It's a great time to be a molecular biologist. (Laughter) Reading and writing DNA code is getting easier and cheaper. By the end of this year, we'll be able to sequence the three million bits of information in your genome in less than a day and for less than 1,000 euros. Biotech is probably the most powerful and the fastest-growing technology sector. It has the power, potentially, to replace our fossil fuels, to revolutionize medicine, and to touch every aspect of our daily lives.
时下,当一名分子生物学家真是太美妙了(笑声) 读写DNA密码越来越简单 也越来便宜 今年底,我们就能 在不到一天的时间里 排列出你体内基因组内包含的三百万比特的信息 而这只花不到1000欧元 生物科技可能是整个科技领域 最强大,发展最快的一个分支 它极有可能 取代化石燃料 彻底革新医学药品 影响我们日常生活的方方面面
So who gets to do it? I think we'd all be pretty comfortable with this guy doing it. But what about that guy? (Laughter) (Laughter)
那么谁会让这些成为现实呢? 我觉得可能我们比较愿意 让这个人来做 那这个人 如何?(笑声) (笑声)
In 2009, I first heard about DIYbio. It's a movement that -- it advocates making biotechnology accessible to everyone, not just scientists and people in government labs. The idea is that if you open up the science and you allow diverse groups to participate, it could really stimulate innovation. Putting technology in the hands of the end user is usually a good idea because they've got the best idea of what their needs are. And here's this really sophisticated technology coming down the road, all these associated social, moral, ethical questions, and we scientists are just lousy at explaining to the public just exactly what it is we're doing in those labs. So wouldn't it be nice if there was a place in your local neighborhood where you could go and learn about this stuff, do it hands-on? I thought so.
2009年,我第一次听说“DIY(自己动手)生物学” 这是一场旨在 让每个人都能接触生物科技的运动 而不仅仅是科学家和政府实验室的工作人员 这一运动的理念在于,如果你真正开放科学探索 并让各行各业的人参与进来 将会激发真正的创新 让最终消费者去接触科技 是一个很好的想法,因为他们最清楚 自己的需求是什么 当一些复杂难懂的科技 出现在市面上,并引发相关的 社会、道德、伦理问题 科学家们只能不厌其烦地向公众解释 我们在这样的实验室里已经做过的事情 如果 你家附近有个地方 可以了解这些东西 还能亲身实践,不是很好吗? 我觉得这样很好
So, three years ago, I got together with some friends of mine who had similar aspirations and we founded Genspace. It's a nonprofit, a community biotech lab in Brooklyn, New York, and the idea was people could come, they could take classes and putter around in the lab in a very open, friendly atmosphere.
所以,三年前我 同一些有类似想法的朋友一起 建立了Genspace 它是个非营利社区性质的生物科技实验室 位于纽约布鲁克林 它的理念是人们可以过来 在开放友好的气氛中 上上课,在实验室里做些小实验
None of my previous experience prepared me for what came next. Can you guess? The press started calling us. And the more we talked about how great it was to increase science literacy, the more they wanted to talk about us creating the next Frankenstein, and as a result, for the next six months, when you Googled my name, instead of getting my scientific papers, you got this. ["Am I a biohazard?"] (Laughter) It was pretty depressing. The only thing that got us through that period was that we knew that all over the world, there were other people that were trying to do the same thing that we were. They were opening biohacker spaces, and some of them were facing much greater challenges than we did, more regulations, less resources. But now, three years later, here's where we stand. It's a vibrant, global community of hackerspaces, and this is just the beginning. These are some of the biggest ones, and there are others opening every day. There's one probably going to open up in Moscow, one in South Korea, and the cool thing is they each have their own individual flavor that grew out of the community they came out of.
我之前所有的经历 都不足以让我预知接下来发生了什么。你能猜得到吗? 媒体开始给我们打电话 我们想谈提高科学素质是多么好的一件事 而他们却想谈 我们将会创造出下一个科学怪人(小说《弗兰肯斯坦》:主人公成功地创造出人工生命,但最终与其同归与尽) 结果,接下来的半年里 在Google上搜索我名字的时候 搜到的不是我的科技论文 而是[“我是个生化危机源”?] (笑声) 我特别沮丧 支撑着我们挺过那段时期的唯一的东西 就是我们知道,在世界的其他地方 也有人试着 在做跟我们一样的事情 这就是早期的生物黑客 他们中一些人面临着比我们更大的压力 更多的限制和更少的资源 但如今,三年后,我们已经发展成这样 (Genspace)成为了一个生机勃勃的全球生物黑客社区 而这仅仅只是个开始 这些只是稍大型的黑客空间 每天都有其他的在新开放 在莫斯科可能会开放一个 在韩国也会有一个 有意思的是它们每一个 都有自己独特的特色 这种特色根植于本土社区
Let me take you on a little tour. Biohackers work alone. We work in groups, in big cities — (Laughter) — and in small villages. We reverse engineer lab equipment. We genetically engineer bacteria. We hack hardware, software, wetware, and, of course, the code of life. We like to build things. Then we like to take things apart. We make things grow. We make things glow. And we make cells dance.
