WEBVTT 00:00:00.929 --> 00:00:02.857 I recently had an epiphany. 00:00:03.183 --> 00:00:07.000 I realized that I could actually play a role 00:00:07.024 --> 00:00:12.696 in solving one of the biggest problems that faces mankind today, 00:00:12.720 --> 00:00:15.029 and that is the problem of climate change. 00:00:16.497 --> 00:00:20.601 It also dawned on me that I have been working for 30 years or more 00:00:20.625 --> 00:00:22.546 just to get to this point in my life 00:00:22.570 --> 00:00:26.461 where I could actually make this contribution to a bigger problem. 00:00:26.857 --> 00:00:29.070 And every experiment that I have done in my lab 00:00:29.094 --> 00:00:31.087 over the last 30 years 00:00:31.111 --> 00:00:35.299 and people who work for me did in my lab over the last 30 years 00:00:35.323 --> 00:00:39.577 has been directed toward doing the really big experiment, 00:00:39.601 --> 00:00:41.534 this one last big experiment. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:41.871 --> 00:00:43.022 So who am I? 00:00:43.046 --> 00:00:45.149 I'm a plant geneticist. 00:00:45.173 --> 00:00:49.410 I live in a world where there's too much CO2 in the atmosphere 00:00:49.434 --> 00:00:52.998 because of human activity. 00:00:53.022 --> 00:00:56.466 But I've come to appreciate the plants 00:00:56.490 --> 00:00:59.622 as amazing machines that they are, 00:00:59.646 --> 00:01:02.600 whose job has been, really, to just suck up CO2. 00:01:02.624 --> 00:01:03.860 And they do it so well, 00:01:03.884 --> 00:01:08.163 because they've been doing it for over 500 million years. 00:01:08.187 --> 00:01:10.409 And they're really good at it. 00:01:10.433 --> 00:01:11.583 And so ... NOTE Paragraph 00:01:13.401 --> 00:01:16.242 I also have some urgency I want to tell you about. 00:01:16.266 --> 00:01:20.208 As a mother, I want to give my two children a better world 00:01:20.232 --> 00:01:21.895 than I inherited from my parents, 00:01:21.919 --> 00:01:24.641 it would be nicer to keep it going in the right direction, 00:01:24.665 --> 00:01:26.228 not the bad direction. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:26.252 --> 00:01:27.759 But I also ... 00:01:29.569 --> 00:01:31.974 I've had Parkinson's for the last 15 years, 00:01:31.998 --> 00:01:35.362 and this gives me a sense of urgency that I want to do this now, 00:01:35.386 --> 00:01:38.974 while I feel good enough to really be part of this team. 00:01:38.998 --> 00:01:41.213 And I have an incredible team. 00:01:41.237 --> 00:01:43.512 We all work together, 00:01:43.536 --> 00:01:47.403 and this is something we want to do because we have fun. 00:01:47.427 --> 00:01:50.829 And if you're only going to have five people trying to save the planet, 00:01:50.853 --> 00:01:52.156 you better like each other, 00:01:52.180 --> 00:01:54.952 because you're going to be spending a lot of time together. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:54.976 --> 00:01:56.026 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:56.050 --> 00:01:57.655 OK, alright. But enough about me. 00:01:57.679 --> 00:01:59.362 Let's talk about CO2. 00:01:59.386 --> 00:02:01.489 CO2 is the star of my talk. 00:02:01.998 --> 00:02:06.299 Now, most of you probably think of CO2 as a pollutant. 00:02:06.323 --> 00:02:11.102 Or perhaps you think of CO2 as the villain in the novel, you know? 00:02:11.126 --> 00:02:13.690 It's always the dark side of CO2. 00:02:14.174 --> 00:02:18.974 But as a plant biologist, I see the other side of CO2, actually. 00:02:19.411 --> 00:02:22.180 And that CO2 that we see, 00:02:22.204 --> 00:02:26.864 we see it differently because I think we remember, as plant biologists, 00:02:26.888 --> 00:02:28.728 something you may have forgotten. 00:02:28.752 --> 00:02:33.608 And that is that plants actually do this process called photosynthesis. 00:02:33.632 --> 00:02:35.672 And when they do photosynthesis -- 00:02:35.696 --> 00:02:39.434 all carbon-based life on our Earth 00:02:39.458 --> 00:02:44.903 is all because of the CO2 that plants and other photosynthetic microbes 00:02:44.927 --> 00:02:49.317 have dragged in from CO2 that was in the atmosphere. 00:02:49.341 --> 00:02:52.929 And almost all of the carbon in your body came from air, basically. 