1
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I want you to touch your face.

2
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Go on.

3
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What do you feel?

4
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Soft? Squishy?

5
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It's you, right? You're feeling you?

6
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Well, it's not quite true.

7
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You're actually feeling
thousands of microscopic creatures

8
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that live on our face and fingers.

9
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You're feeling some of the fungi

10
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that drifted down
from the air ducts today.

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They set off our allergies

12
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and smell of mildew.

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You're feeling some
of the 100 billion bacterial cells

14
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that live on our skin.

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They've been munching away
at your skin oils and replicating,

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producing the smells of body odor.

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You're likely even touching
the fecal bacteria

18
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that sprayed onto you the last time
you flushed a toilet,

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or those bacteria that live
in our water pipes

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and sprayed onto you
with your last shower.

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Sorry.

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(Laughter)

23
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You're probably even giving
a microscopic high five

24
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to the two species of mites
that live on our faces,

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on all of our faces.

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They've spent the night
squirming across your face

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and having sex on the bridge of your nose.

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(Laughter)

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Many of them are now leaking
their gut contents onto your pores.

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(Laughter)

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Now look at your finger.

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How's it feel? Gross?

33
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In desperate need of soap or bleach?

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That's how you feel now,

35
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but it's not going to be
how you feel in the future.

36
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For the last 100 years,

37
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we've had an adversarial relationship

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with the microscopic life nearest us.

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If I told you there was
a bug in your house

40
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or bacteria in your sink,

41
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there was a human-devised
solution for that,

42
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a product to eradicate, exterminate,

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disinfect.

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We strive to remove most
of the microscopic life in our world now.

45
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But in doing so, we're ignoring
the best source of new technology

46
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on this planet.

47
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The last 100 years have featured
human solutions to microbial problems,

48
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but the next 100 years will feature
microbial solutions to human problems.

49
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I'm a scientist, and I work
with researchers

50
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at North Carolina State University
and the University of Colorado

51
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to uncover the microscopic
life that is nearest us,

52
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and that's often in our most intimate
and boring environments,

53
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be it under our couches, in our backyards,

54
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or in our belly buttons.

55
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I do this work because it turns out
that we know very little

56
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about the microscopic life
that's nearest us.

57
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As of a few years ago,
no scientist could tell you

58
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what bugs or microorganisms
live in your home --

59
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your home, the place you know
better than anywhere else.

60
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And so I and teams of others

61
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are armed with Q-tips and tweezers

62
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and advanced DNA techniques

63
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to uncover the microscopic
life nearest us.

64
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In doing so, we found
over 600 species of bugs

65
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that live in USA homes,

66
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everything from spiders and cockroaches

67
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to tiny mites that cling to feathers.

68
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And we found over 100,000 species
of bacteria and fungi

69
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that live in our dust bunnies,

70
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thousands more that live
on our clothes or in our showers.

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We've gone further still,

72
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and we looked at the microorganisms

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that live inside the bodies
of each of those bugs in our home.

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In each bug, for example, a wasp,

75
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we see a microscopic jungle
unfold in a petri plate,

76
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a world of hundreds of vibrant species.

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Behold the biological cosmos!

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So many of the species
you're looking at right now

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don't yet have names.

80
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Most of the life around us
remains unknown.

81
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I remember the first time I discovered
and got to name a new species.

82
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It was a fungus that lives
in the nest of a paper wasp.

83
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It's white and fluffy,

84
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and I named it "mucor nidicola,"

85
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meaning in Latin that it lives
in the nest of another.

86
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This is a picture of it
growing on a dinosaur,

87
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because everyone
thinks dinosaurs are cool.

88
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At the time, I was in graduate school,

89
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and I was so excited
that I had found this new life form.

90
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I called up my dad, and I go,

91
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"Dad! I just discovered
a new microorganism species."

92
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And he laughed and he goes,

93
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"That's great. I hope you also
discovered a cure for it."

94
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(Laughter)

95
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"Cure it."

96
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Now, my dad is my biggest fan,

97
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so in that crushing moment where he wanted
to kill my new little life form,

98
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I realized that actually I had failed him,

99
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both as a daughter and a scientist.

100
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In my years toiling away in labs
and in people's backyards,

101
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investigating and cataloging
the microscopic life around us,

102
00:05:04,736 --> 00:05:07,272
I'd never made clear
my true mission to him.

103
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My goal is not to find technology

104
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to kill the new microscopic
life around us.

105
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My goal is to find new technology
from this life, that will help save us.

106
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The diversity of life in our homes is more
than a list of 100,000 new species.

107
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It is 100,000 new sources
of solutions to human problems.

108
00:05:30,448 --> 00:05:33,149
I know it's hard to believe
that anything that's so small

109
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or only has one cell

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can do anything powerful,

111
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but they can.

112
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These creatures
are microscopic alchemists,

113
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with the ability to transform
their environment

114
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with an arsenal of chemical tools.

