The age of genetic wonder
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0:01 - 0:04So let me with start with Roy Amara.
-
0:04 - 0:09Roy's argument is that most new
technologies tend to be overestimated -
0:09 - 0:11in their impact to begin with,
-
0:11 - 0:13and then they get underestimated
in the long term -
0:13 - 0:14because we get used to them.
-
0:14 - 0:17These really are days
of miracle and wonder. -
0:17 - 0:20You remember that wonderful
song by Paul Simon? -
0:20 - 0:22There were two lines in it.
-
0:22 - 0:25So what was it that was considered
miraculous back then? -
0:26 - 0:28Slowing down things -- slow motion --
-
0:29 - 0:31and the long-distance call.
-
0:32 - 0:35Because, of course, you used
to get interrupted by operators -
0:35 - 0:38who'd tell you, "Long distance calling.
Do you want to hang up?" -
0:38 - 0:41And now we think nothing of calling
all over the world. -
0:41 - 0:44Well, something similar may be happening
-
0:44 - 0:46with reading and programming life.
-
0:47 - 0:48But before I unpack that,
-
0:49 - 0:52let's just talk about telescopes.
-
0:53 - 0:57Telescopes were overestimated
originally in their impact. -
0:57 - 0:59This is one of Galileo's early models.
-
1:00 - 1:03People thought it was just
going to ruin all religion. -
1:03 - 1:05(Laughter)
-
1:07 - 1:10So we're not paying that much
attention to telescopes. -
1:11 - 1:15But, of course, telescopes launched
10 years ago, as you just heard, -
1:15 - 1:18could take this Volkswagen,
fly it to the moon, -
1:18 - 1:24and you could see the lights
on that Volkswagen light up on the moon. -
1:25 - 1:28And that's the kind of resolution power
that allowed you to see -
1:29 - 1:32little specks of dust
floating around distant suns. -
1:32 - 1:36Imagine for a second that this
was a sun a billion light years away, -
1:36 - 1:39and you had a little speck of dust
that came in front of it. -
1:40 - 1:42That's what detecting
an exoplanet is like. -
1:43 - 1:47And the cool thing is, the telescopes
that are now being launched -
1:48 - 1:51would allow you to see
a single candle lit on the moon. -
1:52 - 1:55And if you separated it by one plate,
-
1:55 - 1:58you could see two candles
separately at that distance. -
1:59 - 2:02And that's the kind
of resolution that you need -
2:02 - 2:04to begin to image
that little speck of dust -
2:04 - 2:06as it comes around the sun
-
2:06 - 2:08and see if it has a blue-green signature.
-
2:09 - 2:11And if it does have
a blue-green signature, -
2:11 - 2:13it means that life
is common in the universe. -
2:13 - 2:18The first time you ever see a blue-green
signature on a distant planet, -
2:18 - 2:20it means there's photosynthesis there,
-
2:20 - 2:21there's water there,
-
2:21 - 2:25and the chances that you saw
the only other planet with photosynthesis -
2:25 - 2:26are about zero.
-
2:27 - 2:29And that's a calendar-changing event.
-
2:30 - 2:32There's a before and after
we were alone in the universe: -
2:32 - 2:35forget about the discovery
of whatever continent. -
2:37 - 2:38So as you're thinking about this,
-
2:38 - 2:41we're now beginning
to be able to image most of the universe. -
2:41 - 2:44And that is a time of miracle and wonder.
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2:44 - 2:46And we kind of take that for granted.
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2:48 - 2:49Something similar is happening in life.
-
2:50 - 2:53So we're hearing about life
in these little bits and pieces. -
2:53 - 2:55We hear about CRISPR,
and we hear about this technology, -
2:55 - 2:57and we hear about this technology.
