their genome.

Which is more than you would find in a person who is self-declared as a Chinese, like myself, for example.

RISHII: Oh, that's interesting.

PROF. FOO: So for myself, which is, I would say I'm fully Chinese because I don't practise Peranakan culture, etc., my genetics does not show any Malay ancestry.

RISHII: I used to have a dream where if I could trace back my ancestry, I was hoping to be related to some South Indian king, or some royalty. Would you be able to actually trace it back to a single person?

PROF. FOO: Well, so, Rishii, you probably are a descendant of Kublai Khan and Genghis Khan. [Editor's note: A 2003 study estimated that 16 million men were likely descended from Genghis Khan.] So there are people who --

RISHII: --That's pretty cool.

PROF. FOO: I think all of us are, so that's the sad thing too. So there is a line of research that is looking exactly at evolution and evolutionary genetics. So start from this point. Each one of us have two parents, right? And the two parents have two parents and so on. So two to the power of N.

And if you build up the pedigree going backwards, you end up with millions of people as being your ancestors to which you are a descendant. But the reality is that it wasn't so many people that lived during that time. There is a lot of people that occupy more than one position in that tree. So it's more a web than a tree.

RISHII: Okay. I see that's an interesting way to put it, like a web.

PROF FOO: So in this web, if you go back enough times, there's such a thing known as a genetic isopoint where everybody that lived in that year, if they have descendants living today, they would be the ancestor of everybody today.

JACY: Whoa, that is mind-blowing.

RISHII: So you're saying that everyone, okay, not everyone, but a lot of the people who are listening to this podcast are probably related to Genghis Khan.

PROF. FOO: Yeah, it's true. Yes, because if you can say that Genghis Khan has a descendant today, then he must be an ancestor to everybody today, if he has passed that [genetic isopoint].

RISHII: Whoa, okay. That's a fact that I'm going to use as any icebreaker now that I'm a descendant of Genghis Khan. But that's so interesting, right? I don't think we've looked at ancestry that way, at least for a layman like me. We always thought, everyone's different roots and different people, but if we go down that route, it's a web and it's all just linked to a few people.

JACY: Yes, it means all of us are actually related and connected to one another.

PROF. FOO: Yes, absolutely. That is exactly the point, that there is sufficient inbreeding, if you look at it at a very high level. 

RISHII: Wow, okay. Maybe we'll not dwell too much into that. I do not want to ruin any relationships.

PROF. FOO: But also the point that there are many of us who share ancestors that we are not even aware of. I think that's the most important thing that comes out of this.

RISHII: So if you really put in effort to do research and samples, you can actually find a lot of similarities.

PROF. FOO: A really good one is in the UK, because in the UK, the royal family line, they really know who each king and queen descended from. They can trace the ancestry, at least in the royal line, all the way up to, let's say, Edward I and so on. If Edward I, and he does have ancestors in the royal family today, or descendants in the royal family today, he's actually the ancestor of everybody living in England today. 

RISHII: Whoa. That's pretty insane. Okay, that seems similar to what you referenced, a Richard Dawkins quote on another podcast, Third Spacing, about how our 185th million grandfather was a fish. So, ah, is the fish in the market my cousin, Prof? I wonder.

PROF. FOO: [Laughs] It's a very different looking fish. Okay, please do look up Richard Dawkins' book. I mean, it's fascinating. I think it really helps you to rethink life altogether. And it's true, if you think that, okay, so the analogy he uses, and here I'm just reconfiguring what he actually says. Okay, so it's not my own thinking. If you put the photograph of your father, and then your father's father, and his father, and his father, and line it all the way back.

And if you go back to that generation I described to you, it's actually the picture of a fish. And then if you go back even further, I mean, it depends on how far you want to go, then it's a single cell, for example, you know, the beginning of life.

RISHII: Right. So, in a sense, it's like a fish when humans were not around.

PROF. FOO: Yeah, exactly. So, the idea is that it's very hard to say when species started. Because the transition is, it's so hard to think of this in the evolutionary time frame. Okay. And that's where our human brain maybe cannot even think of it. Right. I mean, even in our human life, I mean, when did you stop being a teenager and becoming an adult? It's a gradual process. Right. That happens, right?

