In the next ten minutes, we will immerse ourselves in an amazing and beautiful marine world that's very often overlooked. I'd like to take you on a journey into the sea, looking at it from the perspective of its smallest inhabitants: the microbes. My goal is that after this short journey, you'll share my amazement at how deeply connected our lives are to these microscopic creatures and also perhaps my concern that these relationships are often neglected when it comes to making decisions and policies about our oceans.
在接下来的十分钟内,我们将沉浸在 神奇美丽的海洋世界中, 一个常常被忽视的世界。 我想带大家踏上一段海洋之旅, 从海洋中最小的居民的 角度来看大海: 微生物的角度。 我的目标是, 在这一短暂的旅程之后, 你们会和我一样惊讶于 我们的生命与这些海洋微生物 如此紧密相连, 或许也会和我一样担心, 在对我们的海洋制定决策和政策时, 这些关联常常被忽略。
When you look out on a clear blue ocean, you're actually gazing at a microbial soup full of vibrant life. What you see here are marine bacteria buzzing about and exploring other members of the marine food web. To emphasize how small this world really is, I've added a white line to most of my slides that shows you the thickness of a single strand of human hair -- very tiny. An average teaspoon of clean seawater has five million bacteria and 50 million viruses in it. If I were to scoop up two gallons of seawater, there would be more bacteria in those two gallons than there are people on this planet. Take just a moment and think about how many gallons might make up an ocean. Or maybe I've already made your stomach turn, as you think of all of the seawater we've each accidentally swallowed over the years. But luckily, we rarely get sick from that seawater, because most marine microbes are working for us, not against us.
当你望着澄澈碧蓝的海洋, 你看到的其实是 充满活跃生命的微生物汤。 你现在看到的是 海洋细菌正忙得四脚朝天, 探索着海洋食物网的其他成员。 为了强调它们的世界有多小, 我在大多数幻灯片上加了一条白线, 这条线代表着一根人类头发的直径, 非常小。 平均一茶匙的干净海水中 含有五百万的细菌 和五千万的病毒。 如果我舀起两加仑的海水, 其中包含的细菌数量 比地球上的人口还要多。 花点时间想想, 海洋里的海水会有多少加仑? 或许我已经让你反胃了, 因为你想到了这么多年 我们不小心喝下的 那些海水。 但幸运的是,我们很少 因为喝的这些海水生病。 因为大多数的海洋微生物 都是对我们有益的, 而不是有害的。
One of my favorite examples is that they provide half of the oxygen we breathe. In middle school, we all learn to thank the trees. And admittedly, they may be more huggable than the microbes. But it turns out that land plants only create a quarter of the oxygen we breathe. Another quarter comes from macroalgae like kelp and a full 50% from the microbes. Take a deep breath in. Thank the trees. Take another deep breath in. Thank the macroalgae. Your next two breaths -- tip your hats to the microbes.
我最喜欢的例子之一是, 我们呼吸的氧气 有一半是它们提供的。 在中学,我们都学过要感谢树木。 不可否认,树木比微生物更容易拥抱。 但事实是,陆地树木只创造了 我们呼吸的氧气的四分之一。 还有四分之一来自于海藻,像巨藻, 而有整整一半是来自微生物的。 深吸一口气, 感谢树木。 再深吸一口气, 感激海藻。 接下来吸两口气,向微生物致敬。
This picture is of a bacterium that happens to be the single most abundant photosynthesizer on our planet. It's called, "Prochlorococcus," and this is oceans' oxygen-producing powerhouse and, I might argue, one of the most amazing discoveries of recent marine microbiology. We didn't know it existed until 1988. All of human history has depended on this little microbe for the oxygen they breathe every day, no matter where or when they lived. And we've only been aware of that relationship for a mere 24 years. I find that astounding. How many more critical relationships are out there that we have yet to discover?
这张照片拍的是一种细菌, 它是我们地球上数量最庞大的 光合作用生物。 它叫“原绿球藻”, 它是海洋的制氧工厂, 我还得加一句, 它是近些年海洋微生物研究中 最惊人的发现之一。 在1988年之前,我们甚至 不知道它的存在。 整个人类历史都依赖这个小微生物, 为人类提供每天呼吸的氧气, 无论何时何地。 而我们知道这层关系 才刚刚24年。 我觉得很震惊。 还有多少重要的关系 是我们还没发现的?
