Magnificent Vistas of Ignorance | Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado | TEDxKC
-
0:28 - 0:30I have been spending my summers
-
0:30 - 0:35in the Marine Biological Laboratory in
Woods Hole, Massachusetts. -
0:35 - 0:39And there, what I have been
doing is essentially renting a boat. -
0:39 - 0:42What I would like to do
is to ask you -
0:42 - 0:45to come on a boat ride with me tonight.
-
0:46 - 0:51So, we ride off from Eel Pond into
the Vineyard South, -
0:51 - 0:54right off the coast of Martha's Vineyard,
-
0:54 - 0:57equipped with a drone to
identify potential spots -
0:57 - 0:59from which to peer into the Atlantic.
-
0:59 - 1:01Earlier I was going to say
-
1:01 - 1:03into the depths of the Atlantic,
-
1:03 - 1:07but we don't have to go too deep
to reach the unknown. -
1:07 - 1:09Here, barely two miles away,
-
1:09 - 1:13from what is arguably the greatest
marine biology lab in the world, -
1:14 - 1:17we lower a simple plankton net
into the water -
1:17 - 1:22and bring up into the surface things
that humanity rarely pays attention to, -
1:22 - 1:26and oftentimes, have never seen before.
-
1:26 - 1:29Here is one of the organisms
that we caught in our net, -
1:29 - 1:30this is a jellyfish.
-
1:30 - 1:34But look closely, living inside this
animal is another organism -
1:34 - 1:37that is very likely entirely
new to science. -
1:37 - 1:39A complete new species.
-
1:40 - 1:42Or how about this other
transparent beauty? -
1:42 - 1:46With a beating heart,
asexually growing, -
1:46 - 1:47on top of its head,
-
1:47 - 1:51progeny that will move on to
reproduce sexually. -
1:51 - 1:52Now let me say that again,
-
1:52 - 1:55this animal is growing asexually,
-
1:55 - 1:56on top of its head,
-
1:56 - 2:01progeny that is going to reproduce
sexually in the next generation. -
2:01 - 2:04A weird jellyfish, not quite,
-
2:04 - 2:07this is an ascidian,
this is a group of animals -
2:07 - 2:11that now we know we share
extensive genomic ancestry with, -
2:11 - 2:17and it is perhaps the closest
invertebrate species to our own. -
2:17 - 2:20Meet your cousin,
Thalia democratica -
2:20 - 2:21(Laughter)
-
2:21 - 2:24I'm pretty sure you didn't
save a spot -
2:24 - 2:26in your last family reunion for Thalia.
-
2:27 - 2:29But, let me tell you,
-
2:29 - 2:32these animals are profoundly related to us
-
2:32 - 2:36in ways we are just
beginning to understand. -
2:37 - 2:41Next time you hear anybody
derisively telling you -
2:41 - 2:44that this type of research is a
simple fishing expedition, -
2:45 - 2:48I hope that you remember
the trip that we just took. -
2:48 - 2:52Today, many biological sciences
only see value -
2:52 - 2:54in studying deeper what we
already know, -
2:55 - 2:57In mapping already discovered continents.
-
2:58 - 3:01But some of us are much more
interested in the unknown, -
3:01 - 3:05we want to discover completely
new continents, -
3:05 - 3:09and gaze at magnificent vistas
of ignorance. -
3:09 - 3:13We crave the experience of being
completely baffled -
3:13 - 3:15by something we have
never seen before. -
3:15 - 3:20And yes, I agree that there's a lot of
ego satisfaction in being able to say -
3:20 - 3:23"Hey, I was the first one
to discover that." -
3:23 - 3:26This is not a self-aggrandizing
enterprise -
3:26 - 3:29because in this type of
discovery research, -
3:29 - 3:33if you don't feel like a complete
idiot most of the time, -
3:33 - 3:35you're just not science-ing
hard enough. -
3:35 - 3:37(Laughter)
-
3:39 - 3:44Every summer, I bring onto the deck
of this little boat of ours, -
3:44 - 3:48more and more things that
we know very little about. -
3:48 - 3:51Very, very, very little about.
-
3:52 - 3:55I would like to tell you tonight,
-
3:55 - 3:57a story about life that
rarely gets told -
3:57 - 4:00in an environment like this.
-
4:01 - 4:06From the vantage point of
our 21st biological laboratories, -
4:06 - 4:09our 21st century
biological laboratories, -
4:09 - 4:11we have began to illuminate
-
4:11 - 4:13many mysteries of life with knowledge.