让我带着大家看一看 独自工作的生物黑客 一起工作的 在大城市(笑声) 小村庄 设计工程实验室设备 用遗传基因的方法制造细菌 我们发掘研究硬件 软件 湿件(计算机专家用语, 指软件、硬件以外的"件", 即人脑) 当然还有生命的密码 我们喜欢造东西 又喜欢拆东西 我们让生物生长 让物体发光 让细胞跳舞
The spirit of these labs, it's open, it's positive, but, you know, sometimes when people think of us, the first thing that comes to mind is bio-safety, bio-security, all the dark side stuff. I'm not going to minimize those concerns. Any powerful technology is inherently dual use, and, you know, you get something like synthetic biology, nanobiotechnology, it really compels you, you have to look at both the amateur groups but also the professional groups, because they have better infrastructure, they have better facilities, and they have access to pathogens.
这些实验室的氛围是开放的,积极的 但你知道,有时人们想到我们 第一个念头就是生物安全 以及其它黑暗的方面 我不会试着去打消这些顾虑 因为任何强大科技的作用,生来都是两面性的 如果你对 合成生物学,纳米生物科技这种东西 真正感兴趣,就必须 同时关注相关业余爱好群体和专业人士 因为他们(专业人士)有更好的基础设施 更好的设备 也能直接接触病原体
So the United Nations did just that, and they recently issued a report on this whole area, and what they concluded was the power of this technology for positive was much greater than the risk for negative, and they even looked specifically at the DIYbio community, and they noted, not surprisingly, that the press had a tendency to consistently overestimate our capabilities and underestimate our ethics. As a matter of fact, DIY people from all over the world, America, Europe, got together last year, and we hammered out a common code of ethics. That's a lot more than conventional science has done.
联合国就是这样做的。最近 他们就整个生物科技领域发布了一份报告 并得出结论,这种科技的影响 积极意义要远远大于消极意义 他们还特意强调了DIY生物学这一领域 指出媒体一直有一种 高估我们的能力 而低估我们的道德水准的倾向 事实上,来自世界各地 包括美洲,欧洲的DIY生物学家去年已经在去年 共同敲定了我们的道德准则 而传统科学却没有做到这一点
Now, we follow state and local regulations. We dispose of our waste properly, we follow safety procedures, we don't work with pathogens. You know, if you're working with a pathogen, you're not part of the biohacker community, you're part of the bioterrorist community, I'm sorry. And sometimes people ask me, "Well, what about an accident?" Well, working with the safe organisms that we normally work with, the chance of an accident happening with somebody accidentally creating, like, some sort of superbug, that's literally about as probable as a snowstorm in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Now, it could happen, but I'm not going to plan my life around it.
我们遵循国家和地区的规定 合理处置废料垃圾 遵守安全细则,不使用病原体 如果你使用了病原体 你就不是生物黑客社区的一份子 你就是生物恐怖分子社区的成员,抱歉 有时候有人问我 "那么万一发生事故怎么办?" 我可以这样说,使用常规安全的生物体 事故发生的几率 就像不小心创造出 某种超级细菌一样 就同一场暴雪 降临在沙哈拉沙漠正中一样小 它确实有可能发生 但我不打算为这种事担扰
I've actually chosen to take a different kind of risk. I signed up for something called the Personal Genome Project. It's a study at Harvard where, at the end of the study, they're going to take my entire genomic sequence, all of my medical information, and my identity, and they're going to post it online for everyone to see. There were a lot of risks involved that they talked about during the informed consent portion. The one I liked the best is, someone could download my sequence, go back to the lab, synthesize some fake Ellen DNA, and plant it at a crime scene. (Laughter) But like DIYbio, the positive outcomes and the potential for good for a study like that far outweighs the risk.