00:02:52.953 --> 00:02:54.445 So you come from air, 00:02:54.469 --> 00:02:56.175 and it's because of photosynthesis, 00:02:56.199 --> 00:02:59.791 because what plants do is they use the energy in sunlight, 00:02:59.815 --> 00:03:02.680 take that CO2 and fix it into sugars. 00:03:03.046 --> 00:03:04.360 It's a great thing. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:04.384 --> 00:03:06.463 And the other thing that is really important 00:03:06.487 --> 00:03:08.217 for what I'm going to tell you today 00:03:08.241 --> 00:03:11.791 is that plants and other photosynthetic microbes 00:03:11.815 --> 00:03:14.458 have a great capacity for doing this -- 00:03:14.482 --> 00:03:18.789 twentyfold or more than the amount of CO2 that we put up 00:03:18.813 --> 00:03:20.979 because of our human activities. 00:03:21.003 --> 00:03:24.003 And so, even though we're not doing a great job 00:03:24.027 --> 00:03:26.347 at cutting our emissions and things, 00:03:26.371 --> 00:03:30.156 the plants have the capacity, 00:03:30.180 --> 00:03:33.156 as photosynthetic organisms, to help out. 00:03:33.180 --> 00:03:35.301 So we're hoping that's what they'll do. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:36.821 --> 00:03:38.511 But there's a catch here. 00:03:38.535 --> 00:03:40.773 We have to help the plants a little ourselves, 00:03:40.797 --> 00:03:45.744 because what plants like to do is put most of the CO2 into sugars. 00:03:45.768 --> 00:03:48.315 And when the end of the growing season comes, 00:03:48.339 --> 00:03:50.696 the plant dies and decomposes, 00:03:50.720 --> 00:03:55.593 and then all that work they did to suck out the CO2 from the atmosphere 00:03:55.617 --> 00:03:58.847 and make carbon-based biomass 00:03:58.871 --> 00:04:03.340 is now basically going right back up in the atmosphere as CO2. 00:04:03.364 --> 00:04:09.737 So how can we get plants to redistribute the CO2 they bring in 00:04:09.761 --> 00:04:12.172 into something that's a little more stable? 00:04:12.196 --> 00:04:15.839 And so it turns out that plants make this product 00:04:15.863 --> 00:04:17.485 and it's called suberin. 00:04:17.509 --> 00:04:20.822 This is a natural product that is in all plant roots. 00:04:20.846 --> 00:04:22.491 And suberin is really cool, 00:04:22.515 --> 00:04:25.212 because as you can see there, I hope, 00:04:25.236 --> 00:04:28.755 everywhere you see a black dot, that's a carbon. 00:04:28.779 --> 00:04:30.843 There's hundreds of them in this molecule. 00:04:30.867 --> 00:04:33.263 And where you see those few red dots, 00:04:33.287 --> 00:04:34.443 those are oxygens. 00:04:34.467 --> 00:04:36.882 And oxygen is what microbes like to find 00:04:36.906 --> 00:04:39.236 so they can decompose a plant. 00:04:39.260 --> 00:04:42.910 So you can see why this is the perfect carbon storage device. 00:04:42.934 --> 00:04:48.047 And actually it can stabilize the carbon that gets fixed by the plant 00:04:48.071 --> 00:04:51.954 into something that's a little bit better for the plant. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:52.450 --> 00:04:54.586 And so, why now? 00:04:54.610 --> 00:05:00.180 Why is now a good time to do a biological solution to this problem? 00:05:00.204 --> 00:05:04.297 It's because over the last 30 or so years -- 00:05:04.321 --> 00:05:07.339 and I know that's a long time, you're saying, "Why now?" -- 00:05:07.363 --> 00:05:09.653 but 30 years ago, we began to understand 00:05:09.677 --> 00:05:13.283 the functions of all the genes that are in an organism in general. 00:05:13.307 --> 00:05:16.895 And that included humans as well as plants 00:05:16.919 --> 00:05:19.743 and many other complicated eukaryotes. 00:05:20.069 --> 00:05:23.196 And so, what did the 1980s begin? 00:05:23.220 --> 00:05:25.403 What began then is that we now know 00:05:25.427 --> 00:05:27.954 the function of many of the genes that are in a plant 00:05:27.978 --> 00:05:29.403 that tell a plant to grow. 00:05:29.427 --> 00:05:34.133 And that has now converged with the fact that we can do genomics 00:05:34.157 --> 00:05:37.283 in a faster and cheaper way than we ever did before. 00:05:37.307 --> 00:05:41.307 And what that tells us is that all life on Earth is really related, 00:05:41.331 --> 00:05:46.728 but plants are more related to each other than other organisms. 