The essence of being human is that we solve problems. And when we're faced with enormous problems like disease and climate change, we need to solve them by collaboration.
人类的本质是解决问题。 当我们面对像疾病和气候变化 这样的很多问题时, 我们需要通过合作来解决问题。
I'm excited to tell you about a new kind of collaboration that will absolutely create solutions to these big problems. It's a collaboration that's unexpected because it's between humans and the tiniest organisms that populate our planet: the bacteria and other microbes that live in, on and around us.
我很兴奋地告诉你们一种新的合作 将绝对可以为这些 重大问题提供解决方案。 这是一种意想不到的合作 因为它位于人类 和我们星球上的最微小的生物: 细菌和其他生活在我们周围的微生物。
Bacteria may be small and unseen, but they often have inspired transformative innovations, including the one that has become the cornerstone of my own research. Over the past decade, I've been at the forefront of developing a revolutionary technology called CRISPR that has come from the study of how bacteria fight viral infection. CRISPR is amazing because it allows us to precisely edit the DNA in living organisms, including in people and plants. With CRISPR, we can change, remove or replace the genes that govern the function of cells. This means that we now have the ability to use CRISPR like a word processor to find, cut and paste text.
细菌可能很小看不见, 但它们往往激发了革命性的创新, 包括我自己研究的基石。 过去几十年,我一直处于 开发CRISPR这种 革命性技术的前线, 该技术来自细菌如何 对抗病毒感染的研究。 CRISPR的神奇之处 在于它可以让我们 在包括人类和植物的生物体中 精确编辑DNA。 凭借CRISPR, 我们可以改变、移除或替代 控制细胞功能的基因。 这意味着我们现在拥有了像 文字处理器那样去使用 CRISPR 查找、剪切和粘贴文本的能力。
CRISPR, amazingly, has already cured people of devastating disorders like sickle cell disease, and it's created rice plants that are resistant to both diseases and drought. Incredible, right? But the next world-changing advance with CRISPR will actually come from using it in a way that will allow us to go to the next level by editing genes beyond just in individual organisms. We now have the ability to use CRISPR to edit entire populations of tiny microbes, called microbiomes, that live in and on our bodies.
CRISPR,令人惊叹的是, 已经治愈了像镰状细胞病 那样严重的疾病 并且它创造出来的水稻 既能抗病又能抗旱。 难以置信,对吧? 但下一次 CRISPR 改变世界的进步 将来自它的一种使用方法 这将会让我们进入 超越编辑个体生物基因的下一个水平。 我们现在拥有能力 可以使用 CRISPR 去编辑整个微生物种群, 即生活在我们体内和身体上 的微生物组。
For decades, scientists studied bacteria one organism at a time, as if each type of bacteria behaved independently. But we now know that bacterial behaviors, both good and bad, result from their interactions within complex microbiomes. In humans, dysfunctional gut microbiomes are associated with diseases as diverse as Alzheimer's and asthma. And in farm animals, microbiomes produce methane, a powerful contributor to climate change. But when they're healthy, both human and animal microbiomes can actually prevent disease and reduce methane emissions. So to harness these benefits, we need a way to precisely and reproducibly control these microbial communities.
几十年来,科学家一次只研究一个细菌, 就好像每个细菌行为独立似的。 但我们现在知道细菌行为, 不管好还是坏, 是它们在复杂微生物群中 相互作用的结果。 在人类中,功能失调 的肠道微生物组 与阿尔茨海默病和 哮喘等多种疾病有关。 在农场动物中, 微生物群产生的甲烷, 是造成气候变化的重要因素。 但当它们健康时, 人类和微生物组可以预防疾病 和减少甲烷排放。 所以要获得这些好处, 我们需要一种精确和可重复控制 这些微生物群落的方法。
So why have microbiomes been difficult to control in the past? It turns out that microbiomes are very complex, and they're difficult to manipulate. Antibiotics affect the entire microbiome and their overuse can lead to drug resistance. Diet and probiotics are nonspecific and they're often ineffective. Fecal transplants face various challenges to both effectiveness and acceptance.
那么为什么微生物群过去那么难控制? 原来是因为微生物群非常复杂, 并且它们很难被操控。 抗生素影响了整个微生物群 并且它们的过度使用导致了抗药性。 饮食和益生菌是非特异性的, 它们通常是无效的。 粪便移植在有效性和接受度 方面面临各种挑战。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
But with CRISPR, we have a tool that works like a scalpel. It allows us to target a particular gene in a particular kind of cell. With CRISPR, we can change one kind of bacterium without affecting all the others.
但有了CRISPR,我们有了 像外科手术刀那样的工具。 它使我们能够瞄准特定类型 细胞中的特定基因。 有了CRISPR, 我们可以改变某一种细菌 而不影响其他。
Another challenge is that less than one percent of the world’s microbial species have been grown and studied in the lab. Fortunately, we can now access the other 99 percent due to the pioneering research of my colleague, Jill Banfield, and her breakthrough technology, metagenomics, which is a tool that allows us to figure out what species are present and what they're doing in a microbial community. Metagenomics creates a detailed blueprint of a complex microbiome, and that means that we can use it to figure out how to use gene editing tools in the right gene, in the right organism.