我实际上准备冒另一种“风险” 我签署了一个叫Personal Genome(个人基因)的项目 它是一项在哈佛大学进行的项目, 研究结束后,我所有的基因序列 医疗信息,个人身份 都会由他们公布在网络上,所有人都能看到 在知情同意环节时 他们谈论了很多可能遇到的风险 我最喜欢的一个是 有人下载了我们基因序列,回到实验室 合成一个假Ellen的DNA 然后放在一个犯罪现场里(笑声) 但像DIY生物学一样,我相信它正面的结果 以及为带来研究的益处 还是超过了风险
Now, you might be asking yourself, "Well, you know, what would I do in a biolab?" Well, it wasn't that long ago we were asking, "Well, what would anyone do with a personal computer?" So this stuff is just beginning. We're only seeing just the tip of the DNA iceberg. Let me show you what you could do right now. A biohacker in Germany, a journalist, wanted to know whose dog was leaving little presents on his street? (Laughter) (Applause) Yep, you guessed it. He threw tennis balls to all the neighborhood dogs, analyzed the saliva, identified the dog, and confronted the dog owner. (Laughter) (Applause) I discovered an invasive species in my own backyard. Looked like a ladybug, right? It actually is a Japanese beetle. And the same kind of technology -- it's called DNA barcoding, it's really cool -- You can use it to check if your caviar is really beluga, if that sushi is really tuna, or if that goat cheese that you paid so much for is really goat's. In a biohacker space, you can analyze your genome for mutations. You can analyze your breakfast cereal for GMO's, and you can explore your ancestry. You can send weather balloons up into the stratosphere, collect microbes, see what's up there. You can make a biocensor out of yeast to detect pollutants in water. You can make some sort of a biofuel cell. You can do a lot of things. You can also do an art science project. Some of these are really spectacular, and they look at social, ecological problems from a completely different perspective. It's really cool.
也许你会自问 “在生物实验室我都能做些什么?” 不久前类似的问题也有过 “人们用电脑都能做些什么?” 所以,这仅仅是个开始 我们只是瞥见了DNA的冰山一角 让我告诉你你现在能做些什么 一位德国的生物黑客,也是个记者,他想知道 谁家的狗在他家附近的街道上留下了“小礼物” (笑声)(掌声) 你们猜对了!他向 所有邻居家的狗扔网球,分析唾液成分 找到了那只狗,并向主人说明了情况 (笑声)(掌声) 我在我家后院发现了一只“入侵物种” 看上去像只瓢虫,是吗? 其实是只日本金龟子 同样的 这种叫做DNA条形码的技术,真的很酷-- 你可以通过它确认你吃的是不是真正的白鲟鱼鱼子酱 是不是真的金枪鱼寿司,或者 你花了大价钱买到的山羊乳干酪是不是真的山羊乳 作为一名生物黑客 你可以分析你有没有基因上的变异 你可以分析你早餐麦片里的转基因成分 你还可以探索你的祖先,血统 把气象气球发送到平流层 采集微生物,看看里面有什么 你可以用酵母当做生物传感器 来检测水污染 合成某种生物燃料细胞 你可以做无数的事情 你还可以进行艺术科学项目 有些项目真的很赞 从完全不同的角度审视社会和生态问题 真的很酷
Some people ask me, well, why am I involved? I could have a perfectly good career in mainstream science. The thing is, there's something in these labs that they have to offer society that you can't find anywhere else. There's something sacred about a space where you can work on a project, and you don't have to justify to anyone that it's going to make a lot of money, that it's going to save mankind, or even that it's feasible. It just has to follow safety guidelines. If you had spaces like this all over the world, it could really change the perception of who's allowed to do biotech. It's spaces like these that spawned personal computing. Why not personal biotech? If everyone in this room got involved, who knows what we could do? This is such a new area, and as we say back in Brooklyn, you ain't seen nothin' yet. (Laughter) (Applause)
有人会问,为什么我要参与这种事儿? 我可以在主流科学行业里有很好的工作 问题关键是,在这样的实验室里 有些东西是你在别处找不到的 有些东西是你在别处找不到的 黑客空间有好的一面,就是 你可以开展项目 而无须向任何人解释“它会带来丰厚的利润” 无须向任何人解释“它会拯救人类”,甚至“它能够行得通” 只要遵循安全规定(操作项目) 如果在世界各地都有这样的地方 那将会真正改变人们对于 “谁才有资格接触生物科技”这一问题的观念 就是这样的地方,推动了个人电脑的应用和传播 所以为什么不能让个人生物科技也如此呢? 如果在场的每个人都参与进来 谁都想象不到我们能够做到什么 这是个全新的领域,正如刚才提到布鲁克林时我讲到的 还有更厉害的呢。(笑声) (掌声)