-
2:57 - 3:00But the bottom line on life
is that life turns out to be code. -
3:02 - 3:06And life as code is a really
important concept because it means, -
3:06 - 3:09just in the same way
as you can write a sentence -
3:09 - 3:12in English or in French or Chinese,
-
3:13 - 3:16just in the same way
as you can copy a sentence, -
3:16 - 3:19just in the same way
as you can edit a sentence, -
3:19 - 3:21just in the same way
as you can print a sentence, -
3:21 - 3:24you're beginning to be able
to do that with life. -
3:25 - 3:29It means that we're beginning
to learn how to read this language. -
3:29 - 3:32And this, of course, is the language
that is used by this orange. -
3:33 - 3:34So how does this orange execute code?
-
3:35 - 3:37It doesn't do it in ones and zeroes
like a computer does. -
3:37 - 3:39It sits on a tree, and one day it does:
-
3:39 - 3:40plop!
-
3:41 - 3:43And that means: execute.
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3:43 - 3:46AATCAAG: make me a little root.
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3:47 - 3:50TCGACC: make me a little stem.
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3:50 - 3:53GAC: make me some leaves.
AGC: make me some flowers. -
3:53 - 3:56And then GCAA: make me some more oranges.
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3:57 - 4:01If I edit a sentence in English
on a word processor, -
4:03 - 4:07then what happens is you can go
from this word to that word. -
4:08 - 4:10If I edit something in this orange
-
4:10 - 4:15and put in GCAAC, using CRISPR
or something else that you've heard of, -
4:16 - 4:18then this orange becomes a lemon,
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4:19 - 4:21or it becomes a grapefruit,
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4:21 - 4:22or it becomes a tangerine.
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4:23 - 4:25And if I edit one in a thousand letters,
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4:25 - 4:28you become the person
sitting next to you today. -
4:29 - 4:30Be more careful where you sit.
-
4:30 - 4:31(Laughter)
-
4:33 - 4:36What's happening on this stuff
is it was really expensive to begin with. -
4:37 - 4:38It was like long-distance calls.
-
4:39 - 4:43But the cost of this is dropping
50 percent faster than Moore's law. -
4:44 - 4:48The first $200 full genome
was announced yesterday by Veritas. -
4:48 - 4:51And so as you're looking at these systems,
-
4:51 - 4:54it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter,
it doesn't matter, and then it does. -
4:54 - 4:58So let me just give you
the map view of this stuff. -
4:59 - 5:02This is a big discovery.
-
5:02 - 5:03There's 23 chromosomes.
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5:04 - 5:05Cool.
-
5:05 - 5:09Let's now start using a telescope version,
but instead of using a telescope, -
5:09 - 5:11let's use a microscope to zoom in
-
5:11 - 5:13on the inferior of those chromosomes,
-
5:13 - 5:15which is the Y chromosome.
-
5:16 - 5:19It's a third the size of the X.
It's recessive and mutant. -
5:20 - 5:22But hey,
-
5:22 - 5:23just a male.
-
5:25 - 5:27And as you're looking at this stuff,
-
5:27 - 5:31here's kind of a country view
-
5:31 - 5:33at a 400 base pair resolution level,
-
5:33 - 5:36and then you zoom in to 550,
and then you zoom in to 850, -
5:36 - 5:40and you can begin to identify
more and more genes as you zoom in. -
5:40 - 5:43Then you zoom in to the state level,
-
5:43 - 5:46and you can begin to tell
who's got leukemia, -
5:48 - 5:51how did they get leukemia,
what kind of leukemia do they have, -
5:51 - 5:53what shifted from what place
to what place. -
5:53 - 5:56And then you zoom in
to the Google street view level. -
5:57 - 6:00So this is what happens
if you have colorectal cancer -
6:00 - 6:04for a very specific patient
on the letter-by-letter resolution. -
6:06 - 6:09So what we're doing in this stuff
is we're gathering information -
6:09 - 6:12and just generating
enormous amounts of information. -
6:12 - 6:15This is one of the largest
databases on the planet -
6:15 - 6:19and it's growing faster
than we can build computers to store it. -
6:20 - 6:23You can create some incredible
maps with this stuff. -
6:23 - 6:26You want to understand the plague
and why one plague is bubonic -
6:26 - 6:29and the other one
is a different kind of plague -
6:29 - 6:31and the other one
is a different kind of plague? -
6:31 - 6:33Well, here's a map of the plague.