I see our relationship with marine microbes as parallel in many ways to the relationship we have with microbes in our gut. We've all experienced the wrath of unhappy gut microbes at one point or another, perhaps food poisoning or tainted water. But we may be less aware of the connection we have with marine microbes and the physical discomforts we can feel when those communities change. As an extreme example: the disease cholera is caused by a bacterium that thrives in the ocean. So while most marine microbes are indeed helping us, there do remain plenty that are not. Our relationship with the ocean, much like our gut, is dependent on the right balance of microbes. The old phrase, "You are what you eat" applies to our ocean microbes as well.
我认为,我们与海洋微生物的 关系在很多方面都类似于 我们与肠道微生物的关系。 我们都曾经在某一时刻体验过 肠道微生物不开心的后果, 也许是食物中毒,或者是 喝了污染了的水。 但我们不太知道 我们与海洋微生物的关联, 以及那些生物群改变时 我们会有怎样的不适。 举个极端的例子: 造成霍乱的细菌 是在海洋中疯狂生长的。 所以,虽然大部分海洋微生物 确实对我们有帮助, 也有很多微生物并非如此。 我们与海洋的关系,很像肠道, 取决于微生物的正确平衡。 老话说,“人如其食”, 也适用于我们的海洋微生物。
To give you a sense of what an overfed ocean may look like, here are two examples of me sampling seawater. On your left, it's a clean coral reef, and on your right is a nearly dead coral reef that has a very intense fish farming operation in the waters there. You'll notice I'm only smiling in one of these two pictures, and in the other one my dive buddy had to be a whole lot closer to capture that image. So if we were to take a drop of seawater from each of these samples and put it under the microscope, this is what the bacteria and viral communities would look like. So again, clean reef on your left, fish farm reef on your right. As we all have had a feeling of discomfort from imbalanced gut microbes, a fish swimming through a part of the ocean that has been overfed in this way -- in this case, by intense aquaculture, but it could be a sewage spill or fertilizer runoff or any number of other sources -- that fish will feel the physical discomforts of the ocean microbes being out of whack. There may be less oxygen present, there may be more pathogens there, and there may be toxins produced by some of these microbes. The bottom line is that from their tiny-scale existence, these tiny microbes have a very large-scale power to control how our ocean smells, how it tastes, how it feels and how it looks.
为了让大家对 过度喂食的海洋有个概念, 请看我对海水取样的两个例子。 左边是干净的珊瑚礁, 右边是几乎死亡的珊瑚礁, 那里的水域有非常密集的渔业。 你能看到这两张照片中, 只有一张是我在笑, 另一张里,我的潜水伙伴 要离我非常近 才能拍到画面。 如果我从每个样本中取一滴海水, 放到显微镜下, 这就是细菌和病毒群的样子。 同样,左边是干净珊瑚礁, 右边是渔场珊瑚礁。 就像我们都体验过 肠道微生物不平衡的不适感觉, 当一条鱼游过海洋中 这样过度喂食的区域时—— 在这种情况下是密集水产养殖, 但也可能是污水溢洒 或肥料外流等等任何其他来源—— 那条鱼会感受到 海洋微生物系统紊乱 带来的身体不适。 可能是缺少氧气, 可能病原体更多, 也可能某些微生物产生了毒素。 至少,从它们的微小尺寸的存在, 这些小小的微生物 具有非常大的力量 去控制海洋闻起来如何, 尝起来如何, 感觉起来如何, 和看起来如何。
If you take one idea away from my talk today, let it be this: we have an incredibly important relationship with these marine microbes that have very large-scale consequences, and we're just barely beginning to understand what that relationship looks like and how it may be changing. Just as a physician will have trouble curing a disease of unknown cause, we will have similar trouble restoring ocean health without understanding the microbes better. They are the invisible engineers that control the chemistry of the ocean and therefore, what creatures can live there, whether or not it's safe for us to swim there and all of the other characteristics we sense with our eyes, noses and taste buds. And the more we pay attention to these small but very numerous members of the ocean, the more we're learning they do indeed respond to human actions, such as in this fish farm example.