And that's the same when homo sapiens became homo sapiens, and before it was a species before that. And the thing that I find it hard to square up even is that species can only breed to give its own species. Right. So, how does a new species come out of that? So, these are really tough questions to get over in the mind, but it's just explained by this very gradual process over evolutionary time.

RISHII: I mean, I guess that's the mysteries of the world, right? Like we'll never figure out, like, just when we think we have all the answers, the questions change. 

JACY: Yes. That is the beauty of science.

[Synthesizer music plays]

RISHII: Hello there, it's time for the mid-roll ad. You're probably listening to this on the MRT with headphones or maybe out loud. Have you ever thought about the DNA that encodes the shape of your ears? Did you know that the University of Pittsburgh scientists found out that 49 genes contribute to earlobe attachment? Head down to the Science Centre Singapore to learn more weird facts about DNA and the human body. 

RISHII: I am here to ask all the paiseh questions as I promised at the start of this show. So, what exactly is DNA? For those who have been listening to this podcast up till this moment and they're like, why is this guy talking about DNA? What exactly is DNA?

PROF. FOO: What do you think Jacy? What should we say?

RISHII: Help me out here.

PROF. FOO: It's the thing that I mentioned about the four bases or the four nucleic acids, A, C, G and T. These are the four letters of life. And if you take out the DNA and sequence it, it literally is the four letters in the different sequence. And every cell in our body has that blueprint of those letters. So, every cell has the same sequence.

RISHII: So, essentially, it is what makes us, us, in the most abstract way possible that I can put it.

JACY: So, it's like a code in a sense where we have all these four letters and they are arranged in different orders and then different orders of the letters will give us a different code. And then the code will determine different characteristics that we have or different features. For example, like the proteins in our body, the colour of our eyes, the colour of our hair, something like that.

PROF. FOO: We mentioned that every cell has the same DNA code. So, that's like the blueprint. And the blueprint, as what Jacy says, gives rise to all the ways in which the cells function. And actually, if you want to take one more step further, the interesting thing in recent years is the discovery that different cells function differently even though they have the same blueprint.

So, a brain cell in the same person, a brain cell and his lung cell and his heart cell and liver cell all have the same blueprint, the same DNA code. But they do different things and they function differently. The brain cell functions differently from the liver cell.

RISHII: Is that because there are different parts of the body?

PROF. FOO: No. So, really, at the end of the day, it turns out that the code is just a blueprint and different parts of the code are being used in different cells. So, it's like an analogy I've used. It's like a songbook. Every cell has exactly the same songbook, that's their blueprint, but different songs are being sung from that songbook.

RISHII: Right. So, they're just using the notes differently in a sense. Exactly. Okay. I think that's a nice way to put it.

PROF. FOO: So, because the different notes are being used, then they are carrying out the function so differently. And when we move into a disease from health, then some of these songs become out of tune.

RISHII: Oh, okay.

JACY: So, I think what you're referring to is your research on epigenetics, if I'm not wrong. So, Prof just gave us a very good analogy about what epigenetics is. And I believe he's referring to his research on how the epigenetics affects heart health and also heart disease. So, maybe you can tell us a bit about that.

PROF. FOO: Yeah, Jacy, thanks. So, it's also around Nobel Prize winning stuffthat came out 20 years ago when they discovered that the way that different parts of the genome is being used is based on certain modification and features that drive how the genome is used in each cell type.

And so much to a point where if you can rewire some of these modifications, you can actually make the cell change and behave differently. So, to give a more concrete analogy, if you take liver cell and you grow it on a plate and allowed it to divide, it will always divide into more liver cells because the code is hardwired there. So, only the songs of a liver cell will sing.

But if you find a way to rewire the genome and make it sing different songs, you can actually turn the liver cell into a heart cell. And that was the groundbreaking Nobel Prize 20 years ago. So, with that knowledge, everyone has gone hunting for the rewiring processes.

And the thinking is that in our context of the heart, if the songs are going out of tune, can we find specific ways to retune it so that the wires are back into health? Okay. And that's the epigenetic research that we're working on. Wow.

JACY: So, if you compare it, maybe go back to the analogy of a songbook, there are little markers to tell the cell which pages to read from. So, if you were to find out which markers are marking the pages, and then maybe you can tweak them a bit, then maybe we have the possibility of helping to reduce the risk of certain diseases like heart disease.