00:05:46.752 --> 00:05:50.006 And that you can take a trait that you know from one plant 00:05:50.030 --> 00:05:52.237 and put it in another plant, 00:05:52.261 --> 00:05:55.756 and you can make a prediction that it'll do the same thing. 00:05:56.093 --> 00:05:57.649 And so that's important as well. 00:05:57.673 --> 00:06:01.106 Then finally, we have these little genetic tricks that came along, 00:06:01.130 --> 00:06:03.903 like you heard about this morning -- 00:06:03.927 --> 00:06:06.186 things like CRISPR, that allows us to do editing 00:06:06.210 --> 00:06:10.713 and make genes be a little different from the normal state in the plant. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:11.272 --> 00:06:13.458 OK, so now we have biology on our side. 00:06:13.482 --> 00:06:17.236 I'm a biologist, so that's why I'm proposing a solution 00:06:17.260 --> 00:06:20.141 to the climate change problem 00:06:20.165 --> 00:06:25.522 that really involves the best evolved organism on Earth to do it -- plants. 00:06:25.546 --> 00:06:27.267 So how are we going to do it? 00:06:27.800 --> 00:06:29.263 Biology comes to the rescue. 00:06:29.287 --> 00:06:30.490 Here we go. 00:06:31.204 --> 00:06:32.354 OK. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:33.634 --> 00:06:37.786 You have to remember three simple things from my talk, OK? 00:06:38.569 --> 00:06:42.125 We have to get plants to make more suberin than they normally make, 00:06:42.149 --> 00:06:45.106 because we need them to be a little better than what they are. 00:06:45.130 --> 00:06:49.498 We have to get them to make more roots, 00:06:49.522 --> 00:06:52.260 because if we make more roots, we can make more suberin -- 00:06:52.284 --> 00:06:57.037 now we have more of the cells that suberin likes to accumulate in. 00:06:57.061 --> 00:07:00.490 And then the third thing is, we want the plants to have deeper roots. 00:07:00.514 --> 00:07:02.236 And what that does is -- 00:07:02.260 --> 00:07:05.927 we're asking the plant, actually, "OK, make stable carbon, 00:07:05.951 --> 00:07:07.395 more than you used to, 00:07:07.419 --> 00:07:09.744 and then bury it for us in the ground." 00:07:09.768 --> 00:07:12.213 So they can do that if they make roots that go deep, 00:07:12.237 --> 00:07:15.847 rather than meander around on the surface of the soil. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:15.871 --> 00:07:18.559 Those are the three traits we want to change: 00:07:18.583 --> 00:07:23.490 more suberin, more roots, and the last one, deep roots. 00:07:23.514 --> 00:07:26.268 Then we want to combine all those traits in one plant, 00:07:26.292 --> 00:07:29.276 and we can do that easily and we will do it, 00:07:29.300 --> 00:07:33.752 and we are doing it actually, in the model plant, Arabidopsis, 00:07:33.776 --> 00:07:36.650 which allows us to do these experiments much faster 00:07:36.674 --> 00:07:39.958 than we can do in another big plant. 00:07:39.982 --> 00:07:43.728 And when we find that we have plants where traits all add up 00:07:43.752 --> 00:07:46.863 and we can get more of them, more suberin in those plants, 00:07:46.887 --> 00:07:48.275 we're going to move it all -- 00:07:48.299 --> 00:07:50.882 we can and we we will, we're beginning to do this -- 00:07:50.906 --> 00:07:52.505 move it to crop plants. 00:07:52.839 --> 00:07:57.244 And I'll tell you why we're picking crop plants to do the work for us 00:07:57.268 --> 00:07:59.653 when I get to that part of my talk. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:00.188 --> 00:08:04.117 OK, so I think this is the science behind the whole thing. 00:08:04.141 --> 00:08:08.085 And so I know we can do the science, I feel pretty confident about that. 00:08:08.109 --> 00:08:10.410 And the reason is because, just in the last year, 00:08:10.434 --> 00:08:14.777 we've been able to find single genes that affect each of those three traits. 00:08:15.307 --> 00:08:19.315 And in several of those cases, two out of the three, 00:08:19.339 --> 00:08:21.720 we have more than one way to get there. 00:08:21.744 --> 00:08:25.156 So that tells us we might be able to even combine within a trait 00:08:25.180 --> 00:08:26.913 and get even more suberin. 