-
4:13 - 4:17We sensed that after centuries
of scientific research, -
4:17 - 4:20we're beginning to make significant
inroads into understanding -
4:20 - 4:24some of the most fundamental
principles of life. -
4:24 - 4:26Our collective optimism is reflected
-
4:27 - 4:31by the growth of biotechnology
across the globe. -
4:31 - 4:37Striving to utilize scientific knowledge
to cure human diseases, -
4:37 - 4:42things like cancer, aging,
degeneretive diseases, -
4:42 - 4:47these are but some of the
undesirables we wish to tame. -
4:47 - 4:49What I often wonder is,
-
4:49 - 4:52"Why is it that we are
having so much trouble -
4:52 - 4:54trying to solve the
problem of cancer? -
4:55 - 4:58Is it that we're trying to solve
the problem of cancer, -
4:58 - 5:01and not trying to
understand life?" -
5:01 - 5:04Life on this planet
shares a common origin. -
5:04 - 5:09I can summarize 3.5 billion years
of the history of life on this planet -
5:09 - 5:11in a single slide.
-
5:11 - 5:13What you see represented here
-
5:13 - 5:14are all known species,
-
5:14 - 5:18representative of all
known species of our planet. -
5:18 - 5:20in this immensity of life
and biodiversity -
5:20 - 5:25we occupy a rather
unremarkable position. -
5:25 - 5:30Homo sapiens,
the last of our kind. -
5:30 - 5:33And though I don't really
want to disparage at all -
5:33 - 5:35the accomplishments
of our species, -
5:35 - 5:37as much as we wish it to be so,
-
5:37 - 5:40and often pretend that it is so,
-
5:40 - 5:43we are not the measure of all things.
-
5:44 - 5:47We are, however, the measurers
of many things. -
5:48 - 5:51We relentlessly quantify,
analyze and compare, -
5:51 - 5:56and some of these are absolutely
invaluable and indeed necessary, -
5:56 - 5:58but this emphasis today,
-
5:58 - 6:02on forcing biological research
to specialize, -
6:02 - 6:05and to produce practical outcomes,
-
6:05 - 6:08is actually restricting our ability
to interrogate life, -
6:08 - 6:13to accept only narrow confines
and unsatisfying depths. -
6:13 - 6:18We are measuring an astonishingly
narrow sliver of life, -
6:18 - 6:22and hoping that those numbers
will save all of our lives. -
6:23 - 6:24How narrow, you ask?
-
6:24 - 6:26Well let me give you a number,
-
6:26 - 6:29The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration -
6:29 - 6:35recently estimated, that about 95%
of our oceans remain unexplored. -
6:35 - 6:37Now let that sink in for a second.
-
6:37 - 6:4295% of our oceans
remain unexplored. -
6:42 - 6:46I think it's very safe to say
that we don't even know -
6:46 - 6:50how much about life
we do not know. -
6:50 - 6:53It's no surprise that every
week in my field -
6:53 - 6:56we begin to see the addition
of more and more new species -
6:56 - 6:58to this amazing tree of life.
-
6:59 - 7:00This one for example,
-
7:00 - 7:02discovered earlier this summer,
-
7:02 - 7:06new to science and now occupying
its lonely branch in a family tree. -
7:07 - 7:09What is even more tragic is that
we know about -
7:09 - 7:12a bunch of other species of
animals out there, -
7:12 - 7:16but their biology remains
sorely understudied, -
7:16 - 7:18I'm sure some of you have heard
about the fact that -
7:18 - 7:22a starfish can actually regenerate
its arm after it's loss, -
7:22 - 7:24but some of you might not know
-
7:24 - 7:29that the arm itself can actually
regenerate a complete starfish. -
7:29 - 7:33There are animals out there
that do truly astounding things, -
7:34 - 7:35and I'm almost willing to bet,
-
7:36 - 7:39that many of you have never heard
of the flatworm -
7:39 - 7:41Schmidtea mediterranea.
-
7:41 - 7:47This little guy right here does things
that essentially just blows my mind. -
7:47 - 7:51You can grab one of these animals
and cut them into 18 different fragments, -
7:51 - 7:53and each and every one of those fragments
-
7:53 - 7:58will go on to regenerate a complete
animal in under two weeks. -
7:58 - 8:0318 heads, 18 bodies, 18 mysteries.
-
8:03 - 8:05For the past decade and a half or so,
-
8:05 - 8:09I've been trying to figure out how
these little dudes do what they do, -
8:09 - 8:11how they pull this body trick off?
-
8:11 - 8:13But like all good magicians,
-
8:13 - 8:16they're not really releasing their
secrets readily to me. -
8:16 - 8:17(Laughter)
-
8:17 - 8:23So here we are, after 20 years
of essentially studying these animals, -
8:23 - 8:25genome mapping, chin scratching,
-
8:25 - 8:28thousands of amputations and
thousands of regenerations, -
8:28 - 8:30we still don't fully understand
-
8:30 - 8:33how these animals do
what they do. -
8:33 - 8:36Each planaria, an ocean
unto itself, -
8:36 - 8:38full of unknowns.