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6:33 - 6:35Some are absolutely deadly to humans,
-
6:35 - 6:36some are not.
-
6:36 - 6:39And note, by the way,
as you go to the bottom of this, -
6:39 - 6:41how does it compare to tuberculosis?
-
6:42 - 6:45So this is the difference between
tuberculosis and various kinds of plagues, -
6:45 - 6:48and you can play detective
with this stuff, -
6:48 - 6:50because you can take
a very specific kind of cholera -
6:50 - 6:51that affected Haiti,
-
6:52 - 6:55and you can look at
which country it came from, -
6:55 - 6:57which region it came from,
-
6:57 - 7:02and probably which soldier took that
from that African country to Haiti. -
7:05 - 7:07Zoom out.
-
7:07 - 7:08It's not just zooming in.
-
7:09 - 7:12This is one of the coolest maps
ever done by human beings. -
7:12 - 7:16What they've done is taken
all the genetic information they have -
7:16 - 7:17about all the species,
-
7:17 - 7:20and they've put a tree of life
on a single page -
7:20 - 7:22that you can zoom in and out of.
-
7:22 - 7:26So this is what came first,
how did it diversify, how did it branch, -
7:26 - 7:27how large is that genome,
-
7:27 - 7:29on a single page.
-
7:30 - 7:32It's kind of the universe
of life on Earth, -
7:32 - 7:34and it's being constantly
updated and completed. -
7:35 - 7:37And so as you're looking at this stuff,
-
7:37 - 7:40the really important change is
the old biology used to be reactive. -
7:40 - 7:43You used to have a lot of biologists
that had microscopes, -
7:43 - 7:46and they had magnifying glasses
and they were out observing animals. -
7:47 - 7:49The new biology is proactive.
-
7:49 - 7:52You don't just observe stuff,
you make stuff. -
7:53 - 7:55And that's a really big change
-
7:55 - 7:58because it allows us
to do things like this. -
7:59 - 8:01And I know you're really
excited by this picture. -
8:01 - 8:02(Laughter)
-
8:02 - 8:05It only took us four years
and 40 million dollars -
8:05 - 8:06to be able to take this picture.
-
8:06 - 8:07(Laughter)
-
8:07 - 8:09And what we did
-
8:10 - 8:13is we took the full gene code
out of a cell -- -
8:13 - 8:17not a gene, not two genes,
the full gene code out of a cell -- -
8:18 - 8:20built a completely new gene code,
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8:21 - 8:22inserted it into the cell,
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8:22 - 8:25figured out a way to have the cell
execute that code -
8:25 - 8:28and built a completely new species.
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8:29 - 8:31So this is the world's first
synthetic life form. -
8:34 - 8:36And so what do you do with this stuff?
-
8:36 - 8:39Well, this stuff is going
to change the world. -
8:39 - 8:41Let me give you three short-term trends
-
8:41 - 8:44in terms of how it's going
to change the world. -
8:44 - 8:47The first is we're going to see
a new industrial revolution. -
8:48 - 8:49And I actually mean that literally.
-
8:50 - 8:54So in the same way as Switzerland
and Germany and Britain -
8:55 - 8:58changed the world with machines
like the one you see in this lobby, -
9:00 - 9:01created power --
-
9:01 - 9:04in the same way CERN
is changing the world, -
9:04 - 9:07using new instruments
and our concept of the universe -- -
9:08 - 9:11programmable life forms
are also going to change the world -
9:12 - 9:13because once you can program cells
-
9:13 - 9:16in the same way as you
program your computer chip, -
9:18 - 9:19then you can make almost anything.
