Everything is covered in invisible ecosystems made of tiny lifeforms: bacteria, viruses and fungi. Our desks, our computers, our pencils, our buildings all harbor resident microbial landscapes. As we design these things, we could be thinking about designing these invisible worlds, and also thinking about how they interact with our personal ecosystems.
Sve je pokriveno nevidljivim ekosistemima sačinjenim od sićušnih oblika života: bakterija, virusa i gljivica. Naši stolovi, kompjuteri, olovke, zgrade svi imaju lokalne mikrobijalne pejzaže. Dok dizajniramo ove stvari, možemo razmišljati o dizajniranju ovih nevidljivih svetova i o tome kako uzajamno deluju sa našim ličnim ekosistemima.
Our bodies are home to trillions of microbes, and these creatures define who we are. The microbes in your gut can influence your weight and your moods. The microbes on your skin can help boost your immune system. The microbes in your mouth can freshen your breath, or not, and the key thing is that our personal ecosystems interact with ecosystems on everything we touch. So, for example, when you touch a pencil, microbial exchange happens.
Naša tela su dom bilionima mikroba i ova stvorenja određuju ko smo. Mikrobi u vašim crevima mogu da utiču na vašu težinu i raspoloženje. Mikrobi na vašoj koži mogu da pomognu u poboljšanju vašeg imunog sistema. Mikrobi u vašim ustima mogu da vam osveže dah, ili ne, i ključno je to da naši lični ekosistemi međusobno deluju sa ekosistemima svega što dodirnemo. Tako kada na primer dodirnete olovku, desi se razmena mikroba.
If we can design the invisible ecosystems in our surroundings, this opens a path to influencing our health in unprecedented ways.
Ako možemo da dizajniramo nevidljive ekosisteme naše okoline ovo otvara put uticaju na naše zdravlje na jedinstven način.
I get asked all of the time from people, "Is it possible to really design microbial ecosystems?" And I believe the answer is yes. I think we're doing it right now, but we're doing it unconsciously. I'm going to share data with you from one aspect of my research focused on architecture that demonstrates how, through both conscious and unconscious design, we're impacting these invisible worlds.
Ljudi me stalno pitaju: "Da li je zaista moguće dizajnirati mikrobne ekosisteme?" Verujem da jeste. Mislim da to radimo sada, ali da je to nesvesno. Podeliću s vama podatke iz jednog aspekta mog istraživanja koje je usmereno na arhitekturu i koji pokazuju kako kroz svestan i nesvestan dizajn, utičemo na ove nevidljive svetove.
This is the Lillis Business Complex at the University of Oregon, and I worked with a team of architects and biologists to sample over 300 rooms in this building. We wanted to get something like a fossil record of the building, and to do this, we sampled dust. From the dust, we pulled out bacterial cells, broke them open, and compared their gene sequences. This means that people in my group were doing a lot of vacuuming during this project. This is a picture of Tim, who, right when I snapped this picture, reminded me, he said, "Jessica, the last lab group I worked in I was doing fieldwork in the Costa Rican rainforest, and things have changed dramatically for me."
Ovo je poslovni kompleks Lilis na Univerzitetu Oregona i radila sam s timom arhitekata i biologa kako bi uzeli uzorke iz 300 prostorija u ovoj zgradi. Hteli smo da dobijemo nešto poput fosilnog zapisa zgrade i kako bismo ovo dobili, uzimali smo uzorke prašine. Iz prašine smo uzeli ćelije bakterija, rasporili ih i uporedili sekvence gena. Ovo znači da su ljudi iz moje grupe tokom ovog projekta puno usisavali. Ovo na slici je Tim, koji me je pre ove slike podsetio i rekao: "Džesika, u poslednjoj laboratorijskoj grupi u kojoj sam radio bio sam na terenskom radu u kišnim šumama Kostarike i stvari su se za mene ozbiljno promenile."
So I'm going to show you now first what we found in the offices, and we're going to look at the data through a visualization tool that I've been working on in partnership with Autodesk. The way that you look at this data is, first, look around the outside of the circle. You'll see broad bacterial groups, and if you look at the shape of this pink lobe, it tells you something about the relative abundance of each group. So at 12 o'clock, you'll see that offices have a lot of alphaproteobacteria, and at one o'clock you'll see that bacilli are relatively rare.