-
8:38 - 8:41Now, one of the common characteristics
of all these animals -
8:41 - 8:43I have been talking to you about is that
-
8:43 - 8:46they did not appear to have
received the memo, -
8:46 - 8:50that they need to behave according
to the rules that we have derived -
8:50 - 8:54from a handful of randomly selected
animals that currently populate -
8:54 - 8:59the vast majority of biomedical
laboratories across the world. -
8:59 - 9:01Meet our Nobel Prize winners,
-
9:01 - 9:057 species, essentially,
that have produced for us -
9:05 - 9:09the bulk of our understanding
of biological behavior today. -
9:10 - 9:12This little guy right here,
-
9:12 - 9:153 Nobel Prizes in 12 years.
-
9:15 - 9:17And yet, after all the attention
they have garnered -
9:17 - 9:21and all the noise they have generated
as well as the lion share of the funding, -
9:21 - 9:26here we are standing in front of the
same litany of tractable problems -
9:26 - 9:28and many new challenges.
-
9:28 - 9:30That's because, unfortunately,
-
9:30 - 9:37these 7 animals correspond to
0.00009% of all of the species -
9:37 - 9:40that inhabit the planet.
-
9:41 - 9:43So, I'm beginning to suspect that
-
9:43 - 9:47our specialization is beginning to
impede our progress at best, -
9:48 - 9:51and at worst, leading us astray.
-
9:51 - 9:54That's because life on this
planet and its history -
9:54 - 9:56is the history of rule breakers.
-
9:56 - 9:59Life started on the face of this
planet as single-cell organisms, -
10:00 - 10:02swimming for millions of years
in the ocean, -
10:02 - 10:04until one of those creatures
decided that, -
10:04 - 10:06"I'm going to do things
differently today, -
10:06 - 10:09today I would like to invent
something called Multicellularity, -
10:09 - 10:10I'm going to do this."
-
10:10 - 10:13I'm sure it was not a popular
decision at the time, -
10:13 - 10:13(Laughter)
-
10:13 - 10:16but somehow it managed to do it.
-
10:16 - 10:18And then, Multicellular organisms
began to populate -
10:18 - 10:21all these ancestral oceans,
and they thrived, -
10:21 - 10:23and we have them here today.
-
10:24 - 10:26Land masses began to merge
from the surfaces of the oceans, -
10:26 - 10:28and another creature thought,
-
10:28 - 10:31"Hey, that looks like a really nice
piece of real estate, -
10:31 - 10:32I'd like to move over there.
-
10:32 - 10:33What, are you crazy?
-
10:33 - 10:36You're going to dessicate out there,
nothing can live out of water." -
10:36 - 10:37But life found a way,
-
10:37 - 10:40and there are organisms now
of course that live on land. -
10:40 - 10:43Once on land, they may have looked up
into the sky and said, -
10:43 - 10:46"Hey, it'd be nice to go to the clouds,
I'm going to fly! -
10:46 - 10:49You can't break the law of gravity,
there's no way you can fly." -
10:49 - 10:53And yet, nature has invented
multiple and independent times -
10:53 - 10:55ways to fly.
-
10:55 - 10:58I love to study animals
that break the rules -
10:58 - 11:01because every time they break a rule,
they invent something new -
11:01 - 11:05that made it possible for us
to be able to be here today. -
11:05 - 11:08These animals did not
get the memo, -
11:08 - 11:09they have broken the rules.
-
11:09 - 11:12So if we are going to study
animals that break the rules, -
11:12 - 11:16shouldn't how we study them
also break the rules? -
11:16 - 11:20I think that we need to renew
our spirit of exploration, -
11:20 - 11:24rather than bringing nature into
our laboratories and interrogating them, -
11:24 - 11:28we need to bring our science into
the majestic laboratory that is nature. -
11:28 - 11:32And there, with our modern
technological armamentarium, -
11:32 - 11:35interrogate every new form of
life we find -
11:35 - 11:39and any new biological attribute
that we may find. -
11:39 - 11:43We actually need to bring all
of our intelligence -
11:43 - 11:45to becoming stupid again.
-
11:46 - 11:47Clueless in the immensity,
-
11:47 - 11:50in front of the immensity
of the unknown. -
11:50 - 11:51Because, after all,
-
11:51 - 11:56science is not really about knowledge,
science is about ignorance, -
11:56 - 11:58that's what we do.
