What's left to explore?
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0:00 - 0:03Recently I visited Beloit, Wisconsin.
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0:03 - 0:07And I was there to honor a great 20th century explorer,
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0:07 - 0:09Roy Chapman Andrews.
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0:09 - 0:12During his time at the American Museum of Natural History,
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0:12 - 0:16Andrews led a range of expeditions to uncharted regions,
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0:16 - 0:18like here in the Gobi Desert.
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0:18 - 0:19He was quite a figure.
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0:19 - 0:23He was later, it's said, the basis of the Indiana Jones character.
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0:23 - 0:25And when I was in Beloit, Wisconsin,
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0:25 - 0:29I gave a public lecture to a group of middle school students.
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0:29 - 0:31And I'm here to tell you,
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0:31 - 0:33if there's anything more intimidating than talking here at TED,
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0:33 - 0:35it'll be trying to hold the attention
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0:35 - 0:39of a group of a thousand 12-year-olds for a 45-minute lecture.
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0:39 - 0:41Don't try that one.
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0:41 - 0:44At the end of the lecture they asked a number of questions,
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0:44 - 0:48but there was one that's really stuck with me since then.
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0:48 - 0:50There was a young girl who stood up,
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0:50 - 0:51and she asked the question:
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0:51 - 0:53"Where should we explore?"
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0:53 - 0:55I think there's a sense that many of us have
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0:55 - 0:58that the great age of exploration on Earth is over,
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0:58 - 0:59that for the next generation
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0:59 - 1:03they're going to have to go to outer space or the deepest oceans
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1:03 - 1:05in order to find something significant to explore.
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1:05 - 1:08But is that really the case?
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1:08 - 1:11Is there really nowhere significant for us to explore
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1:11 - 1:13left here on Earth?
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1:13 - 1:14It sort of made me think back
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1:14 - 1:17to one of my favorite explorers in the history of biology.
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1:17 - 1:20This is an explorer of the unseen world, Martinus Beijerinck.
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1:20 - 1:22So Beijerinck set out to discover the cause
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1:22 - 1:25of tobacco mosaic disease.
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1:25 - 1:28What he did is he took the infected juice from tobacco plants
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1:28 - 1:31and he would filter it through smaller and smaller filters.
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1:31 - 1:33And he reached the point
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1:33 - 1:36where he felt that there must be something out there
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1:36 - 1:39that was smaller than the smallest forms of life that were ever known --
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1:39 - 1:41bacteria, at the time.
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1:41 - 1:45He came up with a name for his mystery agent.
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1:45 - 1:47He called it the virus --
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1:47 - 1:49Latin for "poison."
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1:49 - 1:52And in uncovering viruses,
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1:52 - 1:55Beijerinck really opened this entirely new world for us.
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1:55 - 1:57We now know that viruses make up the majority
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1:57 - 2:00of the genetic information on our planet,
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2:00 - 2:01more than the genetic information
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2:01 - 2:03of all other forms of life combined.
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2:03 - 2:06And obviously there's been tremendous practical applications
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2:06 - 2:07associated with this world --
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2:07 - 2:10things like the eradication of smallpox,
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2:10 - 2:13the advent of a vaccine against cervical cancer,
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2:13 - 2:17which we now know is mostly caused by human papillomavirus.
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2:17 - 2:19And Beijerinck's discovery,
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2:19 - 2:21this was not something that occurred 500 years ago.
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2:21 - 2:24It was a little over 100 years ago
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2:24 - 2:27that Beijerinck discovered viruses.
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2:27 - 2:28So basically we had automobiles,
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2:28 - 2:31but we were unaware of the forms of life
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2:31 - 2:34that make up most of the genetic information on our planet.
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2:34 - 2:36We now have these amazing tools
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2:36 - 2:38to allow us to explore the unseen world --
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2:38 - 2:40things like deep sequencing,
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2:40 - 2:44which allow us to do much more than just skim the surface
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2:44 - 2:47and look at individual genomes from a particular species,
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2:47 - 2:49but to look at entire metagenomes,
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2:49 - 2:54the communities of teeming microorganisms in, on and around us
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2:54 - 2:57and to document all of the genetic information in these species.
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2:57 - 2:59We can apply these techniques
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2:59 - 3:03to things from soil to skin and everything in between.
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3:03 - 3:06In my organization we now do this on a regular basis
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3:06 - 3:08to identify the causes of outbreaks
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3:08 - 3:12that are unclear exactly what causes them.
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3:12 - 3:14And just to give you a sense of how this works,
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3:14 - 3:17imagine that we took a nasal swab from every single one of you.
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3:17 - 3:18And this is something we commonly do
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3:18 - 3:21to look for respiratory viruses like influenza.
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3:21 - 3:23The first thing we would see
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3:23 - 3:26is a tremendous amount of genetic information.