另一个挑战是世界上 不到1%的微生物种群 在实验室生长和被研究过。 幸运的是,我们现在 可以接触另外 99% 这归于我的同事 吉尔·班菲尔德(Jill Banfield) 的开创性的研究 和她突破性的技术, 宏基因组学, 这一种工具让我们可以搞清楚 微生物群落中 存在哪些物种以及它们在做什么。 宏基因组学构建了一个 复杂微生物组的详细蓝图, 这意味着我们可以使用它 去搞清楚如何在对的基因,对的生物体中 使用基因编辑工具。
You might be wondering how we can take this new knowledge and harness it to solve real world problems. Well, we're bringing together these two breakthrough technologies, metagenomics and CRISPR, to create a brand new field of science called precision microbiome editing. This will allow us to discover links between dysfunctional microbiomes and disease or greenhouse gas emissions. We can develop modified and improved microbiome editors and show that they're safe and effective. And we can then begin to deploy these optimized solutions to create the kinds of solutions that will be transformative in the future.
你可能好奇我们如何使用这些新知识 运用于解决现实世界的问题。 我们是将宏基因组学和CRISPR 这两种突破性的技术结合在一起 去创建这个被称为精确微生物组 编辑的全新科学领域。 这将使我们能够发现功能失调的微生物群 和疾病或者温室气体排放的联系。 我们可以开发修改和改进微生物编辑器 并证明它们是安全有效的。 然后我们就可以开始部署 这些改进后的解决方案 去创造出在未来具有革命性的解决方案。
So how does this affect our health and the health of our planet? We know the poorest countries and people are the most affected by climate change, and it's a problem created by the wealthiest people. And methane is a big part of the problem. It's been a major contributor to rising global temperatures since preindustrial times. Specific microbiome compositions in livestock can actually reduce methane emissions by up to 80 percent. But doing that today currently requires daily interventions at enormous expense, and it just doesn't scale.
那么这会如何影响我们的健康 和我们地球的健康? 我们知道最贫穷的国家和人们 被气候变化影响最大, 并且这个问题是最富裕的国家造成的。 甲烷是主要的问题。 从前工业时代开始, 它就是全球气温升高的 主要因素。 牲畜中特定微生物组的组成 其实可以减少甲烷排放高达 80% 。 但现在的做法要求每天干预,成本巨大, 并且无法规模化。
But with precision microbiome editing, we have an opportunity to modify a calf's microbiome at birth, limiting that animal's impact on the climate for its entire lifetime. And this is beneficial for farmers because reduced methane production means more efficient conversion of feed into food. Importantly, these tools can be used in the future to reduce methane emissions from other sources, like landfills, wastewater and rice paddies. Ultimately, microbiomes generate up to two-thirds of all of the methane emissions globally. So our technology could really move the needle in our fight against climate change.
但通过精准微生物组编辑, 我们有机会改变小牛出生时的微生物群, 在动物的整个生命周期中 限制其对气候的影响。 这对农民也有益, 因为减少甲烷排放 意味着更有效地将饲料转化为食物。 重要的是,这些工具未来可以用于 减少其他地方的甲烷排放, 比如垃圾填埋场、废水和稻田。 最重要地,微生物群产生了 全球三分之二的甲烷排放量。 因此,我们的技术可以真正推动 我们与气候变化的斗争。
In human health, asthma affects up to 300 million people around the world, a number that grows by 50 percent each decade, and it disproportionately affects lower-income children. Our team has identified a promising link between a molecule produced in the gut microbiome and asthma development. With precision microbiome editing, we could offer a child at risk for asthma a noninvasive therapy that would eliminate asthma-inducing molecules, changing her life trajectory. And what's really exciting is that these same approaches in the future could help us treat or even prevent human diseases that are linked to the gut microbiome, including obesity, diabetes and Alzheimer's.
在人类健康领域, 全世界有多达 3 亿人患有哮喘, 这个数字每十年增长 50% , 并且不成比例地影响低收入儿童。 我们团队已经识别出了 肠道微生物群中产生的分子与哮喘 发展之间的关系。 通过精确微生物组编辑, 我们可以为有患哮喘风险 的孩子提供无创治疗 去消除诱发哮喘的分子, 改变她的人生轨迹。 真正让人兴奋的是 这些同样的方法未来可以帮助我们 治疗或者预防人类 与肠道微生物群有关的疾病, 包括肥胖、糖尿病和老年痴呆症。
I think it’s fascinating that we can now use CRISPR to edit the same tiny organisms that gave us CRISPR. In doing so, we’re collaborating with the ultimate partner: nature. Together, we can use CRISPR-powered precision microbiome editing to build a more resilient future for all of us.
我想更让人着迷的是我们 现在可以使用 CRISPR 去编辑给予我们 CRISPR 的同种微生物体。 通过这样做,我们 和终极的伙伴:自然合作。 我们一起,可以使用基于 CRISPR 的精准微生物组编辑 去为我们所有人构建更有韧性的未来。
Thank you very much.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(鼓掌)