1 00:00:28,095 --> 00:00:30,155 I have been spending my summers 2 00:00:30,235 --> 00:00:34,828 in the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. 3 00:00:35,148 --> 00:00:39,276 And there, what I have been doing is essentially renting a boat. 4 00:00:39,406 --> 00:00:41,656 What I would like to do is to ask you 5 00:00:41,736 --> 00:00:45,466 to come on a boat ride with me tonight. 6 00:00:46,166 --> 00:00:50,866 So, we ride off from Eel Pond into the Vineyard South, 7 00:00:50,936 --> 00:00:53,526 right off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, 8 00:00:53,596 --> 00:00:56,887 equipped with a drone to identify potential spots 9 00:00:56,967 --> 00:00:59,357 from which to peer into the Atlantic. 10 00:00:59,417 --> 00:01:00,787 Earlier I was going to say 11 00:01:00,827 --> 00:01:02,827 into the depths of the Atlantic, 12 00:01:02,857 --> 00:01:06,539 but we don't have to go too deep to reach the unknown. 13 00:01:06,709 --> 00:01:09,149 Here, barely two miles away, 14 00:01:09,239 --> 00:01:13,489 from what is arguably the greatest marine biology lab in the world, 15 00:01:13,819 --> 00:01:16,919 we lower a simple plankton net into the water 16 00:01:17,009 --> 00:01:22,246 and bring up into the surface things that humanity rarely pays attention to, 17 00:01:22,366 --> 00:01:25,580 and oftentimes, have never seen before. 18 00:01:25,690 --> 00:01:28,610 Here is one of the organisms that we caught in our net, 19 00:01:28,700 --> 00:01:30,210 this is a jellyfish. 20 00:01:30,280 --> 00:01:34,281 But look closely, living inside this animal is another organism 21 00:01:34,421 --> 00:01:37,161 that is very likely entirely new to science. 22 00:01:37,261 --> 00:01:39,191 A complete new species. 23 00:01:39,521 --> 00:01:42,111 Or how about this other transparent beauty? 24 00:01:42,211 --> 00:01:45,611 With a beating heart, asexually growing, 25 00:01:45,701 --> 00:01:47,221 on top of its head, 26 00:01:47,291 --> 00:01:50,702 progeny that will move on to reproduce sexually. 27 00:01:50,822 --> 00:01:52,412 Now let me say that again, 28 00:01:52,442 --> 00:01:54,652 this animal is growing asexually, 29 00:01:54,682 --> 00:01:56,152 on top of its head, 30 00:01:56,182 --> 00:02:01,223 progeny that is going to reproduce sexually in the next generation. 31 00:02:01,453 --> 00:02:04,073 A weird jellyfish, not quite, 32 00:02:04,213 --> 00:02:07,135 this is an ascidian, this is a group of animals 33 00:02:07,235 --> 00:02:10,993 that now we know we share extensive genomic ancestry with, 34 00:02:11,093 --> 00:02:16,534 and it is perhaps the closest invertebrate species to our own. 35 00:02:16,684 --> 00:02:19,725 Meet your cousin, Thalia democratica 36 00:02:19,775 --> 00:02:21,315 (Laughter) 37 00:02:21,435 --> 00:02:23,904 I'm pretty sure you didn't save a spot 38 00:02:23,974 --> 00:02:26,264 in your last family reunion for Thalia. 39 00:02:26,894 --> 00:02:28,523 But, let me tell you, 40 00:02:28,583 --> 00:02:31,954 these animals are profoundly related to us 41 00:02:32,014 --> 00:02:35,844 in ways we are just beginning to understand. 42 00:02:36,924 --> 00:02:40,574 Next time you hear anybody derisively telling you 43 00:02:40,644 --> 00:02:44,494 that this type of research is a simple fishing expedition, 44 00:02:44,584 --> 00:02:47,906 I hope that you remember the trip that we just took. 45 00:02:47,986 --> 00:02:51,635 Today, many biological sciences only see value 46 00:02:51,695 --> 00:02:54,416 in studying deeper what we already know, 47 00:02:54,556 --> 00:02:57,396 In mapping already discovered continents. 