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3:26 - 3:29And if we started looking into that genetic information,
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3:29 - 3:31we'd see a number of usual suspects out there --
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3:31 - 3:33of course, a lot of human genetic information,
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3:33 - 3:36but also bacterial and viral information,
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3:36 - 3:39mostly from things that are completely harmless within your nose.
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3:39 - 3:42But we'd also see something very, very surprising.
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3:42 - 3:44As we started to look at this information,
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3:44 - 3:48we would see that about 20 percent of the genetic information in your nose
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3:48 - 3:51doesn't match anything that we've ever seen before --
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3:51 - 3:54no plant, animal, fungus, virus or bacteria.
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3:54 - 3:58Basically we have no clue what this is.
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3:58 - 4:02And for the small group of us who actually study this kind of data,
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4:02 - 4:06a few of us have actually begun to call this information
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4:06 - 4:08biological dark matter.
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4:08 - 4:11We know it's not anything that we've seen before;
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4:11 - 4:14it's sort of the equivalent of an uncharted continent
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4:14 - 4:17right within our own genetic information.
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4:17 - 4:18And there's a lot of it.
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4:18 - 4:22If you think 20 percent of genetic information in your nose is a lot
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4:22 - 4:23of biological dark matter,
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4:23 - 4:25if we looked at your gut,
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4:25 - 4:29up to 40 or 50 percent of that information is biological dark matter.
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4:29 - 4:31And even in the relatively sterile blood,
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4:31 - 4:34around one to two percent of this information is dark matter --
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4:34 - 4:39can't be classified, can't be typed or matched with anything we've seen before.
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4:39 - 4:41At first we thought that perhaps this was artifact.
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4:41 - 4:45These deep sequencing tools are relatively new.
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4:45 - 4:47But as they become more and more accurate,
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4:47 - 4:50we've determined that this information is a form of life,
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4:50 - 4:53or at least some of it is a form of life.
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4:53 - 4:57And while the hypotheses for explaining the existence of biological dark matter
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4:57 - 4:59are really only in their infancy,
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4:59 - 5:03there's a very, very exciting possibility that exists:
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5:03 - 5:06that buried in this life, in this genetic information,
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5:06 - 5:11are signatures of as of yet unidentified life.
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5:11 - 5:15That as we explore these strings of A's, T's, C's and G's,
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5:15 - 5:18we may uncover a completely new class of life
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5:18 - 5:20that, like Beijerinck, will fundamentally change
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5:20 - 5:23the way that we think about the nature of biology.
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5:23 - 5:27That perhaps will allow us to identify the cause of a cancer that afflicts us
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5:27 - 5:31or identify the source of an outbreak that we aren't familiar with
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5:31 - 5:34or perhaps create a new tool in molecular biology.
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5:34 - 5:35I'm pleased to announce that,
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5:35 - 5:40along with colleagues at Stanford and Caltech and UCSF,
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5:40 - 5:42we're currently starting an initiative
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5:42 - 5:46to explore biological dark matter for the existence of new forms of life.
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5:46 - 5:48A little over a hundred years ago,
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5:48 - 5:51people were unaware of viruses,
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5:51 - 5:55the forms of life that make up most of the genetic information on our planet.
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5:55 - 5:57A hundred years from now, people may marvel
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5:57 - 6:01that we were perhaps completely unaware of a new class of life
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6:01 - 6:04that literally was right under our noses.
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6:04 - 6:08It's true, we may have charted all the continents on the planet
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6:08 - 6:11and we may have discovered all the mammals that are out there,
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6:11 - 6:14but that doesn't mean that there's nothing left to explore on Earth.
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6:14 - 6:16Beijerinck and his kind
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6:16 - 6:20provide an important lesson for the next generation of explorers --
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6:20 - 6:23people like that young girl from Beloit, Wisconsin.
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6:23 - 6:27And I think if we phrase that lesson, it's something like this:
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6:27 - 6:31Don't assume that what we currently think is out there is the full story.
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6:31 - 6:36Go after the dark matter in whatever field you choose to explore.
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6:36 - 6:38There are unknowns all around us
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6:38 - 6:41and they're just waiting to be discovered.
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6:41 - 6:42Thank you.
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6:42 - 6:47(Applause)
- Title:
- What's left to explore?
- Speaker:
- Nathan Wolfe
- Description:
-
We've been to the moon, we've mapped the continents, we've even been to the deepest point in the ocean -- twice. What's left for the next generation to explore? Biologist and explorer Nathan Wolfe suggests this answer: Almost everything. And we can start, he says, with the world of the unseeably small.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 07:10
Jenny Zurawell edited English subtitles for What's left to explore? | ||
TASIA TASSOVA commented on English subtitles for What's left to explore? | ||
TASIA TASSOVA commented on English subtitles for What's left to explore? | ||
Jenny Zurawell approved English subtitles for What's left to explore? | ||
Jenny Zurawell edited English subtitles for What's left to explore? | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for What's left to explore? | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for What's left to explore? | ||
Timothy Covell added a translation |