We're covered in germs. Let's design for that.
-
0:01 - 0:05Everything is covered in invisible ecosystems
-
0:05 - 0:10made of tiny lifeforms: bacteria, viruses and fungi.
-
0:10 - 0:14Our desks, our computers, our pencils, our buildings
-
0:14 - 0:17all harbor resident microbial landscapes.
-
0:17 - 0:20As we design these things, we could be thinking
-
0:20 - 0:23about designing these invisible worlds,
-
0:23 - 0:25and also thinking about how they interact
-
0:25 - 0:28with our personal ecosystems.
-
0:28 - 0:31Our bodies are home to trillions of microbes,
-
0:31 - 0:34and these creatures define who we are.
-
0:34 - 0:38The microbes in your gut can influence your weight and your moods.
-
0:38 - 0:41The microbes on your skin can help boost your immune system.
-
0:41 - 0:44The microbes in your mouth can freshen your breath,
-
0:44 - 0:46or not,
-
0:46 - 0:49and the key thing is that our personal ecosystems
-
0:49 - 0:52interact with ecosystems on everything we touch.
-
0:52 - 0:53So, for example, when you touch a pencil,
-
0:53 - 0:56microbial exchange happens.
-
0:56 - 1:01If we can design the invisible ecosystems in our surroundings,
-
1:01 - 1:04this opens a path to influencing
-
1:04 - 1:07our health in unprecedented ways.
-
1:07 - 1:09I get asked all of the time from people,
-
1:09 - 1:13"Is it possible to really design microbial ecosystems?"
-
1:13 - 1:16And I believe the answer is yes.
-
1:16 - 1:18I think we're doing it right now,
-
1:18 - 1:21but we're doing it unconsciously.
-
1:21 - 1:23I'm going to share data with you
-
1:23 - 1:27from one aspect of my research focused on architecture
-
1:27 - 1:30that demonstrates how, through both conscious
-
1:30 - 1:32and unconscious design,
-
1:32 - 1:35we're impacting these invisible worlds.
-
1:35 - 1:39This is the Lillis Business Complex at the University of Oregon,
-
1:39 - 1:42and I worked with a team of architects and biologists
-
1:42 - 1:46to sample over 300 rooms in this building.
-
1:46 - 1:50We wanted to get something like a fossil record of the building,
-
1:50 - 1:53and to do this, we sampled dust.
-
1:53 - 1:57From the dust, we pulled out bacterial cells,
-
1:57 - 2:01broke them open, and compared their gene sequences.
-
2:01 - 2:03This means that people in my group
-
2:03 - 2:06were doing a lot of vacuuming during this project.
-
2:06 - 2:08This is a picture of Tim, who,
-
2:08 - 2:11right when I snapped this picture, reminded me,
-
2:11 - 2:13he said, "Jessica, the last lab group I worked in
-
2:13 - 2:16I was doing fieldwork in the Costa Rican rainforest,
-
2:16 - 2:20and things have changed dramatically for me."
-
2:20 - 2:24So I'm going to show you now first what we found in the offices,
-
2:24 - 2:27and we're going to look at the data through a visualization tool
-
2:27 - 2:30that I've been working on in partnership with Autodesk.
-
2:30 - 2:33The way that you look at this data is,
-
2:33 - 2:37first, look around the outside of the circle.
-
2:37 - 2:40You'll see broad bacterial groups,
-
2:40 - 2:42and if you look at the shape of this pink lobe,
-
2:42 - 2:45it tells you something about the relative abundance of each group.
-
2:45 - 2:48So at 12 o'clock, you'll see that offices have a lot of
-
2:48 - 2:50alphaproteobacteria, and at one o'clock
-
2:50 - 2:55you'll see that bacilli are relatively rare.
-
2:55 - 2:59Let's take a look at what's going on in different space types in this building.
-
2:59 - 3:01If you look inside the restrooms,
-
3:01 - 3:04they all have really similar ecosystems,
-
3:04 - 3:07and if you were to look inside the classrooms,
-
3:07 - 3:09those also have similar ecosystems.
-
3:09 - 3:12But if you look across these space types,
-
3:12 - 3:14you can see that they're fundamentally different
-
3:14 - 3:16from one another.
-
3:16 - 3:19I like to think of bathrooms like a tropical rainforest.
-
3:19 - 3:22I told Tim, "If you could just see the microbes,
-
3:22 - 3:26it's kind of like being in Costa Rica. Kind of."
-
3:26 - 3:30And I also like to think of offices as being a temperate grassland.
-
3:30 - 3:35This perspective is a really powerful one for designers,
-
3:35 - 3:38because you can bring on principles of ecology,
-
3:38 - 3:41and a really important principle of ecology is dispersal,
-
3:41 - 3:44the way organisms move around.
-
3:44 - 3:48We know that microbes are dispersed around by people
-
3:48 - 3:49and by air.
-
3:49 - 3:52So the very first thing we wanted to do in this building
-
3:52 - 3:54was look at the air system.
-
3:54 - 3:57Mechanical engineers design air handling units
-
3:57 - 3:59to make sure that people are comfortable,
-
3:59 - 4:02that the air flow and temperature is just right.
-
4:02 - 4:05They do this using principles of physics and chemistry,
-
4:05 - 4:09but they could also be using biology.
-
4:09 - 4:12If you look at the microbes
-
4:12 - 4:15in one of the air handling units in this building,
-
4:15 - 4:19you'll see that they're all very similar to one another.
-
4:19 - 4:22And if you compare this to the microbes
-
4:22 - 4:24in a different air handling unit,
-
4:24 - 4:27you'll see that they're fundamentally different.
