Hi there! 

I’m very happy to join the Steemit community and try to bring my contribution to the platform!  Here is a little bit about me: I was born in France and studied Molecular Biology there. I moved to the U.S about one year ago to work as a scientist in a Biotech company. On my free time I am a singer in a Heavy Metal band, a climber, hiker and (not so good) runner. I also enjoy good science fiction books, improv and old school horror movies. 

Why Steemit?

I live in the Bay Area, which makes it almost impossible to spend a single day without hearing about crypto-currencies. That’s how I started reading about some blockchain-based projects (which is a full time job if you want to keep up) and discovered Steemit! 

As a big consumer of educational content on YouTube, I have been concerned for a while about how the business model of the platform affects the content that’s shared on it and how it tends to prevent constructive debate and horizontal transfer of knowledge. While I still need to wrap my head around some aspects of how the platform works, I’m very excited about the Steemit project and I really like the way it encourages high-quality posts and cooperative interactions between users.  

What I write about 

As a biologist working in the field of Genetic Engineering, I see very mixed reactions from my family, friends or strangers when I talk about my job. People are sometimes very excited about the opportunities brought by these technologies, most of them are understandably very concerned, but in general they are mostly confused about some concepts they heard of but often don’t have a clear understanding of what they really mean. This is what encouraged me to write articles. 

Through them I would like to demystify genetic engineering as a field and clarify what scientists are currently trying to achieve, what is possible or not, and then maybe open an honest debate about some important ethical questions.  I definitely have a lot to learn to produce clear and catchy articles (especially since I’m not a native English speaker) but I think this platform is the right place to learn from the rest of the community. 

I already posted a first article of a series about the basics of genetic engineering and CRISPR/Cas9. Here are some topics that I would like to talk about soon: 

• CRISPR and the fear of "Designer Babies" 
• The impossible debate on GMOs 
• Why we ask the wrong questions about GM crops 
• Biohacking: dreams and concerns of an open-source science 
• Next-generation drugs: the 800 000$ treatment and what it means for the future of medicine 
• The unknown world of epigenetics 
• 23andMe and whole genome sequencing: how sensitive is your genetic information? 
• Lab-grown meat and the perspective of cruelty-free food   

Outside of experiencing life on other side of the Atlantic and gaining a couple kilograms, moving to the US allowed me to visit the beautiful National Parks on the West Coast so I’ll finish this post with a picture of the sunset over beautiful Death Valley: