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.
一切事物均被肉眼不可见的生态系统覆盖 其组成为微小的 生命形式:细菌、病毒和霉菌 我们的书桌、计算机、笔、建筑 全是微生物的栖息地 当我们设计这些物品时,不妨思考一下 关于这些隐形世界的设计 同时思考它们如何与 我们个人的生态系统互动
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.
我们的身体是亿万个微生物的住所 这些生物定义了我们 肠道中的微生物可影响你的体重和心情 皮肤上的微生物有助于提升你的免疫系统 口中的微生物可使你口气清新 或正好相反 最重要的是,我们个人的生态系统 与我们接触的一切生态系统间的交互作用 因此,例如,当你触摸一支笔时 即发生微生物交换
If we can design the invisible ecosystems in our surroundings, this opens a path to influencing our health in unprecedented ways.
如果我们能设计周遭的隐形生态系统 将开启一条途径 以前所未有的方式影响我们的健康
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.
经常有人问我 “设计微生物生态系统是否确实可行?” 我认为答案是肯定的 我认为我们此刻正在进行这件事 但处于不自觉状态 我想与大家分享一些信息 来自我对建筑的研究之一 显示我们如何藉由有意识 及无意识的设计 影响这些肉眼不可见的世界
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."
这是奥勒冈大学Lillis商学综合大楼 我与一个由 建筑师和生物学家组成的团队合作 在这栋建筑中的300多个房间取样 我们希望得到 类似建筑物化石纪录的数据 为了达成这个目标,我们搜集灰尘样本 我们从灰尘中分离出细菌细胞 将它们打破,比较其中的基因序列 这意味着我的团队成员 在这个计划中进行了许多吸尘工作 照片中的人是Tim 就在拍摄这张照片的当下,他提醒我- 他说,“Jessica,在上个研究团队中” “我的工作是 在哥斯达黎加雨林进行田野调查” “对我来说 目前的处境简直是天壤之别”
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.
因此我准备向大家展示 我们在办公室中的第一项发现 我们将藉由某种视觉工具浏览这些数据 这是我和Autodesk (3D软件设计公司)长期合作的成果 浏览数据的方法是 先观察圆圈外围 你将看见许多不同的菌落 如果观察这个粉红叶片状图形 它将显示每种菌落的相对数量 因此在12点钟方向 你看见办公室存在许多 甲型变形菌,在1点钟方向 你看见杆菌数量十分稀少
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.
我们看看建筑中不同类型空间的情况 如果观察休息室 它们的生态系统均十分相似 如果观察教室 它们亦拥有相似的生态系统 但如果纵观这些空间类型 可看出它们彼此间 截然不同 我喜欢将浴室想成热带雨林 我对Tim说,“如果你能看见微生物” “感觉就像身处哥斯达黎加,多少吧” 我也喜欢将办公室想成温带草原
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.
这个观点对设计师来说十分有用 因为你可套用生态学原则 生态学中一个十分重要的原则就是分布 即有机体的传播方式 我们知道微生物藉由人类 和空气传播 因此我们希望在这栋建筑中做的第一件事 就是观察空气系统 机械工程师设计空调系统 确保人们感到舒适 空气流通、气温恰到好处 他们利用物理和化学原理进行这项工作 但也可利用生物学 如果观察这栋建筑中 某个空调系统里的微生物 将发现其中生态均十分相似 如果将它与 不同空调系统中的微生物比较 将发现两者截然不同 这建筑中的房间就像孤立群岛中的岛屿 这意味着机械工程师 如同生态工程师,有能力 以他们想要的方式 建构这栋建筑中的生物群落
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.
另一个传播微生物的方式是藉由人类 设计师通常将房间设计在一处 促进人们的交流 或分享彼此的看法,就像实验室和办公室 考虑微生物随着人们四处传播 你或许预期相距不远的房间 存在十分相似的生物群落 这正是我们发现的结果 如果观察彼此相邻的教室 它们拥有十分相似的生态系统 但如果观察 与其相距甚远的办公室 其中的生态系统则大不相同 当我发现促使 生物地理学分布的力量之后 意识到或许可藉此 解决一些充满挑战的问题 例如医院内感染 我认为其中部分原因必定在于 建筑物的生态问题
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.
好,我将告诉大家 更多关于这栋建筑的故事 我与Charlie Brown合作 他是一名建筑师 Charlie十分关切全球气候变化 毕生致力于永续建筑设计 当他遇上我之后,意识到自己有机会 以量化方式进行研究 了解他的设计选择如何影响 这栋建筑的生态和生物系统 他十分兴奋,因为 这为他的工作增添一个新层面 他从仅思考能源问题 转为同时将人类健康纳入考虑 他协助设计了一些 这栋建筑的空调系统及通风方式
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.
因此我首先要展示的是 我们从户外取样的空气 图中显示的是户外空气中的细菌群落 以及它们如何随时间改变 接下来我将向大家展示 我们以教室进行实验的情形 我们于夜间将它关闭 因此教室无法通风 许多建筑采用这种方式 或许你的工作地点正是如此 公司藉由这种方式节省电费 我们发现这些房间的空气几乎静止不动 直到我们周六再次将它打开 当你走进那些房间时 气味十分难闻 我们的数据显示 这和空气中残留的菌落有关 来自前一天于此活动的人们 相较于 采用被动式永续策略设计的房间 户外空气可由百叶窗进入 这些房间的空气成分与户外空气极为相似 目赌这个结果时,Charlie非常兴奋 他感到自己藉由设计 做了一个好选择 因为这不仅符合能源效率需求 也能带走残留在建筑中的微生物
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.
我刚刚展示的是关于建筑的例子 但这和任何设计都息息相关 想象我们希望设计的微生物种类 在飞机上 或手机上
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?
我不久前发现一种新型微生物 名为BLIS,研究证明 它不但能抵御病原体 也能使你口气清新 如果我们手机上都有BLIS,不是很棒吗?
A conscious approach to design, I'm calling it bioinformed design, and I think it's possible.
根据意识进行的设计 我称之为生物信息设计 (bioinformed design) 我认为这是可行的
Thank you.
谢谢
(Applause)
(掌声)