-
4:27 - 4:31The rooms in this building are like islands in an archipelago,
-
4:31 - 4:33and what that means is that mechanical engineers
-
4:33 - 4:36are like eco-engineers, and they have the ability
-
4:36 - 4:42to structure biomes in this building the way that they want to.
-
4:42 - 4:46Another facet of how microbes get around is by people,
-
4:46 - 4:49and designers often cluster rooms together
-
4:49 - 4:51to facilitate interactions among people,
-
4:51 - 4:55or the sharing of ideas, like in labs and in offices.
-
4:55 - 4:57Given that microbes travel around with people,
-
4:57 - 5:00you might expect to see rooms that are close together
-
5:00 - 5:02have really similar biomes.
-
5:02 - 5:05And that is exactly what we found.
-
5:05 - 5:08If you look at classrooms right adjacent to one another,
-
5:08 - 5:10they have very [similar] ecosystems,
-
5:10 - 5:13but if you go to an office
-
5:13 - 5:16that is a farther walking distance away,
-
5:16 - 5:19the ecosystem is fundamentally different.
-
5:19 - 5:23And when I see the power that dispersal has
-
5:23 - 5:26on these biogeographic patterns,
-
5:26 - 5:28it makes me think that it's possible
-
5:28 - 5:32to tackle really challenging problems,
-
5:32 - 5:34like hospital-acquired infections.
-
5:34 - 5:37I believe this has got to be, in part,
-
5:37 - 5:41a building ecology problem.
-
5:41 - 5:45All right, I'm going to tell you one more story about this building.
-
5:45 - 5:48I am collaborating with Charlie Brown.
-
5:48 - 5:50He's an architect,
-
5:50 - 5:55and Charlie is deeply concerned about global climate change.
-
5:55 - 5:58He's dedicated his life to sustainable design.
-
5:58 - 6:01When he met me and realized that it was possible for him
-
6:01 - 6:03to study in a quantitative way
-
6:03 - 6:06how his design choices impacted
-
6:06 - 6:09the ecology and biology of this building,
-
6:09 - 6:13he got really excited, because it added a new dimension to what he did.
-
6:13 - 6:15He went from thinking just about energy
-
6:15 - 6:18to also starting to think about human health.
-
6:18 - 6:22He helped design some of the air handling systems
-
6:22 - 6:25in this building and the way it was ventilated.
-
6:25 - 6:27So what I'm first going to show you is
-
6:27 - 6:31air that we sampled outside of the building.
-
6:31 - 6:35What you're looking at is a signature of bacterial communities
-
6:35 - 6:39in the outdoor air, and how they vary over time.
-
6:39 - 6:42Next I'm going to show you what happened
-
6:42 - 6:46when we experimentally manipulated classrooms.
-
6:46 - 6:47We blocked them off at night
-
6:47 - 6:49so that they got no ventilation.
-
6:49 - 6:52A lot of buildings are operated this way,
-
6:52 - 6:53probably where you work,
-
6:53 - 6:56and companies do this to save money on their energy bill.
-
6:56 - 7:00What we found is that these rooms remained relatively stagnant
-
7:00 - 7:03until Saturday, when we opened the vents up again.
-
7:03 - 7:05When you walked into those rooms,
-
7:05 - 7:07they smelled really bad,
-
7:07 - 7:10and our data suggests that it had something to do with
-
7:10 - 7:13leaving behind the airborne bacterial soup
-
7:13 - 7:16from people the day before.
-
7:16 - 7:18Contrast this to rooms
-
7:18 - 7:22that were designed using a sustainable passive design strategy
-
7:22 - 7:26where air came in from the outside through louvers.
-
7:26 - 7:31In these rooms, the air tracked the outdoor air relatively well,
-
7:31 - 7:33and when Charlie saw this, he got really excited.
-
7:33 - 7:35He felt like he had made a good choice
-
7:35 - 7:37with the design process
-
7:37 - 7:39because it was both energy efficient
-
7:39 - 7:44and it washed away the building's resident microbial landscape.
-
7:44 - 7:47The examples that I just gave you are about architecture,
-
7:47 - 7:50but they're relevant to the design of anything.
-
7:50 - 7:54Imagine designing with the kinds of microbes that we want
-
7:54 - 7:56in a plane
-
7:56 - 7:59or on a phone.
-
7:59 - 8:01There's a new microbe, I just discovered it.
-
8:01 - 8:04It's called BLIS, and it's been shown
-
8:04 - 8:06to both ward off pathogens
-
8:06 - 8:08and give you good breath.
-
8:08 - 8:14Wouldn't it be awesome if we all had BLIS on our phones?
-
8:14 - 8:17A conscious approach to design,
-
8:17 - 8:19I'm calling it bioinformed design,
-
8:19 - 8:21and I think it's possible.
-
8:21 - 8:22Thank you.
-
8:22 - 8:26(Applause)
- Title:
- We're covered in germs. Let's design for that.
- Speaker:
- Jessica Green
- Description:
-
Our bodies and homes are covered in microbes -- some good for us, some bad for us. As we learn more about the germs and microbes who share our living spaces, TED Fellow Jessica Green asks: Can we design buildings that encourage happy, healthy microbial environments?
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 08:43
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for We're covered in germs. Let's design for that. | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for We're covered in germs. Let's design for that. | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for We're covered in germs. Let's design for that. | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for We're covered in germs. Let's design for that. | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for We're covered in germs. Let's design for that. | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for We're covered in germs. Let's design for that. | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for We're covered in germs. Let's design for that. | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for We're covered in germs. Let's design for that. |