Prvo ću vam pokazati šta smo našli u kancelarijama i pogledaćemo podatke kroz alat za vizualizaciju na kojem radim u saradnji sa Autodeskom. Na ove podatke gledate ovako - prvo gledate spoljašnjost kruga. Vidite široke grupe bakterija i ako pogledate oblik ove roze školjke, on vam govori nešto o relativnom izobilju svake grupe. Na 12 sati vidite da kancelarije imaju dosta alfa-proteobakterija, a na 1 sat vidite da ima relativno malo bacila.
Let's take a look at what's going on in different space types in this building. If you look inside the restrooms, they all have really similar ecosystems, and if you were to look inside the classrooms, those also have similar ecosystems. But if you look across these space types, you can see that they're fundamentally different from one another. I like to think of bathrooms like a tropical rainforest. I told Tim, "If you could just see the microbes, it's kind of like being in Costa Rica. Kind of." And I also like to think of offices as being a temperate grassland.
Hajde da pogledamo šta se dešava u različitim tipovima prostora u ovoj zgradi. Ako pogledate u toalete, svi imaju slične ekosisteme, a ako pogledate unutar učionica i one imaju lične ekosisteme. Ali ako pogledate kroz te tipove prostora, videćete da se bitno razlikuju jedan od drugog. O kupatilima razmišljam kao o tropskim kišnim šumama. Rekla sam Timu: "Ako gledaš samo mikrobe, to je otprilike kao da si u Kostariki. Kao." O kancelarijama razmišljam kao o mirnim pašnjacima.
This perspective is a really powerful one for designers, because you can bring on principles of ecology, and a really important principle of ecology is dispersal, the way organisms move around. We know that microbes are dispersed around by people and by air. So the very first thing we wanted to do in this building was look at the air system. Mechanical engineers design air handling units to make sure that people are comfortable, that the air flow and temperature is just right. They do this using principles of physics and chemistry, but they could also be using biology. If you look at the microbes in one of the air handling units in this building, you'll see that they're all very similar to one another. And if you compare this to the microbes in a different air handling unit, you'll see that they're fundamentally different. The rooms in this building are like islands in an archipelago, and what that means is that mechanical engineers are like eco-engineers, and they have the ability to structure biomes in this building the way that they want to.
Ovo je za dizajnere moćna perspektiva jer možete primeniti principe ekologije, a veoma važan princip ekologije je osipanje, način na koji se organizmi kreću. Znamo da mikrobe rasejavaju ljudi i vazduh. Prva stvar koju smo hteli da uradimo u ovoj zgradi je da pogledamo ventilaciju. Mašinski inženjeri smišljaju jedinice za vazduh kako bi ljudima bilo prijatno, kako bi vazduh cirkulisao i temperatura bila savršena. Ovo rade pomoću principa fizike i hemije, ali takođe mogu koristiti biologiju. Ako pogledate mikrobe u jednoj od jedinica za vazduh u ovoj zgradi, videćete da su svi slični jedni drugima. Ako ovo uporedite sa mikrobima iz druge jedinice za vazduh, videćete da su potpuno različiti. Prostorije u ovoj zgradi su poput ostrva u arhipelagu, a to znači da su mehanički inženjeri poput eko-inženjera i imaju mogućnost da po želji prave strukture bioma u ovoj zgradi.
Another facet of how microbes get around is by people, and designers often cluster rooms together to facilitate interactions among people, or the sharing of ideas, like in labs and in offices. Given that microbes travel around with people, you might expect to see rooms that are close together have really similar biomes. And that is exactly what we found. If you look at classrooms right adjacent to one another, they have very similar ecosystems, but if you go to an office that is a farther walking distance away, the ecosystem is fundamentally different. And when I see the power that dispersal has on these biogeographic patterns, it makes me think that it's possible to tackle really challenging problems, like hospital-acquired infections. I believe this has got to be, in part, a building ecology problem.
Drugi način na koji se mikrobi kreću je preko ljudi i dizajneri često zbiju prostorije kako bi olašali kontakt među ljudima ili deljenje ideja, kao u laboratorijama i kancelarijama. S obzirom da mikrobi putuju okolo s ljudima, možete očekivati da susedne prostorije imaju jako slične biome. Upravo to smo i pronašli. Ako pogledate susedne učionice, imaju veoma slične ekosisteme, ali ako odete u kancelariju do koje se mora duže hodati, ekosistem je potpuno drugačiji. Kada vidim moć osipanja na ove biogeografske šablone, pomislim da je moguće uhvatiti se u koštac sa stvarno izazovnim problemima, poput infekcija koje se dobijaju u bolnici. Mislim da ovo mora da bude, delimično problem ekologije zgrade.