如果你能从我今天的演讲中 吸收一个观念,那就应该是: 我们与这些海洋微生物的 关系极其重要, 它带来的后果也相当可观, 我们才刚刚开始理解 那是一种什么样的关系, 以及它会如何发生改变。 就像医生很难治愈不明原因的疾病, 如果不进一步了解微生物, 我们也同样很难恢复海洋的健康。 它们是控制海洋化学的隐形工程师, 也控制着哪种生物能在那生存, 我们去那儿游泳是否安全, 以及我们用眼睛、鼻子和味蕾 能感受到的所有其他特征。 我们越是关注 海洋中这些个头小但 数量庞大的成员, 我们就越明白,它们 真的会对人类的行为作出反应, 比如这个养鱼场的例子。
Now, as the past few slides about coral reefs may have suggested, I do indeed spend much of my time as a researcher thinking about human-microbe interactions, specifically on coral reefs. It turns out, we're not alone in having our own protective community of microbes. Corals, along with most other organisms on this planet, have their own protective communities as well. However, rather than keeping theirs on the inside as we do in our gut, they keep theirs on the outside, to protect them from their surroundings So what you're seeing here is a three-dimensional image of a live spot on a living coral with all of its living bacteria, that I took with some exciting technology -- a high-speed laser-scanning confocal microscope. All of the red circles are the symbiotic algae that live inside the coral tissue, turning sunlight and into sugars they both can use, and all of the little blue dots are the protective bacteria. So when I use image analysis software to highlight the outer layer of the coral in white, you can see that there are still some tiny little blue dots above that layer. And those bacteria are sitting in a mucus layer, which is also part of the coral's protective layer.
就像前几张珊瑚礁 幻灯片展示的那样, 作为研究人员,我花了大量时间 思考人类与微生物的互动, 特别是关于珊瑚礁。 结果发现, 不只是人类具有自己的 微生物保护群, 珊瑚,以及这个星球上 大多数其他有机体 也有自己的保护群。 但是,不像我们把保护群放在肠道里, 它们的保护群在体外, 保护它们免受周围环境伤害。 这里看到的是一颗活珊瑚和 它的所有活细菌的三维图像, 是我用超赞的技术拍的—— 高速激光扫描共焦显微镜。 所有红圈是共生海藻, 它们住在珊瑚组织里面, 把阳光转换成糖,与珊瑚共享, 所有的小蓝点是保护性的细菌。 当我用图像分析软件 把珊瑚的外层调亮成白色时, 你能看到还有些微小的小蓝点 在那层的上面。 那些细菌处于粘液层, 粘液层也是珊瑚的保护层的成员。
From the bigger perspective, I spend my time thinking about these relationships, because too many reefs are going from looking like the picture on your left to the picture on your right. Believe it or not, the picture on your right remains a very popular tourist snorkeling spot on the island of Maui, even though it's lost most of its coral cover over the past decade or so. Corals are getting sick all around the globe at alarming rates, and we really don't know how or why. I see the microbes on the coral reefs, both the good ones and the bad ones, trying to link their micro-scale behaviors to this big picture of: How do we help the reef that looks like the right back towards something that looks more like the left? Or: How do we stop coral disease from spreading?
从更高的层面看, 我花时间思考了这些关系, 是因为太多左图的珊瑚礁 正在变成右边的图片那样。 信不信由你, 右边的图片仍然是 热门观光浮潜景点, 位于毛伊岛上, 尽管在过去十年左右, 它已经失去了大部分珊瑚覆盖。 地球各处的珊瑚都在 以惊人的速度感染病菌, 而我们完全不知道 它们是怎样生病的,为什么生病。 我看到了珊瑚礁上的微生物, 好的,以及坏的, 尝试把他们的微观行为 与整个现状联系起来: 我们如何帮助右图的珊瑚礁 回到更像左图的状态? 或者:我们如何阻止珊瑚疾病蔓延?
Just over a year ago, no one had ever seen a view like this. This video is a prime example of making the invisible visible. We're looking at a side view of the same coral as before, where the protective layer meets the seawater; so, seawater on your right, coral on your left. It's incredibly exciting to me that we can finally see these bacteria in real life, in real time, at their micro scale, and learn how they interact with the world around them. Ecologists all over the world are used to being able to grab a pair of binoculars and go out and observe what their study creatures do each day. But microbial ecologists have desperately needed breakthroughs in technology, such as with this fast confocal, to make similar observations. I work to find ways that cutting-edge technologies like this can help make the unseen seeable, to see marine bacteria in action and learn how they behave. In doing so, we can learn how they respond to our actions and our behaviors and the environment around them in ways that will help us better manage our oceans.