48 00:02:57,506 --> 00:03:00,707 But some of us are much more interested in the unknown, 49 00:03:00,757 --> 00:03:05,097 we want to discover completely new continents, 50 00:03:05,177 --> 00:03:08,817 and gaze at magnificent vistas of ignorance. 51 00:03:08,977 --> 00:03:12,978 We crave the experience of being completely baffled 52 00:03:13,068 --> 00:03:15,327 by something we have never seen before. 53 00:03:15,387 --> 00:03:20,248 And yes, I agree that there's a lot of ego satisfaction in being able to say 54 00:03:20,308 --> 00:03:23,399 "Hey, I was the first one to discover that." 55 00:03:23,489 --> 00:03:26,308 This is not a self-aggrandizing enterprise 56 00:03:26,368 --> 00:03:29,017 because in this type of discovery research, 57 00:03:29,077 --> 00:03:32,659 if you don't feel like a complete idiot most of the time, 58 00:03:32,729 --> 00:03:35,210 you're just not science-ing hard enough. 59 00:03:35,240 --> 00:03:36,750 (Laughter) 60 00:03:39,250 --> 00:03:44,240 Every summer, I bring onto the deck of this little boat of ours, 61 00:03:44,300 --> 00:03:47,871 more and more things that we know very little about. 62 00:03:48,021 --> 00:03:50,901 Very, very, very little about. 63 00:03:52,261 --> 00:03:54,501 I would like to tell you tonight, 64 00:03:54,541 --> 00:03:57,292 a story about life that rarely gets told 65 00:03:57,412 --> 00:04:00,481 in an environment like this. 66 00:04:00,771 --> 00:04:05,811 From the vantage point of our 21st biological laboratories, 67 00:04:06,061 --> 00:04:08,772 our 21st century biological laboratories, 68 00:04:08,842 --> 00:04:10,683 we have began to illuminate 69 00:04:10,713 --> 00:04:13,415 many mysteries of life with knowledge. 70 00:04:13,455 --> 00:04:16,894 We sensed that after centuries of scientific research, 71 00:04:16,964 --> 00:04:20,044 we're beginning to make significant inroads into understanding 72 00:04:20,074 --> 00:04:23,744 some of the most fundamental principles of life. 73 00:04:23,814 --> 00:04:26,464 Our collective optimism is reflected 74 00:04:26,534 --> 00:04:30,588 by the growth of biotechnology across the globe. 75 00:04:30,898 --> 00:04:36,555 Striving to utilize scientific knowledge to cure human diseases, 76 00:04:37,225 --> 00:04:41,935 things like cancer, aging, degeneretive diseases, 77 00:04:42,035 --> 00:04:46,575 these are but some of the undesirables we wish to tame. 78 00:04:47,165 --> 00:04:48,816 What I often wonder is, 79 00:04:48,856 --> 00:04:51,786 "Why is it that we are having so much trouble 80 00:04:51,826 --> 00:04:54,496 trying to solve the problem of cancer? 81 00:04:54,586 --> 00:04:57,846 Is it that we're trying to solve the problem of cancer, 82 00:04:57,896 --> 00:05:00,967 and not trying to understand life?" 83 00:05:01,117 --> 00:05:04,257 Life on this planet shares a common origin. 84 00:05:04,367 --> 00:05:09,197 I can summarize 3.5 billion years of the history of life on this planet 85 00:05:09,247 --> 00:05:10,956 in a single slide. 86 00:05:10,986 --> 00:05:12,798 What you see represented here 87 00:05:12,828 --> 00:05:14,178 are all known species, 88 00:05:14,188 --> 00:05:17,528 representative of all known species of our planet. 89 00:05:17,578 --> 00:05:20,219 in this immensity of life and biodiversity 90 00:05:20,239 --> 00:05:25,119 we occupy a rather unremarkable position. 