Recently I visited Beloit, Wisconsin. And I was there to honor a great 20th century explorer, Roy Chapman Andrews. During his time at the American Museum of Natural History, Andrews led a range of expeditions to uncharted regions, like here in the Gobi Desert. He was quite a figure. He was later, it's said, the basis of the Indiana Jones character.
Nedavno sam posjetio Beloit, u Wisconsinu. Bio sam ondje kako bih odao čast jednom velikom istraživaču 20. stoljeća, Royu Chapmanu Andrewsu. Kada je radio za Američki prirodoslovni muzej, Andrews je vodio niz ekspedicija u regije koje još nisu bile ucrtane u karte, poput pustinje Gobi. Bio je dosta važna ličnost. Kasnije je, navodno, bio nadahnuće za lik Indiane Jonesa.
And when I was in Beloit, Wisconsin, I gave a public lecture to a group of middle school students. And I'm here to tell you, if there's anything more intimidating than talking here at TED, it'll be trying to hold the attention of a group of a thousand 12-year-olds for a 45-minute lecture. Don't try that one.
Kada sam bio u Beloitu, u Wisconsinu, održao sam javno predavanje grupi srednjoškolaca. A ovdje sam da bih vam rekao, ako postoji išta što je više zastrašujuće od držanja govora na TED-u, to je pokušavanje zadržavanja pažnje grupe od tisuću 12-ogodišnjaka na predavanju od 45 minuta. Nemojte to pokušavati.
At the end of the lecture they asked a number of questions, but there was one that's really stuck with me since then. There was a young girl who stood up, and she asked the question: "Where should we explore?"
Na kraju predavanja pitali su brojna pitanja, ali jedno od njih mi se zbilja urezalo u pamćenje. Jedna mlada djevojka je ustala, i postavila je pitanje: "Što bismo trebali istraživati?"
I think there's a sense that many of us have that the great age of exploration on Earth is over, that for the next generation they're going to have to go to outer space or the deepest oceans in order to find something significant to explore. But is that really the case? Is there really nowhere significant for us to explore left here on Earth?
Mislim da mnogi od nas misle da je veliko doba istraživanja Zemlje gotovo, da će sljedeće generacije morati otići u svemir ili najdublje oceane kako bi pronašli nešto značajno za istraživanje. Ali je li to uistinu tako? Nije li zbilja ništa značajno što bismo mi istražili preostalo ovdje na Zemlji?
It sort of made me think back to one of my favorite explorers in the history of biology. This is an explorer of the unseen world, Martinus Beijerinck. So Beijerinck set out to discover the cause of tobacco mosaic disease. What he did is he took the infected juice from tobacco plants and he would filter it through smaller and smaller filters. And he reached the point where he felt that there must be something out there that was smaller than the smallest forms of life that were ever known -- bacteria, at the time. He came up with a name for his mystery agent. He called it the virus -- Latin for "poison." And in uncovering viruses, Beijerinck really opened this entirely new world for us.
To me natjeralo da se prisjetim jednog od mojih omiljenih istraživača povijesti biologije. To je istraživač nevidljivog svijeta, Martinus Beijerinck. Dakle, Beijerinck je krenuo otkriti uzrok bolesti mozaika duhana. Uzeo je zaraženi sok iz biljaka duhana i filtrirao ga kroz sve manje i manje filtere. I došao je do točke gdje je pomislio da mora postojati nešto što je manje od najmanjih oblika života za koje se ikad znalo -- bakterija, u to vrijeme. Izmislio je ime za tog tajnovitog uzročnika. Nazvao ga je virusom -- latinski za "otrov". I otkrivanjem virusa, Beijerinck je otvorio vrata ovog nama potpuno novog svijeta.
We now know that viruses make up the majority of the genetic information on our planet, more than the genetic information of all other forms of life combined. And obviously there's been tremendous practical applications associated with this world -- things like the eradication of smallpox, the advent of a vaccine against cervical cancer, which we now know is mostly caused by human papillomavirus.
Sada znamo da virusi sačinjavaju većinu genetskih informacija na našem planetu, više od genetskih informacija svih drugih oblika života ukupno. I očito postoje važne praktične primjene povezane s ovim svijetom -- stvari poput istrebljenja malih boginja, pojava cjepiva protiv raka grlića maternice, za koji znamo da ga najčešće prouzročuje humani papiloma virus.
And Beijerinck's discovery, this was not something that occurred 500 years ago. It was a little over 100 years ago that Beijerinck discovered viruses. So basically we had automobiles, but we were unaware of the forms of life that make up most of the genetic information on our planet.
A Beijerinckovo otkriće, to nije nešto što se dogodilo prije 500 godina. Tek prije nešto više od stotinu godinu Beijerinck je otkrio viruse. Dakle, u osnovi smo imali automobile, ali nismo bili svjesni oblika života koji čine većinu genetskih informacija na našem planetu.
We now have these amazing tools to allow us to explore the unseen world -- things like deep sequencing, which allow us to do much more than just skim the surface and look at individual genomes from a particular species, but to look at entire metagenomes, the communities of teeming microorganisms in, on and around us and to document all of the genetic information in these species. We can apply these techniques to things from soil to skin and everything in between.
Sada imamo te čudesne alate koji nam dopuštaju da istražimo taj nevidljivi svijet -- stvari poput dubokog sekvenciranja koje nam dopušta da učinimo mnogo više od pregledavanja površine i gledanja pojedinačnih genoma određenih vrsta, već da gledamo cijele metagenome, zajednice mnogobrojnih mikroorganizama u nama, na nama i oko nas i da dokumentiramo sve genetske informacije u tim vrstama. Možemo primijeniti te tehnike na sve od zemlje do kože i sve između toga.
In my organization we now do this on a regular basis to identify the causes of outbreaks that are unclear exactly what causes them.
U mojoj organizaciji redovito identificiramo uzroke izbijanja bolesti za koje je nejasno što ih točno uzrokuje.
And just to give you a sense of how this works, imagine that we took a nasal swab from every single one of you. And this is something we commonly do to look for respiratory viruses like influenza. The first thing we would see is a tremendous amount of genetic information. And if we started looking into that genetic information, we'd see a number of usual suspects out there -- of course, a lot of human genetic information, but also bacterial and viral information, mostly from things that are completely harmless within your nose. But we'd also see something very, very surprising. As we started to look at this information, we would see that about 20 percent of the genetic information in your nose doesn't match anything that we've ever seen before -- no plant, animal, fungus, virus or bacteria. Basically we have no clue what this is.
I samo da biste shvatili kako to funkcionira, zamislite da smo uzeli nazalni bris svakome od vas. A to je nešto što obično radimo da bismo našli viruse dišnog sustava kao što je gripa. Prva stvar koju bismo vidjeli je ogromna količina genetskih informacija. A kada bismo počeli pregledavati te genetske informacije, vidjeli bismo niz uobičajenih osumnjičenika ondje -- naravno, mnogo ljudskih genetskih informacija, ali i bakterijske i virusne informacije, uglavnom iz potpuno bezopasnih stvari koje su unutar vašeg nosa. Ali vidjeli bismo i nešto jako, jako iznenađujuće. Kada bismo počeli proučavati te informacije, vidjeli bismo da oko 20% genetskih informacija u vašem nosu ne odgovara ničemu što smo ikad prije vidjeli -- nijednoj biljci, gljivi, virusu ili bakteriji. U biti nemamo pojma što je to.
And for the small group of us who actually study this kind of data, a few of us have actually begun to call this information biological dark matter. We know it's not anything that we've seen before; it's sort of the equivalent of an uncharted continent right within our own genetic information. And there's a lot of it. If you think 20 percent of genetic information in your nose is a lot of biological dark matter, if we looked at your gut, up to 40 or 50 percent of that information is biological dark matter. And even in the relatively sterile blood, around one to two percent of this information is dark matter -- can't be classified, can't be typed or matched with anything we've seen before.
A mala grupa nas koji zapravo proučavamo te vrste podataka, neki od nas su zapravo počeli zvati te informacije biološkom tamnom tvari. Znamo da ništa takvo nismo prije vidjeli; to je u neku ruku ekvivalent kontinentu koji nije ucrtan u kartu, koji se nalazi upravo među našim genetskim informacijama. A ima ih mnogo. Ako mislite da je 20% genetskog materijala u vašem nosu mnogo biološke tamne tvari, kada bismo pogledali u vaša crijeva, do 40 ili 50% tih informacija je biološka tamna tvar. Čak i u relativno sterilnoj krvi, oko 1 do 2% informacija je tamna tvar -- ne može je se klasificirati, odrediti vrsta ili povezati s bilo čim što smo ikada vidjeli.
At first we thought that perhaps this was artifact. These deep sequencing tools are relatively new. But as they become more and more accurate, we've determined that this information is a form of life, or at least some of it is a form of life. And while the hypotheses for explaining the existence of biological dark matter are really only in their infancy, there's a very, very exciting possibility that exists: that buried in this life, in this genetic information, are signatures of as of yet unidentified life. That as we explore these strings of A's, T's, C's and G's, we may uncover a completely new class of life that, like Beijerinck, will fundamentally change the way that we think about the nature of biology. That perhaps will allow us to identify the cause of a cancer that afflicts us or identify the source of an outbreak that we aren't familiar with or perhaps create a new tool in molecular biology.
Najprije smo mislili da je to možda artefakt. Ti alati dubokog sekvenciranja su relativno novi. Ali kako postaju sve točniji, utvrdili smo da su te informacije oblik života, ili je barem dio njih oblik života. I dok su hipoteze za objašnjenje postojanja biološke tamne tvari zapravo tek u povojima, postoji jedna vrlo, vrlo zanimljiva mogućnost: zakopani u ovom životu, u tim genetskim informacijama, su znakovi još neidentificiranog života. Ako istražimo ove lance A, T, C i G aminokiselina, mogli bismo otkriti potpuno novu vrstu života koja će, poput Beijerincka, iz temelja promijeniti način na koji razmišljamo o prirodi biologije. Koja će nam možda omogućiti prepoznavanje uzroka raka koji nas pogađa ili prepoznavanje izvora izbijanja neke bolesti koja nam je nepoznata ili možda stvaranje novog alata u molekularnoj biologiji.
I'm pleased to announce that, along with colleagues at Stanford and Caltech and UCSF, we're currently starting an initiative to explore biological dark matter for the existence of new forms of life.
Drago mi je da vam mogu objaviti kako, zajedno s kolegama sa Stanforda i Caltecha i UCSF-a, trenutno započinjemo inicijativu za istraživanje biološke tamne tvari za postojanjem novih oblika života.
A little over a hundred years ago, people were unaware of viruses, the forms of life that make up most of the genetic information on our planet. A hundred years from now, people may marvel that we were perhaps completely unaware of a new class of life that literally was right under our noses.
Prije nešto više od sto godina, ljudi nisu bili svjesni virusa, oblika života koji sačinjavaju većinu genetskih informacija na našem planetu. Za sto godina, ljudi bi se mogli čuditi tome što možda u potpunosti nismo bili svjesni nove vrste života koja nam je doslovno bila pod nosom.
It's true, we may have charted all the continents on the planet and we may have discovered all the mammals that are out there, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing left to explore on Earth. Beijerinck and his kind provide an important lesson for the next generation of explorers -- people like that young girl from Beloit, Wisconsin. And I think if we phrase that lesson, it's something like this: Don't assume that what we currently think is out there is the full story. Go after the dark matter in whatever field you choose to explore. There are unknowns all around us and they're just waiting to be discovered.
Istina je, možda smo ucrtali u karte sve kontinente na planetu i možda smo otkrili sve sisavce koji postoje, no to ne znači da nije preostalo ništa za istraživanje na Zemlji. Beijerinck i njemu slični daju važnu lekciju za sljedeću generaciju istraživača -- ljudi poput mlade djevojke iz Beloita u Wisconsinu. Kada bismo htjeli prenijeti tu lekciju u rečenicu, zvučala bi ovako nekako: Nemojte pretpostavljati da je ono što mislimo da postoji cijela priča. Idite za tamnom tvari u bilo kojem polju koje odlučite istraživati. Nepoznanice su svuda oko nas i samo čekaju da ih se otkrije.
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)