Plants, Quantum Sensors, and Predicting Cancer Evolution (EP. 25)

From First Principles · Feb 10, 2026 · 1h 49m · transcript

Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this episode jumps from plant biochemistry to quantum metrology to cancer evolution. We start with a University of York breakthrough that solves a ~50-year mystery in alkaloid biosynthesis—identifying the “missing” enzyme behind a key asymmetric step plants use to build powerful defensive (and pharmaceutically useful) molecules. Then we go deep on quantum sensing with entangled atomic clouds, showing how correlated measurements can beat the standard quantum limit. Finally, we close with ALFA-K, a new tool that maps local fitness landscapes to…