91 00:05:25,219 --> 00:05:29,519 Homo sapiens, the last of our kind. 92 00:05:29,649 --> 00:05:32,849 And though I don't really want to disparage at all 93 00:05:32,879 --> 00:05:34,899 the accomplishments of our species, 94 00:05:34,929 --> 00:05:37,320 as much as we wish it to be so, 95 00:05:37,350 --> 00:05:39,779 and often pretend that it is so, 96 00:05:39,809 --> 00:05:43,360 we are not the measure of all things. 97 00:05:43,510 --> 00:05:47,449 We are, however, the measurers of many things. 98 00:05:47,509 --> 00:05:51,085 We relentlessly quantify, analyze and compare, 99 00:05:51,155 --> 00:05:55,641 and some of these are absolutely invaluable and indeed necessary, 100 00:05:55,781 --> 00:05:58,051 but this emphasis today, 101 00:05:58,121 --> 00:06:01,952 on forcing biological research to specialize, 102 00:06:02,022 --> 00:06:04,613 and to produce practical outcomes, 103 00:06:04,673 --> 00:06:08,429 is actually restricting our ability to interrogate life, 104 00:06:08,479 --> 00:06:13,173 to accept only narrow confines and unsatisfying depths. 105 00:06:13,263 --> 00:06:18,253 We are measuring an astonishingly narrow sliver of life, 106 00:06:18,303 --> 00:06:22,313 and hoping that those numbers will save all of our lives. 107 00:06:22,543 --> 00:06:24,093 How narrow, you ask? 108 00:06:24,123 --> 00:06:25,657 Well let me give you a number, 109 00:06:25,687 --> 00:06:28,694 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 110 00:06:28,734 --> 00:06:34,686 recently estimated, that about 95% of our oceans remain unexplored. 111 00:06:34,836 --> 00:06:37,234 Now let that sink in for a second. 112 00:06:37,314 --> 00:06:41,935 95% of our oceans remain unexplored. 113 00:06:42,045 --> 00:06:46,336 I think it's very safe to say that we don't even know 114 00:06:46,406 --> 00:06:49,767 how much about life we do not know. 115 00:06:50,107 --> 00:06:52,928 It's no surprise that every week in my field 116 00:06:52,968 --> 00:06:56,087 we begin to see the addition of more and more new species 117 00:06:56,157 --> 00:06:58,451 to this amazing tree of life. 118 00:06:58,531 --> 00:06:59,877 This one for example, 119 00:06:59,897 --> 00:07:01,837 discovered earlier this summer, 120 00:07:01,857 --> 00:07:06,487 new to science and now occupying its lonely branch in a family tree. 121 00:07:06,917 --> 00:07:09,117 What is even more tragic is that we know about 122 00:07:09,147 --> 00:07:11,859 a bunch of other species of animals out there, 123 00:07:11,879 --> 00:07:15,560 but their biology remains sorely understudied, 124 00:07:15,610 --> 00:07:18,279 I'm sure some of you have heard about the fact that 125 00:07:18,309 --> 00:07:21,879 a starfish can actually regenerate its arm after it's loss, 126 00:07:21,999 --> 00:07:23,618 but some of you might not know 127 00:07:23,658 --> 00:07:28,629 that the arm itself can actually regenerate a complete starfish. 128 00:07:28,679 --> 00:07:33,490 There are animals out there that do truly astounding things, 129 00:07:33,570 --> 00:07:35,480 and I'm almost willing to bet, 130 00:07:35,510 --> 00:07:38,773 that many of you have never heard of the flatworm 131 00:07:38,803 --> 00:07:41,061 Schmidtea mediterranea. 132 00:07:41,111 --> 00:07:46,870 This little guy right here does things that essentially just blows my mind. 133 00:07:46,910 --> 00:07:50,751 You can grab one of these animals and cut them into 18 different fragments, 134 00:07:50,801 --> 00:07:52,891 and each and every one of those fragments 135 00:07:52,911 --> 00:07:58,331 will go on to regenerate a complete animal in under two weeks. 136 00:07:58,391 --> 00:08:03,032 18 heads, 18 bodies, 18 mysteries. 