PROF. FOO: Exactly. Yeah, very nicely put to Jacy. So, for example, in the case of the heart, when we have heart attack, the heart muscle dies, right? The cells die. And it gets replaced by these things called fibroblasts. They're all scarring cells, scar cells. So, these guys came up, not my lab, but some other lab showed that you can actually put in these rewiring factors and rewire so that the scar cells turn into heart cells.

RISHII: So, completely changing them.

PROF. FOO: And making them behave differently altogether. So, if you think that scar cells, you don't want them, you should get them back to heart cells, you can actually change the cause of heart failure completely. So, this has worked seemingly in mouse. We also see it in our own hands using those rewiring factors. And I think there are people in the world who are trying to ultimately bring it to clinic one day.

RISHII: So, you're kind of reversing damages to the heart that was previously thought, this is a permanent damage. After a few heart attacks, your heart is pretty weak and there's nothing that we can do except just take good care of it. But now you can actually rewire it to be back to how it was.

PROF. FOO: Yeah, so good that you are saying it like that, Rishii. Definitely spot on.

RISHII: Oh, okay, great. I learned something today.

JACY: Yes, because I think usually if I understand correctly, after a heart attack, there will be scar tissue on the wall of the heart. Then that interferes somewhat with the pumping of the heart. And then that will contribute or lead to heart failure, which for now, I think can only be managed by good lifestyle control medications. So, this is really some groundbreaking research. If we really can reverse these changes, I think we can provide people a new lease of life.

PROF. FOO: Yes, absolutely, Jacy. I mean, that's the whole space of regenerative medicine as well, to get organs to repair themselves, especially organs like the heart that are not reparative.

RISHII: We would now like to play some games with you. Word association game. So, basically, we will be asking you certain words in quickfire. And we just want to see what comes to your mind first. First word is health.

PROF. FOO: Disease.

RISHII: Disease. Why is that the first thing that comes to your mind?

PROF. FOO: Well, that's the opposite, right? So, people are healthy, but they become diseased. We want to convert them back to health. At the moment in my head, this is the juxtaposition I keep thinking about.

RISHII: Apple. 

PROF. FOO: Orange.

RISHII: So, it's going with opposite fruits now.

PROF. FOO: It's better than saying doctor, right? Apple a day keeps the doctor away.

RISHII: Cliché, I see. Heart.

PROF. FOO: Lung. 

RISHII: Oh, why would that come up? 

PROF. FOO: So, in our research space, very often, heart research institutes are set together with heart and lung institutes.

RISHII: Right. Is there some correlation?

PROF. FOO: Maybe it's just organs in the chest. 

RISHII: Right. They're like cousins. Okay. Bloodline.

PROF. FOO: Oh, vikings. How come I'm thinking of the word vikings? 

RISHII: Was it a show?  

PROF. FOO: Could well be. So, the way that blood is so gory and the Vikings are fighting people. And then there's always this talk about ancestry. My knowledge about ancestry is very British and European based. And it always dates to the Vikings.

RISHII: For me, bloodline would have been like Game of Thrones because they're always talking about ancestry and who has the right to sit on the throne. Yes.

JACY: It's always associated with royalty in pop culture for some reason.

RISHII: Right. And pure blood. But good to know what shows you like, Prof. 

Peranakan.

PROF. FOO: What's that? What? Buah keluak.

RISHII: Oh, that's the dish.

PROF. FOO: Yeah. It uses a nut.

RISHII: Yes. And actually the nut is like a bit toxic or something, right? It's true.

PROF. FOO: And they need to soak it for the longest of time to then actually cook it. Right. Right. There's some really special technique that goes into cooking that dish.

RISHII: Did you have a lot of it during the research phase?

PROF. FOO: Yeah. Probably too much.

JACY: Gattaca? Is it Gattaca?

PROF. FOO: Oh yeah, that's the amazing sci-fi show that quite a number of us talk about from time to time. There was a moment in time when we were crafting the first heart disease project. A lot of the projects in our clinical space always come with abbreviations. The one that I'm now running together with team is called Project RESET. There's always a name to it. They wanted to use “Gattaca” as a name because it was very DNA-based. I've not actually watched the movie myself but it sounds really interesting.

RISHII: It's a movie, like an old movie?

PROF. FOO: Science fiction movie where people came in and they could buy their DNA. They can exchange their DNA from a window like in the bank teller.

RISHII: Wow, okay I need to check this out. Thank you so much, Prof, for joining us today. I think we had a lot of fun learning about our ancestry, your Peranakan Genome Project. I think my biggest takeaway was that I'm either linked to a fish or to Genghis Khan. What about you, Jacy?

JACY: Wow, it was absolutely mind-blowing to hear that. But it was also super fascinating to hear about all your research on heart health and about the prospect of regenerative medicine and how the different markers can help different cells to perform different roles. It's really exciting research.

PROF. FOO: Very nice, Jacy. Very nice, Rishii. Thanks for giving the chance at this.

RISHII: Thank you, Prof, and thanks everyone for listening. So subscribe to Void Deck to be the first to know when new geeky episodes about science in Singapore are released. You can stay updated with Prof Roger Foo's work by following foo-lab.sg.

JACY: Are you over 40 years old? Consider joining Project RESET, a nationwide heart health study. Gain insights into your metabolism, heart and liver health, and find out how you can lower your risk of cardiovascular diseases like heart attack and stroke. If you're under 40, encourage your parents to sign up. It's a chance for them to advance medical science while learning more about their own health.

RISHII: Can't wait for the next episode or curious to learn more about DNA and the human body? Come down to Science Centre Singapore to visit our revamped exhibit on bioethics and learn more about the science of ageing at Dialogue with Time with your parents and grandparents. See you in the next episode!

JACY: Thank you!

Resources

Wu, D., Li, P.Y., Pan, B., Tiang, Z., Dou, J., et al. Genetic Admixture in the Culturally Unique Peranakan Chinese Population in Southeast Asia, Molecular Biology and Evolution 38:4463-4474 (2021)
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/38/10/4463/6307269 

A*STAR Research: Unravelling the ancestry of a unique community
https://research.a-star.edu.sg/articles/highlights/unravelling-the-ancestry-of-a-unique-community/

A*STAR News: Genomic Analysis Of Peranakan Chinese Reveals Insight Into Ancestry
https://www.a-star.edu.sg/News/astarNews/news/press-releases/genomic-analysis-of-peranakan-chinese-reveals-insight-into-ancestry 

"Genes of Myths and Legends" by Dawn Marie Lee in THE PERANAKAN Magazine
https://www.peranakan.org.sg/wp-content/uploads/pdf-light-viewer/770-pdfs/page-00032.pdf

PRECISE-SG100K
https://www.npm.sg/partners/precise-sg100k/

Wellcome Collection's Library of the Human Genome
https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/the-key-to-memory--write-it-down

Zerjal, T., Xue, Y., Bertorelle, G., Wells, R. S., Bao, W., Zhu, S., Qamar, R., Ayub, Q., Mohyuddin, A., Fu, S., Li, P., Yuldasheva, N., Ruzibakiev, R., Xu, J., Shu, Q., Du, R., Yang, H., Hurles, M. E., Robinson, E., … Tyler-Smith, C. (2003). The genetic legacy of the Mongols. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 72(3), 717–721.
https://doi.org/10.1086/367774

Third Spacing Episode 69: What is it like being a clinician scientist? https://open.spotify.com/episode/34nzeJwVjNPgycpOvnVOHl?si=CTBXyTaIRniV5iVeXURe-g&nd=1&dlsi=d2c1dd7c0dad442c

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2012/press-release/

Prof. Foo's Website
https://www.foo-lab.sg/

Project RESET
https://www.foo-lab.sg/project-reset

Want to learn more about the human body? Check out the following exhibitions at Science Centre Singapore and get your tickets at https://www.gevme.com/scsonlinetickets:

Bioethics: We Could, But Should We?
https://www.science.edu.sg/whats-on/exhibitions/bioethics-exhibition

Dialogue with Time - Embrace Aging
https://www.science.edu.sg/whats-on/exhibitions/dialogue-with-time-embrace-ageing

Credits

This episode of Void Deck was hosted by Rishii Vijayahkumar and Jacy Mok. The episode was written, produced, and sound engineered by Jamie Uy. Sound recording and post-production assistance was provided by Lydia Konig and Joyce Sia. The episode graphics were designed by Jansen Michelle and the podcast cover art illustrated by Vikki Li Qi. The background music "Data Flow" and "Spatial" was created by Fugu Vibes. Special thanks to Prof. Foo for coming on the show.