-
9:20 - 9:23So your computer chip
can produce photographs, -
9:23 - 9:25can produce music, can produce film,
-
9:25 - 9:28can produce love letters,
can produce spreadsheets. -
9:28 - 9:30It's just ones and zeroes
flying through there. -
9:31 - 9:33If you can flow ATCGs through cells,
-
9:34 - 9:37then this software makes its own hardware,
-
9:37 - 9:39which means it scales very quickly.
-
9:40 - 9:42No matter what happens,
-
9:42 - 9:44if you leave your cell phone
by your bedside, -
9:44 - 9:47you will not have a billion
cell phones in the morning. -
9:47 - 9:52But if you do that with living organisms,
-
9:53 - 9:56you can make this stuff
at a very large scale. -
9:57 - 10:00One of the things you can do
is you can start producing -
10:00 - 10:03close to carbon-neutral fuels
-
10:03 - 10:05on a commercial scale by 2025,
-
10:06 - 10:08which we're doing with Exxon.
-
10:09 - 10:11But you can also substitute
for agricultural lands. -
10:11 - 10:16Instead of having 100 hectares
to make oils or to make proteins, -
10:16 - 10:18you can make it in these vats
-
10:18 - 10:21at 10 or 100 times
the productivity per hectare. -
10:21 - 10:25Or you can store information,
or you can make all the world's vaccines -
10:25 - 10:26in those three vats.
-
10:27 - 10:31Or you can store most of the information
that's held at CERN in those three vats. -
10:32 - 10:36DNA is a really powerful
information storage device. -
10:37 - 10:38Second turn:
-
10:38 - 10:41you're beginning to see the rise
of theoretical biology. -
10:42 - 10:46So, medical school departments are one
of the most conservative places on earth. -
10:46 - 10:50The way they teach anatomy is similar
to the way they taught anatomy -
10:50 - 10:51100 years ago.
-
10:51 - 10:53"Welcome, student. Here's your cadaver."
-
10:54 - 10:58One of the things medical schools are
not good at is creating new departments, -
10:58 - 11:00which is why this is so unusual.
-
11:00 - 11:07Isaac Kohane has now created a department
based on informatics, data, knowledge -
11:07 - 11:08at Harvard Medical School.
-
11:09 - 11:12And in a sense,
what's beginning to happen is -
11:12 - 11:14biology is beginning to get enough data
-
11:14 - 11:17that it can begin to follow
the steps of physics, -
11:17 - 11:20which used to be observational physics
-
11:20 - 11:22and experimental physicists,
-
11:22 - 11:24and then started creating
theoretical biology. -
11:24 - 11:27Well, that's what you're beginning to see
-
11:27 - 11:29because you have so many medical records,
-
11:29 - 11:31because you have
so much data about people: -
11:31 - 11:33you've got their genomes,
you've got their viromes, -
11:33 - 11:35you've got their microbiomes.
-
11:35 - 11:37And as this information stacks,
-
11:37 - 11:39you can begin to make predictions.
-
11:40 - 11:43The third thing that's happening
is this is coming to the consumer. -
11:45 - 11:49So you, too, can get your genes sequenced.
-
11:50 - 11:52And this is beginning to create
companies like 23andMe, -
11:52 - 11:55and companies like 23andMe
are going to be giving you -
11:55 - 11:56more and more and more data,
-
11:56 - 11:58not just about your relatives,
-
11:59 - 12:00but about you and your body,
-
12:00 - 12:01and it's going to compare stuff,
-
12:02 - 12:04and it's going
to compare stuff across time, -
12:04 - 12:06and these are going to become
very large databases. -
12:06 - 12:09But it's also beginning to affect
a series of other businesses -
12:09 - 12:11in unexpected ways.
-
12:12 - 12:16Normally, when you advertise something,
you really don't want the consumer -
12:16 - 12:20to take your advertisement
into the bathroom to pee on. -
12:22 - 12:24Unless, of course, if you're IKEA.