137 00:08:03,072 --> 00:08:05,373 For the past decade and a half or so, 138 00:08:05,393 --> 00:08:09,243 I've been trying to figure out how these little dudes do what they do, 139 00:08:09,283 --> 00:08:11,434 how they pull this body trick off? 140 00:08:11,464 --> 00:08:13,174 But like all good magicians, 141 00:08:13,194 --> 00:08:15,664 they're not really releasing their secrets readily to me. 142 00:08:15,694 --> 00:08:17,164 (Laughter) 143 00:08:17,224 --> 00:08:22,634 So here we are, after 20 years of essentially studying these animals, 144 00:08:22,764 --> 00:08:25,085 genome mapping, chin scratching, 145 00:08:25,135 --> 00:08:28,204 thousands of amputations and thousands of regenerations, 146 00:08:28,254 --> 00:08:29,875 we still don't fully understand 147 00:08:29,915 --> 00:08:32,525 how these animals do what they do. 148 00:08:32,605 --> 00:08:36,012 Each planaria, an ocean unto itself, 149 00:08:36,092 --> 00:08:38,316 full of unknowns. 150 00:08:38,496 --> 00:08:41,296 Now, one of the common characteristics of all these animals 151 00:08:41,366 --> 00:08:43,466 I have been talking to you about is that 152 00:08:43,496 --> 00:08:46,255 they did not appear to have received the memo, 153 00:08:46,305 --> 00:08:50,096 that they need to behave according to the rules that we have derived 154 00:08:50,136 --> 00:08:54,347 from a handful of randomly selected animals that currently populate 155 00:08:54,407 --> 00:08:58,747 the vast majority of biomedical laboratories across the world. 156 00:08:58,907 --> 00:09:01,077 Meet our Nobel Prize winners, 157 00:09:01,127 --> 00:09:04,938 7 species, essentially, that have produced for us 158 00:09:04,998 --> 00:09:09,348 the bulk of our understanding of biological behavior today. 159 00:09:09,768 --> 00:09:11,688 This little guy right here, 160 00:09:11,758 --> 00:09:14,808 3 Nobel Prizes in 12 years. 161 00:09:14,888 --> 00:09:17,382 And yet, after all the attention they have garnered 162 00:09:17,412 --> 00:09:21,269 and all the noise they have generated as well as the lion share of the funding, 163 00:09:21,289 --> 00:09:25,520 here we are standing in front of the same litany of tractable problems 164 00:09:25,580 --> 00:09:27,720 and many new challenges. 165 00:09:27,740 --> 00:09:29,630 That's because, unfortunately, 166 00:09:29,660 --> 00:09:37,444 these 7 animals correspond to 0.00009% of all of the species 167 00:09:37,464 --> 00:09:40,370 that inhabit the planet. 168 00:09:40,750 --> 00:09:43,231 So, I'm beginning to suspect that 169 00:09:43,291 --> 00:09:47,171 our specialization is beginning to impede our progress at best, 170 00:09:47,801 --> 00:09:50,792 and at worst, leading us astray. 171 00:09:50,962 --> 00:09:53,932 That's because life on this planet and its history 172 00:09:53,972 --> 00:09:56,163 is the history of rule breakers. 173 00:09:56,193 --> 00:09:59,462 Life started on the face of this planet as single-cell organisms, 174 00:09:59,502 --> 00:10:01,773 swimming for millions of years in the ocean, 175 00:10:01,803 --> 00:10:04,113 until one of those creatures decided that, 176 00:10:04,133 --> 00:10:06,153 "I'm going to do things differently today, 177 00:10:06,163 --> 00:10:09,113 today I would like to invent something called Multicellularity, 178 00:10:09,133 --> 00:10:10,203 I'm going to do this." 179 00:10:10,223 --> 00:10:12,604 I'm sure it was not a popular decision at the time, 180 00:10:12,604 --> 00:10:13,317 (Laughter) 181 00:10:13,327 --> 00:10:15,744 but somehow it managed to do it. 182 00:10:15,774 --> 00:10:18,334 And then, Multicellular organisms began to populate 183 00:10:18,394 --> 00:10:21,064 all these ancestral oceans, and they thrived, 184 00:10:21,124 --> 00:10:23,474 and we have them here today. 