就在一年前, 还没有人见过这幅景象。 这个视频是把不可见 变成可见的最佳示例。 我们看到的是先前珊瑚的侧面, 保护层与海水衔接的地方; 那么,海水在右边 珊瑚在左边。 这非常令我兴奋, 我们终于可以看着这些细菌 活生生地,实时地, 以它们的微观尺度看, 并了解它们如何与周围世界互动。 世界各地的生态学家都习惯了 能拿起一副望远镜, 出去观察他们的研究对象 每天在做什么。 但微生物生态学家一直急切盼望 技术的突破, 例如这种快速共焦显微镜, 来做同样的观察。 我的工作是寻找方法, 让这样的尖端科技 能帮助不可见变成可见, 能看见行动中的海洋微生物, 了解它们如何行动。 如此一来,我们就能 知道它们如何响应 我们的动作和行为 以及它们周围环境, 通过各种方式帮助我们 更好地管理海洋。
Another example of how I'm doing this is by using microfluidics to study specifically how pathogens behave in the ocean. The basic idea behind microfluidics is that you can use nanofabrication techniques to recreate or mimic the conditions bacteria experience at their own tiny scale in the ocean. What you see here is a microfluidic chamber on a microscope slide with a microscope lens underneath it. We use high-speed video microscopy to record bacteria behavior. The colored tubing is where bacteria and seawater flow in and out of the device. And it's using a device like this that I recently discovered that a known coral pathogen actually has the ability to sniff around the seawater and hunt for corals. Here's the video of in action. You'll see all of the pathogens which are the tiny green dots on the left start detecting the coral mucus I put on the right side of the channel, and they swim quickly over in that direction and stay there. Up until now, it was thought that a pathogen would need some good luck to find its host in the ocean. But simply by watching and observing, we can learn that these bacteria are very well adapted to seeking out their victims.
再举个例子说明我怎么做的, 我使用微流控, 具体研究病原体 在海洋中的行为模式。 微流控背后的基本原理是 用纳米制造技术 重现或模拟细菌 在海洋中以它们自身的 微小尺寸所经历的状况。 这里看到的是显微镜切片 上的微流控室, 下面有显微镜的镜头。 我们用高速影像显微镜 记录细菌的行为。 有色管道是细菌和海水 流入和流出这个设备。 最近我用这样的设备发现了 一种已知的珊瑚病原体 真的有能力 在海水中闻来闻去,寻找珊瑚。 这里是正在行动的视频。 你能看到左边的小绿点 是所有病原体, 它们开始探测我放在 通道右边的珊瑚粘液, 朝那个方向快速游过去并待在那儿。 直到现在,人们一直以为 病原体需要运气才能 在海洋中找到宿主。 但仅仅靠观察和追踪,我们知道了 这些细菌非常善于寻找受害目标。
These micro-channels are bringing us closer than ever before to understanding how bacteria navigate that big blue ocean. It turns out that this pathogen can even detect the coral mucus when I dilute it 20,000 fold. So these bacteria are very well adapted to hunting down these corals. I'm currently testing different environmental conditions to see what scenarios make this pathogen more or less capable of hunting corals. By learning more about what triggers the hunt, we should be able to find ways to help slow down or prevent this disease. There's also some evidence that the healthy microbes on the coral can fight off the pathogen if the conditions are right.
这些微通道让我们比任何时候 都更理解细菌如何 在蓝色大海中航行。 最后发现,这种病原体 甚至可以检测到 被我稀释了2万倍的珊瑚粘液。 所以这些细菌非常善于 猎取这些珊瑚。 目前我在测试不同的环境条件, 看看什么情况会让这些病原体 猎取珊瑚的能力 增强或减弱。 通过对触发捕猎机制的深入了解, 我们应该能够找到方法 来帮助减缓或者防止这种疾病。 还有些证据显示, 珊瑚上的健康微生物 可以战胜病原体, 只要条件适当。
So, one final image of a coral and its healthy bacteria. I hope you've enjoyed this short journey into our microbial oceans and that the next time you look out at the sea, you'll take in a deep breath of fresh ocean air and wonder: What else are all of the unseen microbes doing to keep us and our oceans healthy?
最后是珊瑚及其健康细菌的图像。 我希望你们都喜欢 这趟了解微生物海洋的短暂旅程, 下次你望着大海, 会深深吸一口新鲜的 海洋空气,心里想着: 所有哪些看不见的微生物 还在做着别的什么能让 人类和我们的海洋 维持健康的事情吗?
Thank you.
谢谢。