-
12:25 - 12:28Because when you rip this
out of a magazine and you pee on it, -
12:28 - 12:30it'll turn blue if you're pregnant.
-
12:30 - 12:32(Laughter)
-
12:32 - 12:36And they'll give you
a discount on your crib. -
12:36 - 12:37(Laughter)
-
12:37 - 12:39Right? So when I say consumer empowerment,
-
12:39 - 12:42and this is spreading beyond biotech,
-
12:42 - 12:44I actually really mean that.
-
12:46 - 12:50We're now beginning to produce,
at Synthetic Genomics, -
12:51 - 12:52desktop printers
-
12:53 - 12:57that allow you to design a cell,
-
12:57 - 12:58print a cell,
-
12:58 - 13:00execute the program on the cell.
-
13:01 - 13:03We can now print vaccines
-
13:03 - 13:05real time as an airplane takes off
-
13:05 - 13:06before it lands.
-
13:08 - 13:11We're shipping 78
of these machines this year. -
13:12 - 13:17This is not theoretical biology.
This is printing biology. -
13:18 - 13:20Let me talk about two long-term trends
-
13:21 - 13:25that are coming at you
over a longer time period. -
13:26 - 13:28The first one is, we're starting
to redesign species. -
13:29 - 13:31And you've heard about that, right?
-
13:31 - 13:34We're redesigning trees.
We're redesigning flowers. -
13:34 - 13:36We're redesigning yogurt,
-
13:37 - 13:39cheese, whatever else you want.
-
13:40 - 13:42And that, of course,
brings up the interesting question: -
13:43 - 13:45How and when should we redesign humans?
-
13:48 - 13:51And a lot of us think,
"Oh no, we never want to redesign humans." -
13:52 - 13:55Unless, of course, if your child
has a Huntington's gene -
13:55 - 13:56and is condemned to death.
-
13:57 - 14:01Or, unless if you're passing on
a cystic fibrosis gene, -
14:01 - 14:03in which case, you don't just want
to redesign yourself, -
14:03 - 14:06you want to redesign your children
and their children. -
14:07 - 14:10And these are complicated debates
and they're going to happen in real time. -
14:11 - 14:13I'll give you one current example.
-
14:14 - 14:17One of the debates going on
at the National Academies today -
14:18 - 14:23is you have the power to put
a gene drive into mosquitoes -
14:23 - 14:26so that you will kill
all the malaria-carrying mosquitoes. -
14:28 - 14:30Now, some people say,
-
14:31 - 14:34"That's going to affect the environment
in an extreme way, don't do it." -
14:35 - 14:36Other people say,
-
14:37 - 14:40"This is one of the things
that's killing millions of people yearly. -
14:40 - 14:43Who are you to tell me
that I can't save the kids in my country?" -
14:45 - 14:47And why is this debate so complicated?
-
14:47 - 14:50Because as soon as you
let this loose in Brazil -
14:50 - 14:51or in Southern Florida --
-
14:51 - 14:53mosquitoes don't respect walls.
-
14:53 - 14:55You're making a decision for the world
-
14:55 - 14:57when you put a gene drive into the air.
-
15:02 - 15:04This wonderful man won a Nobel Prize,
-
15:05 - 15:07and after winning the Nobel Prize
-
15:07 - 15:08he's been worrying about
-
15:10 - 15:12how did life get started on this planet
-
15:12 - 15:14and how likely is it
that it's in other places? -
15:15 - 15:18So what he's been doing is going around
to this graduate students -
15:18 - 15:20and saying to his graduate students,
-
15:21 - 15:24"Build me life but don't use
any modern chemicals or instruments. -
15:24 - 15:27Build me stuff that was here
three billion years ago. -
15:27 - 15:30You can't use lasers.