All right, I'm going to tell you one more story about this building. I am collaborating with Charlie Brown. He's an architect, and Charlie is deeply concerned about global climate change. He's dedicated his life to sustainable design. When he met me and realized that it was possible for him to study in a quantitative way how his design choices impacted the ecology and biology of this building, he got really excited, because it added a new dimension to what he did. He went from thinking just about energy to also starting to think about human health. He helped design some of the air handling systems in this building and the way it was ventilated.
Ispričaću vam još nešto u vezi s ovom zgradom. Sarađujem s Čarlijem Braunom. On je arhitekta, i Čarli je veoma zabrinut zbog globalne promene klime. Posvetio je život održivom dizajnu. Kada me je upoznao i shvatio da je moguće da na kvantitativan način proučava kako njegove odluke u dizajnu utiču na ekologiju i biologiju ove zgrade, veoma se uzbudio jer je to dodalo novu dimenziju njegovom poslu. Od razmišljanja isključivo o energiji prešao je na razmišljanje o zdravlju ljudi. Pomogao je sa dizajnom sistema za vazduh u ovoj zgradi i sa načinom ventilacije.
So what I'm first going to show you is air that we sampled outside of the building. What you're looking at is a signature of bacterial communities in the outdoor air, and how they vary over time. Next I'm going to show you what happened when we experimentally manipulated classrooms. We blocked them off at night so that they got no ventilation. A lot of buildings are operated this way, probably where you work, and companies do this to save money on their energy bill. What we found is that these rooms remained relatively stagnant until Saturday, when we opened the vents up again. When you walked into those rooms, they smelled really bad, and our data suggests that it had something to do with leaving behind the airborne bacterial soup from people the day before. Contrast this to rooms that were designed using a sustainable passive design strategy where air came in from the outside through louvers. In these rooms, the air tracked the outdoor air relatively well, and when Charlie saw this, he got really excited. He felt like he had made a good choice with the design process because it was both energy efficient and it washed away the building's resident microbial landscape.
Prvo ću vam pokazati uzorke vazduha izvan zgrade. Trenutno gledate u potpis bakterijskih zajednica u spoljašnjem vazduhu i kako se vremenom menjaju. Onda ću vam pokazati šta se desilo kada smo u eksperimentu manipulisali učionicama. Noću smo ih blokirali kako ne bi bilo ventilacije. Puno zgrada funkcioniše na ovaj način, verovatno na vašem poslu, i kompanije ovako štede na računima. Otkrili smo da su prostorije bile u relativnoj stagnaciji, do subote, kada smo ponovo uključili ventilaciju. Kada biste ušli u ove prostorije, jako su zaudarale i podaci sugerišu da to ima veze sa ostavljanjem vazdušne bakterijske supe ljudi od prethodnog dana. Ovo uporedite sa prostorijama koje su dizajnirane održivom strategijom pasivnog dizajna gde vazduh dolazi spolja kroz otvore. U ovim prostorijama, vazduh je relativno dobro pratio spoljašnji, i kada je Čarli ovo video, zaista se uzbudio. Imao je osećaj da je dobro odabrao u procesu dizajna jer je bio energetski efikasan i sprao je lokalni mikrobski pejzaž.
The examples that I just gave you are about architecture, but they're relevant to the design of anything. Imagine designing with the kinds of microbes that we want in a plane or on a phone.
Primeri koje sam vam dala vezani su za arhitekturu, ali bitni su za bilo koju vrstu dizajna. Zamislite dizajn sa mikrobima koje mi želimo u avionu ili na telefonu.
There's a new microbe, I just discovered it. It's called BLIS, and it's been shown to both ward off pathogens and give you good breath. Wouldn't it be awesome if we all had BLIS on our phones?
Postoji novi mikrob koji sam tek otkrila. Zove se BLIS, i dokazano je da odbija patogene i pruža svež dah. Zar ne bi bilo sjajno da svi imamo BLIS na telefonu?
A conscious approach to design, I'm calling it bioinformed design, and I think it's possible.
Svestan pristup dizajnu, koji ja nazivam bioinformisanim dizajnom, i mislim da je to moguće.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)