115
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This means that they can live
anywhere on this planet,

116
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and they can eat whatever
food is around them.

117
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This means they can eat everything
from toxic waste to plastic,

118
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and they can produce waste products
like oil and battery power

119
00:06:02,614 --> 00:06:05,456
and even tiny nuggets of real gold.

120
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They can transform the inedible
into nutritive.

121
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They can make sugar into alcohol.

122
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They give chocolate its flavor,

123
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and soil the power to grow.

124
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I'm here to tell you

125
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that the next 100 years will feature
these microscopic creatures

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solving more of our problems.

127
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And we have a lot of problems
to choose from.

128
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We've got the mundane:
bad-smelling clothes or bland food.

129
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And we've got the monumental:

130
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disease, pollution, war.

131
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And so this is my mission:

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to not just catalog
the microscopic life around us,

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but to find out what it's uniquely
well-suited to help us with.

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Here's an example.

135
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We started with a pest,

136
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a wasp that lives on many of our homes.

137
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Inside that wasp, we plucked out
a little-known microorganism species

138
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with a unique ability:

139
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it could make beer.

140
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This is a trait that only
a few species on this planet have.

141
00:07:07,435 --> 00:07:10,296
In fact, all commercially produced
beer you've ever had

142
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likely came from one of only
three microorganism species.

143
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Yet our species, it could make
a beer that tasted like honey,

144
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and it could also make
a delightfully tart beer.

145
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In fact, this microorganism species
that lives in the belly of a wasp,

146
00:07:27,607 --> 00:07:29,904
it could make a valuable sour beer

147
00:07:29,928 --> 00:07:33,387
better than any other species
on this planet.

148
00:07:34,676 --> 00:07:37,800
There are now four species
that produce commercial beer.

149
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Where you used to see a pest,

150
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now think of tasting
your future favorite beer.

151
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As a second example,

152
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I worked with researchers
to dig in the dirt in people's backyards.

153
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There, we uncovered a microorganism
that could make novel antibiotics,

154
00:07:55,574 --> 00:07:58,707
antibiotics that can kill
the world's worst superbugs.

155
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This was an awesome thing to find,

156
00:08:02,923 --> 00:08:04,301
but here's the secret:

157
00:08:05,164 --> 00:08:07,084
for the last 60 years,

158
00:08:07,108 --> 00:08:09,397
most of the antibiotics on the market

159
00:08:09,421 --> 00:08:11,630
have come from similar soil bacteria.

160
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Every day, you and I
and everyone in this room

161
00:08:15,318 --> 00:08:17,060
and on this planet,

162
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are saved by similar soil bacteria
that produce most of our antibiotics.

163
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Where you used to see dirt,

164
00:08:24,922 --> 00:08:26,853
now think of medication.

165
00:08:28,402 --> 00:08:31,048
Perhaps my favorite example
comes from colleagues

166
00:08:31,072 --> 00:08:33,968
who are studying
a pond scum microorganism,

167
00:08:33,992 --> 00:08:37,611
which is tragically named after
the cow dung it was first found in.

168
00:08:38,388 --> 00:08:42,346
It's pretty unremarkable
and would be unworthy of discussion,

169
00:08:42,370 --> 00:08:45,892
except that the researchers found
that if you feed it to mice,

170
00:08:45,916 --> 00:08:47,967
it vaccinates against PTSD.

171
00:08:49,842 --> 00:08:51,746
It vaccinates against fear.

172
00:08:53,418 --> 00:08:56,640
Where you used to see pond scum,
now think of hope.

173
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There are so many more microbial examples

174
00:09:00,505 --> 00:09:02,649
that I don't have time
to talk about today.

175
00:09:03,122 --> 00:09:08,506
I gave you examples of solutions
that came from just three species,

176
00:09:08,530 --> 00:09:12,876
but imagine what those other
100,000 species in your dust bunnies

177
00:09:12,900 --> 00:09:14,173
might be able to do.

178
00:09:14,751 --> 00:09:18,079
In the future, they might be able
to make you sexier

179
00:09:18,758 --> 00:09:20,065
or smarter

180
00:09:21,035 --> 00:09:22,912
or perhaps live longer.

181
00:09:24,483 --> 00:09:26,635
So I want you to look
at your finger again.

182
00:09:27,185 --> 00:09:29,471
Think about all those
microscopic creatures

183
00:09:29,495 --> 00:09:30,942
that are unknown.

184
00:09:30,966 --> 00:09:33,971
Think about in the future
what they might be able to do

185
00:09:33,995 --> 00:09:35,168
or make

186
00:09:35,708 --> 00:09:37,854
or whose life they might be able to save.

187
00:09:39,071 --> 00:09:40,874
How does your finger feel right now?

188
00:09:41,502 --> 00:09:43,007
A little bit powerful?

189
00:09:44,564 --> 00:09:46,591
That's because you're feeling the future.

190
00:09:47,210 --> 00:09:48,372
Thank you.

191
00:09:48,803 --> 00:09:53,424
(Applause)