You can't use this. You can't use that." -
15:32 - 15:36He gave me a vial of what he's built
about three weeks ago. -
15:37 - 15:38What has he built?
-
15:38 - 15:42He's built basically what looked like
soap bubbles that are made out of lipids. -
15:42 - 15:44He's built a precursor of RNA.
-
15:45 - 15:49He's had the precursor of the RNA
be absorbed by the cell -
15:50 - 15:52and then he's had the cells divide.
-
15:54 - 15:56We may not be that far --
-
15:58 - 16:01call it a decade, maybe two decades --
-
16:01 - 16:03from generating life from scratch
-
16:04 - 16:06out of proto-communities.
-
16:08 - 16:09Second long-term trend:
-
16:10 - 16:14we've been living and are living
through the digital age -- -
16:14 - 16:16we're starting to live through
the age of the genome -
16:16 - 16:20and biology and CRISPR
and synthetic biology -- -
16:21 - 16:24and all of that is going to merge
into the age of the brain. -
16:25 - 16:29So we're getting to the point where
we can rebuild most of our body parts, -
16:29 - 16:32in the same way as if you break a bone
or burn your skin, it regrows. -
16:32 - 16:35We're beginning to learn
how to regrow our tracheas -
16:35 - 16:37or how to regrow our bladders.
-
16:37 - 16:39Both of those have been
implanted in humans. -
16:39 - 16:42Tony Atala is working on
32 different organs. -
16:43 - 16:45But the core is going to be this,
-
16:45 - 16:48because this is you
and the rest is just packaging. -
16:50 - 16:54Nobody's going to live beyond
120, 130, 140 years -
16:54 - 16:55unless if we fix this.
-
16:56 - 16:58And that's the most interesting challenge.
-
16:58 - 17:00That's the next frontier, along with:
-
17:00 - 17:03"How common is life in the universe?"
-
17:03 - 17:04"Where did we come from?"
-
17:05 - 17:06and questions like that.
-
17:08 - 17:11Let me end this with
an apocryphal quote from Einstein. -
17:12 - 17:14[You can live as if
everything is a miracle, -
17:14 - 17:16or you can live as if
nothing is a miracle.] -
17:16 - 17:18It's your choice.
-
17:19 - 17:21You can focus on the bad,
you can focus on the scary, -
17:21 - 17:23and certainly there's
a lot of scary out there. -
17:24 - 17:29But use 10 percent of your brain
to focus on that, or maybe 20 percent, -
17:29 - 17:31or maybe 30 percent.
-
17:31 - 17:33But just remember,
-
17:33 - 17:36we really are living in an age
of miracle and wonder. -
17:36 - 17:40We're lucky to be alive today.
We're lucky to see this stuff. -
17:40 - 17:43We're lucky to be able to interact
with folks like the folks -
17:43 - 17:45who are building
all the stuff in this room. -
17:45 - 17:48So thank you to all of you,
for all you do. -
17:49 - 17:53(Applause)
- Title:
- The age of genetic wonder
- Speaker:
- Juan Enriquez
- Description:
-
Gene-editing tools like CRISPR enable us to program life at its most fundamental level. But this raises some pressing questions: If we can generate new species from scratch, what should we build? Should we redesign humanity as we know it? Life scientist Juan Enriquez forecasts the possible futures of genetic editing, exploring the immense uncertainty and opportunity of this next frontier.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 18:05
Oliver Friedman edited English subtitles for The age of genetic wonder | ||
Oliver Friedman edited English subtitles for The age of genetic wonder | ||
Oliver Friedman edited English subtitles for The age of genetic wonder | ||
Oliver Friedman approved English subtitles for The age of genetic wonder | ||
Oliver Friedman edited English subtitles for The age of genetic wonder | ||
Camille Martínez accepted English subtitles for The age of genetic wonder | ||
Camille Martínez edited English subtitles for The age of genetic wonder | ||
Camille Martínez edited English subtitles for The age of genetic wonder |