185 00:10:23,524 --> 00:10:26,456 Land masses began to merge from the surfaces of the oceans, 186 00:10:26,486 --> 00:10:27,894 and another creature thought, 187 00:10:27,894 --> 00:10:30,634 "Hey, that looks like a really nice piece of real estate, 188 00:10:30,634 --> 00:10:31,993 I'd like to move over there. 189 00:10:31,993 --> 00:10:32,985 What, are you crazy? 190 00:10:32,985 --> 00:10:36,195 You're going to dessicate out there, nothing can live out of water." 191 00:10:36,195 --> 00:10:37,415 But life found a way, 192 00:10:37,415 --> 00:10:40,086 and there are organisms now of course that live on land. 193 00:10:40,086 --> 00:10:42,891 Once on land, they may have looked up into the sky and said, 194 00:10:42,891 --> 00:10:45,627 "Hey, it'd be nice to go to the clouds, I'm going to fly! 195 00:10:45,627 --> 00:10:49,077 You can't break the law of gravity, there's no way you can fly." 196 00:10:49,117 --> 00:10:53,077 And yet, nature has invented multiple and independent times 197 00:10:53,187 --> 00:10:54,847 ways to fly. 198 00:10:54,957 --> 00:10:57,678 I love to study animals that break the rules 199 00:10:57,728 --> 00:11:01,061 because every time they break a rule, they invent something new 200 00:11:01,121 --> 00:11:05,311 that made it possible for us to be able to be here today. 201 00:11:05,361 --> 00:11:07,628 These animals did not get the memo, 202 00:11:07,668 --> 00:11:09,258 they have broken the rules. 203 00:11:09,258 --> 00:11:12,004 So if we are going to study animals that break the rules, 204 00:11:12,004 --> 00:11:15,928 shouldn't how we study them also break the rules? 205 00:11:16,058 --> 00:11:19,949 I think that we need to renew our spirit of exploration, 206 00:11:19,999 --> 00:11:23,850 rather than bringing nature into our laboratories and interrogating them, 207 00:11:23,940 --> 00:11:28,279 we need to bring our science into the majestic laboratory that is nature. 208 00:11:28,379 --> 00:11:32,330 And there, with our modern technological armamentarium, 209 00:11:32,350 --> 00:11:35,405 interrogate every new form of life we find 210 00:11:35,445 --> 00:11:38,970 and any new biological attribute that we may find. 211 00:11:39,020 --> 00:11:43,011 We actually need to bring all of our intelligence 212 00:11:43,081 --> 00:11:45,451 to becoming stupid again. 213 00:11:45,501 --> 00:11:47,411 Clueless in the immensity, 214 00:11:47,461 --> 00:11:49,772 in front of the immensity of the unknown. 215 00:11:49,812 --> 00:11:51,129 Because, after all, 216 00:11:51,179 --> 00:11:55,931 science is not really about knowledge, science is about ignorance, 217 00:11:56,081 --> 00:11:57,582 that's what we do. 218 00:11:57,622 --> 00:11:59,113 So if we're serious about this, 219 00:11:59,133 --> 00:12:01,509 we are going to have to start seriously supporting 220 00:12:01,509 --> 00:12:03,633 those institutions that make it possible 221 00:12:03,663 --> 00:12:05,693 for discovery research to take place. 222 00:12:05,713 --> 00:12:06,953 Institutions like our own 223 00:12:06,983 --> 00:12:10,236 Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri, 224 00:12:10,256 --> 00:12:14,303 or the National Institute of General Medical Science in Bethesda, Maryland, 225 00:12:14,353 --> 00:12:16,583 and of course our gateway to biodiversity, 226 00:12:16,603 --> 00:12:20,695 the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. 