00:08:29.735 --> 00:08:31.156 This shows one result, 00:08:31.180 --> 00:08:33.046 where we have a plant here on the right 00:08:33.070 --> 00:08:35.820 that's making more than double the amount of root 00:08:35.844 --> 00:08:37.175 than the plant on the left, 00:08:37.199 --> 00:08:39.892 and that's just because of the way we expressed one gene 00:08:39.916 --> 00:08:41.370 that's normally in the plant 00:08:41.394 --> 00:08:45.887 in a slightly different way than the plant usually does on its own. 00:08:45.911 --> 00:08:48.871 Alright, so that's just one example I wanted to show you. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:48.895 --> 00:08:50.966 And now I want to tell you that, you know, 00:08:50.990 --> 00:08:53.248 we still have a lot of challenges, actually, 00:08:53.272 --> 00:08:54.998 when we get to this problem, 00:08:55.022 --> 00:08:57.307 because it takes ... 00:08:57.990 --> 00:09:00.993 We have to get the farmers to actually buy the seeds, 00:09:01.017 --> 00:09:03.469 or at least the seed company to buy seeds 00:09:03.493 --> 00:09:05.730 that farmers are going to want to have. 00:09:06.080 --> 00:09:08.485 And so when we do the experiments, 00:09:08.509 --> 00:09:12.212 we can't actually take a loss in yield, 00:09:12.236 --> 00:09:15.228 because while we are doing these experiments, 00:09:15.252 --> 00:09:17.974 say, beginning about 10 years from now, 00:09:17.998 --> 00:09:21.184 the Earth's population will be even more than it is right now. 00:09:21.208 --> 00:09:23.752 And it's rapidly growing still. 00:09:23.776 --> 00:09:26.430 So by the end of the century, we have 11 billion people, 00:09:26.454 --> 00:09:30.742 we have wasted ecosystems that aren't really going to be able to handle 00:09:30.766 --> 00:09:34.192 all the load they have to take from agriculture. 00:09:34.567 --> 00:09:38.853 And then we also have this competition for land. 00:09:39.209 --> 00:09:44.450 And so we figure, to do this carbon sequestration experiment 00:09:44.474 --> 00:09:48.791 actually requires a fair amount of land. 00:09:48.815 --> 00:09:51.355 We can't take it away from food, 00:09:51.379 --> 00:09:54.895 because we have to feed the people that are also going to be on the Earth 00:09:54.919 --> 00:09:57.459 until we get past this big crisis. 00:09:57.483 --> 00:10:01.816 And the climate change is actually causing loss of yield all over the Earth. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:01.840 --> 00:10:04.903 So why would farmers want to buy seeds [unclear] 00:10:04.927 --> 00:10:06.379 if it's going to impact yield? 00:10:06.403 --> 00:10:08.434 So we're not going to let it impact yield, 00:10:08.458 --> 00:10:10.657 we're going to always have checks and balances 00:10:10.681 --> 00:10:13.871 that says go or no go on that experiment. 00:10:13.895 --> 00:10:17.964 And then the second thing is, when a plant actually makes more carbon, 00:10:17.988 --> 00:10:19.855 buries it in the soil like that, 00:10:19.879 --> 00:10:23.434 almost all the soils on Earth are actually depleted of carbon 00:10:23.458 --> 00:10:26.181 because of the load from agriculture, 00:10:26.205 --> 00:10:28.681 trying to feed eight billion people, 00:10:28.705 --> 00:10:31.001 which is what lives on the Earth right now. 00:10:31.372 --> 00:10:33.919 And so, that is also a problem as well. 00:10:36.212 --> 00:10:39.705 Plants that are making more carbon, those soils become enriched in carbon. 00:10:39.729 --> 00:10:44.364 And carbon-enriched soils actually hold nitrogen 00:10:44.388 --> 00:10:46.640 and they hold sulphur and they hold phosphate -- 00:10:46.664 --> 00:10:50.260 all the minerals that are required for plants to grow and have a good yield. 00:10:50.284 --> 00:10:53.236 And they also retain water in the soil as well. 00:10:53.260 --> 00:10:55.610 So the suberin will break up into little particles 00:10:55.634 --> 00:10:58.156 and give the whole soil a new texture. 00:10:58.180 --> 00:11:01.887 And as we've shown that we can get more carbon in that soil, 00:11:01.911 --> 00:11:03.847 the soil will get darker. 00:11:03.871 --> 00:11:06.926 And so we will be able to measure all that, 00:11:06.950 --> 00:11:09.990 and hopefully, this is going to help us solve the problem. 