-
11:58 - 11:59So if we're serious about this,
-
11:59 - 12:02we are going to have to start
seriously supporting -
12:02 - 12:04those institutions that make it
possible -
12:04 - 12:06for discovery research to take place.
-
12:06 - 12:07Institutions like our own
-
12:07 - 12:10Stowers Institute for Medical Research
in Kansas City, Missouri, -
12:10 - 12:14or the National Institute of General
Medical Science in Bethesda, Maryland, -
12:14 - 12:17and of course our gateway
to biodiversity, -
12:17 - 12:21the Marine Biological Laboratory
in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. -
12:21 - 12:25I have been very fortunate to be able
to do some of this training myself, -
12:25 - 12:27and it is a pleasure for me
-
12:27 - 12:31to actually grab students out of the
confines of their laboratories -
12:31 - 12:33away from their computers and
their catalogues, -
12:33 - 12:38and throw them into the world
of discovery and exploration. -
12:38 - 12:43It is an immense pleasure,
a real pleasure to actually see -
12:44 - 12:48how these bright, young minds'
curiosity spreads its wings -
12:48 - 12:52and flies away when faced
with the unknown. -
12:52 - 12:55This is how we become
real scientists. -
12:55 - 12:59So we need these people
to actually go out there -
12:59 - 13:02and ask the better questions
that will bring us closer -
13:02 - 13:05to the answers that we seek.
-
13:05 - 13:08Once, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
actually wrote -
13:08 - 13:10that if you want to build a ship,
-
13:10 - 13:12don't drum up people to collect wood
-
13:12 - 13:14and don't assign them tasks and work,
-
13:14 - 13:18but rather teach them to long for
the endless immensity of the sea. -
13:18 - 13:20As a scientist and a teacher,
-
13:20 - 13:22I like to paraphrase this to read,
-
13:22 - 13:25that we scientists need to
teach our students -
13:25 - 13:28to long for the endless immensity
of the sea -
13:28 - 13:30that is our ignorance.
-
13:30 - 13:34We, Homo sapiens, are the only
species we know of -
13:34 - 13:37that is driven to scientific inquiry,
-
13:37 - 13:40We, like all other species on this planet
-
13:40 - 13:45are inextricably woven into the
history of life in this planet. -
13:45 - 13:48I think that I'm a little wrong when
I say that life is a mystery, -
13:48 - 13:51because I think that life is
actually an open secret -
13:51 - 13:55that has been beckoning our species
for millennia to understand it. -
13:55 - 13:57So I ask you,
-
13:57 - 14:01are we the best chance that
life has to know itself? -
14:01 - 14:04And if so, what the heck
are we waiting for? -
14:04 - 14:08We need to do things differently.
-
14:08 - 14:10Tonight I'm going to ask you
-
14:10 - 14:14to please help us build the
greatest discovery research vessel -
14:14 - 14:16in the history of humankind.
-
14:16 - 14:18Call your legislators,
-
14:18 - 14:21ask them to fund basic discovery research,
-
14:21 - 14:24support and give what you can
to institutions such as these -
14:24 - 14:27that are dedicated to discovery research,
-
14:27 - 14:31and hop on board with us
on a grand expedition -
14:31 - 14:34to radically transform our
understanding of life. -
14:34 - 14:36And along the way,
-
14:36 - 14:40change the way we do
biomedical research forever. -
14:40 - 14:41Thank you.
-
14:41 - 14:45(Applause)
- Title:
- Magnificent Vistas of Ignorance | Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado | TEDxKC
- Description:
-
Life on this planet is the history of rule breakers – species that didn't get the memo about how they were supposed to behave. So if we are studying rule breakers, then shouldn't how we study them break the rules, too?
This fascinating talk poses the question: is the way science approaches life’s biggest mysteries restricting our ability to solve them?
Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado is a researcher at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Sánchez Alvarado's current research efforts are aimed at understanding the molecular and cellular basis of animal regeneration.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDxTalks
- Duration:
- 14:52
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for Magnificent Vistas of Ignorance | Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado | TEDxKC | ||
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for Magnificent Vistas of Ignorance | Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado | TEDxKC | ||
Tammy Lee edited English subtitles for Magnificent Vistas of Ignorance | Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado | TEDxKC | ||
Tammy Lee edited English subtitles for Magnificent Vistas of Ignorance | Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado | TEDxKC | ||
Tammy Lee edited English subtitles for Magnificent Vistas of Ignorance | Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado | TEDxKC | ||
Tammy Lee edited English subtitles for Magnificent Vistas of Ignorance | Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado | TEDxKC | ||
Tammy Lee edited English subtitles for Magnificent Vistas of Ignorance | Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado | TEDxKC | ||
Tammy Lee edited English subtitles for Magnificent Vistas of Ignorance | Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado | TEDxKC |