227 00:12:20,715 --> 00:12:24,885 I have been very fortunate to be able to do some of this training myself, 228 00:12:25,455 --> 00:12:27,454 and it is a pleasure for me 229 00:12:27,464 --> 00:12:30,624 to actually grab students out of the confines of their laboratories 230 00:12:30,654 --> 00:12:32,864 away from their computers and their catalogues, 231 00:12:32,874 --> 00:12:37,505 and throw them into the world of discovery and exploration. 232 00:12:37,575 --> 00:12:43,450 It is an immense pleasure, a real pleasure to actually see 233 00:12:43,540 --> 00:12:48,086 how these bright, young minds' curiosity spreads its wings 234 00:12:48,126 --> 00:12:51,849 and flies away when faced with the unknown. 235 00:12:51,899 --> 00:12:55,348 This is how we become real scientists. 236 00:12:55,498 --> 00:12:58,692 So we need these people to actually go out there 237 00:12:58,762 --> 00:13:01,909 and ask the better questions that will bring us closer 238 00:13:01,979 --> 00:13:04,619 to the answers that we seek. 239 00:13:04,689 --> 00:13:07,829 Once, Antoine de Saint-Exupery actually wrote 240 00:13:07,869 --> 00:13:09,670 that if you want to build a ship, 241 00:13:09,690 --> 00:13:11,569 don't drum up people to collect wood 242 00:13:11,589 --> 00:13:13,778 and don't assign them tasks and work, 243 00:13:13,828 --> 00:13:18,110 but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. 244 00:13:18,390 --> 00:13:20,201 As a scientist and a teacher, 245 00:13:20,241 --> 00:13:22,131 I like to paraphrase this to read, 246 00:13:22,161 --> 00:13:25,192 that we scientists need to teach our students 247 00:13:25,232 --> 00:13:27,532 to long for the endless immensity of the sea 248 00:13:27,562 --> 00:13:30,332 that is our ignorance. 249 00:13:30,382 --> 00:13:34,248 We, Homo sapiens, are the only species we know of 250 00:13:34,308 --> 00:13:37,323 that is driven to scientific inquiry, 251 00:13:37,353 --> 00:13:39,593 We, like all other species on this planet 252 00:13:39,623 --> 00:13:44,554 are inextricably woven into the history of life in this planet. 253 00:13:44,694 --> 00:13:47,814 I think that I'm a little wrong when I say that life is a mystery, 254 00:13:47,884 --> 00:13:50,575 because I think that life is actually an open secret 255 00:13:50,615 --> 00:13:55,081 that has been beckoning our species for millennia to understand it. 256 00:13:55,221 --> 00:13:56,835 So I ask you, 257 00:13:56,885 --> 00:14:00,926 are we the best chance that life has to know itself? 258 00:14:00,966 --> 00:14:04,196 And if so, what the heck are we waiting for? 259 00:14:04,236 --> 00:14:07,837 We need to do things differently. 260 00:14:07,887 --> 00:14:09,677 Tonight I'm going to ask you 261 00:14:09,697 --> 00:14:14,007 to please help us build the greatest discovery research vessel 262 00:14:14,057 --> 00:14:16,247 in the history of humankind. 263 00:14:16,287 --> 00:14:17,838 Call your legislators, 264 00:14:17,898 --> 00:14:20,587 ask them to fund basic discovery research, 265 00:14:20,607 --> 00:14:23,618 support and give what you can to institutions such as these 266 00:14:23,668 --> 00:14:26,617 that are dedicated to discovery research, 267 00:14:26,667 --> 00:14:30,619 and hop on board with us on a grand expedition 268 00:14:30,759 --> 00:14:34,299 to radically transform our understanding of life. 269 00:14:34,359 --> 00:14:35,779 And along the way, 270 00:14:35,819 --> 00:14:40,051 change the way we do biomedical research forever. 271 00:14:40,111 --> 00:14:41,340 Thank you. 272 00:14:41,380 --> 00:14:45,301 (Applause)