00:11:10.363 --> 00:11:11.799 So, OK. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:11.823 --> 00:11:15.728 So we have the challenges of a lot of land that we need to use, 00:11:15.752 --> 00:11:17.375 we have to get farmers to buy it, 00:11:17.399 --> 00:11:20.014 and that's going to be the hard thing for us, I think, 00:11:20.038 --> 00:11:22.936 because we're not really salesmen, 00:11:22.960 --> 00:11:25.974 we're people who like to Google a person rather than meet them, 00:11:25.998 --> 00:11:27.264 you know what I mean? NOTE Paragraph 00:11:27.288 --> 00:11:28.300 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:11:28.324 --> 00:11:30.811 That's what scientists are mostly like. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:31.291 --> 00:11:34.943 But we know now that, you know, no one can really deny -- 00:11:34.967 --> 00:11:38.156 the climate is changing, everyone knows that. 00:11:38.180 --> 00:11:40.276 And it's here and it's bad and it's serious, 00:11:40.300 --> 00:11:42.149 and we need to do something about it. 00:11:42.173 --> 00:11:45.220 But I feel pretty optimistic that we can do this. 00:11:45.244 --> 00:11:49.514 So I'm here today as a character witness for plants. 00:11:49.538 --> 00:11:52.459 And I want to tell you that plants are going to do it for us, 00:11:52.483 --> 00:11:54.666 all we have to do is give them a little help, 00:11:54.690 --> 00:11:57.211 and they will go and get a gold medal for humanity. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:57.235 --> 00:11:58.647 Thank you very much. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:58.671 --> 00:12:02.658 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:12:02.682 --> 00:12:04.618 (Cheers) NOTE Paragraph 00:12:04.642 --> 00:12:05.793 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:05.817 --> 00:12:10.653 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:12:13.428 --> 00:12:14.828 I finally got it out. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:18.817 --> 00:12:20.150 Chris Anderson: Wow. 00:12:20.831 --> 00:12:22.410 Joanne, you're so extraordinary. 00:12:22.790 --> 00:12:24.529 Just to be sure we heard this right: 00:12:24.553 --> 00:12:27.791 you believe that within the next 10 years 00:12:27.815 --> 00:12:30.082 you may be able to offer the world 00:12:31.895 --> 00:12:36.909 seed variants for the major crops, like -- what? -- wheat, corn, maybe rice, 00:12:38.331 --> 00:12:41.768 that can offer farmers just as much yield, 00:12:41.792 --> 00:12:46.811 sequester three times, four times, more carbon than they currently do? 00:12:47.315 --> 00:12:48.466 Even more than that? NOTE Paragraph 00:12:48.490 --> 00:12:50.765 Joanne Chory: We don't know that number, really. 00:12:50.789 --> 00:12:52.363 But they will do more. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:52.387 --> 00:12:53.769 CA: And at the same time, 00:12:53.793 --> 00:12:57.211 make the soil that those farmers have more fertile? NOTE Paragraph 00:12:57.235 --> 00:12:58.385 JC: Yes, right. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:58.903 --> 00:13:00.680 CA: So that is astonishing. 00:13:00.704 --> 00:13:04.609 And the genius of doing that and a solution that can scale 00:13:04.633 --> 00:13:06.037 where there's already scale. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:06.061 --> 00:13:07.752 JC: Yes, thank you for saying that. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:07.776 --> 00:13:09.760 CA: No, no, you said it, you said it. 00:13:09.784 --> 00:13:13.272 But it almost seems too good to be true. 00:13:13.919 --> 00:13:18.216 Your Audacious Project is that we scale up the research in your lab 00:13:18.240 --> 00:13:22.299 and pave the way to start some of these pilots 00:13:22.323 --> 00:13:24.561 and make this incredible vision possible. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:24.585 --> 00:13:26.387 JC: That's right, yes, thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:26.411 --> 00:13:28.190 CA: Joanne Chory, thank you so much. 00:13:28.214 --> 00:13:29.415 Godspeed. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:29.439 --> 00:13:32.301 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:13:32.325 --> 00:13:33.475 JC: Thank you.