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.
Kohet e fundit vizitova Beloit, Wisconsin. Vajta atje per te nderuar eksploratorin e shekullit te 20te Roy Chapman Andrews. Gjate asaj kohe ne Museun Amerikan te Historise se Natyres Andrews udhehoqi nje sere ekspeditash ne regjione te panjohura si ketu ne Shkretetiren e Gobit. Ishte nje personalitet i shquar. Thuhet se ka frymezuar me vone personazhin e Indiana Jones.
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.
Dhe, kur isha ne Beloit, Winsconsin, dhashe nje leksion per nje grup nxenesish te shkolles tetevjecare dhe jam ketu per t'ju treguar, nese ka dicka me te frikshme se te flasesh ketu ne TED, do te ishte te perpiqesh te kesh vemendjen e nje grupi 12 vjecaresh per 45 minuta leksion. Mos e provoni.
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?"
Ne fund te leksionit ata bene nje numer pyetjesh, por njera me ka mbetur ne mendje qe atehere. Ishte nje vajze e re qe u ngrit ne kembe, the beri pyetjen: "Ku duhet te eksplorojme?"
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?
Mendoj qe te gjithe ne ndjejme se epoka e madhe e eksplorimit mbi Toke ka marre fund se gjenerata tjeter duhet te shkoje ne hapsire ose ne thellesi the oqeaneve per te bere eksplorime te rendesishme. Por a eshte keshtu me te vertete? A eshte e vertete qe nuk na ka mbetur asgje per te eksploruar ketu mbi Toke?
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.
Me beri qe te rikthehesha te nje nga eksploratoret e mi me te preferuar ne historine e biologjise. Ky eshte nje eksplorues i botes se padukshme, Martinus Beijerinck. Beijernick ka filluar me zbulimin e shkakut te virusit mozaik te duhanit. Ai mori lengun e infektuar nga bimet e duhanit dhe e filtroi nepermjet filtrave gjithnje e me te imta. Dhe arriti ne piken ku ndjeu se duhet te jete dicka aty qe eshte me e vogel se format me te vogla te jetes qe kishim njohur deri tani-- bakteri, ne ate kohe. Ai gjeti nje emer per agjentin e tij misterioz. E quajti virus -- "helm" ne latinisht. Duke zbuluar viruset, Beijerinck me te vertete hapi nje bote krejtesisht te re per ne.
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.
Tani e dime se viruset kane shumicen e informacioneve gjenetike ne kete planet me shume se informacioni gjenetik i te gjitha formave te jetes se bashku. Dhe natyrisht ka shume aplikime praktike te shoqeruara me kete bote -- sic eshte zhdukja e lise, zhvillimi i vaksines kunder kancerit cervikal, shkaku i njohur i te cilit eshte virusi human papillomavirus.
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.
Zbulimi i Beijerinck, nuk ndodhi para 500 vjeteve. Ishte me pak se 100 vite me pare kur Beijerinck zbuloi viruset. Pra, ne kishim automobila, por nuk e dinim qe kishte forma te jetes qe perfaqesojne pjesen me te madhe te informacionit gjenetik te planetit tone.
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.
Tani ne kemi keto mjete te mrekullueshme qe na lejojne te eksplorojme boten e "papare" - gjera qe kerkojne zhvillim te thelle, qe na lejojne te shkojme me thelle se siperfaqja e nje genomi individual i nje specie, por qe lejon te veshgohet nje gjithesi metagenomesh, komunitetet e mikroorganizmave dhe duke dokumentuar gjithe informacionin gjenetik ne ato specie Ne mund te aplikojme keto teknika prej lekures dhe gjithcka ne mes.
In my organization we now do this on a regular basis to identify the causes of outbreaks that are unclear exactly what causes them.
Ne organizaten time e bejme rregullisht per te identifikuar shkaqet e epidemive kur eshte e paqarte cfare i ka shkaktuar.
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.
Dhe vetem qe ti japim kuptim gjithe punes imagjinoni sikur te marrim nje monster nga hunda e secilit nga ju. Kete e bejme ne pergjithesi kur kerkojme per viruset si influenza. Gjeja e pare qe do shihnim eshte nje sasi e madhe informacioni gjenetik. Nese ne do te shikonim ne ate informacion gjenetik do te ndeshim te dyshuarit e zakonshem- natyrisht shume informacion gjenetik njerezor por gjithashtu informacion te bakterieve dhe viruseve, me te shumtat te pademshme ne hunde. Por gjthashtu do te shihnim dicka surprize. Ndersa filluam te analizonim kete informacion shohim se rreth 20 perqind e informacionit gjenetik te hundes tuaj nuk perputhet me asgje qe kemi pare me pare-- as bime, kafshe, viruse, apo baktere. Ne fakt nuk kemi ide se cfare eshte.
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.
Dhe ne grupin tone te vogel qe studion keto lloj te dhenash, disa nga ne kane filluar ta quajne kete informacion materie e erret biologjike. e dime qe eshte dicka qe nuk e kemi pare me pare; eshte ekuivalente me nje kontinent te paeksploruar tamam brenda informacionit tone gjenetik. Dhe eshte me shumice. Nese mendoni se 20 perqind e informacionit tone gjenetik ne hunden tuaj eshte plot e materies se erret biologjike, nese do te shikonit tek zorret, rreth 40 ose 50 perqind e ketji informacioni eshte materie e erret biologjike Dhe ne nje kampion gjaku relativisht steril, rreth 1-2 perqind te informacionit eshte materie e erret-- nuk mund te klasifikohet ne ndonje gje qe e kemi pare me pare.
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.
Njehere menduam se ishte lloj artifakti. Mjetet e kerkimit te thelle jane relativisht te reja. Por ndersa po behem gjithnje e me te sakta, na lejuan te kuptojme se ky informacion ishte forme e jetes ose se paku nje pjese e tij eshte nje forme jete. E ndersa hipotezat qe shpjegojne ekzistencen e materies se erret biologjike jane ne fillimet e tyre, ekziston nje mundesi shume premtuese: qe e varrosur ne kete jete, ne kete informacion gjenetik, ka shenja te jetes se paidentifikuar ende. Ndersa eksplorojme keto fije A,T C dhe G, mund te zbulojme nje forme jete krejt te re qe, ashtu si Beijerinck, do te ndryshoje rrenjesisht menyren qe ne mendojme per natyren e biologjise. Qe ndoshta do te na lejoje te identifikojme shkaqet e kancerit ose te identifikojme burimin e nje epidemie qe nuk e njohim ose ndoshta te krijojme nje mjet te ri per biologjine molekulare.
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.
Kam kenaqesine qe te njoftoj qe se bashku me koleget e universitetit Stanford, Caltech e UCSF kemi filluar iniciativen te eksplorojme materien e erret biologjike per ekzistencen e formave te reja te jetes.
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.
Pak me shume se 100 vjet me pare, njerezit nuk i njihnin viruset, format e jetes qe perben shumicen e informacionit gjenetik ne planetin tone. 100 vjet me vone njerezit mund te habiten qe nuk njihnim ndoshta nje forme te re jete qe ishte vertet nen hunden tone.
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.
Eshte e vertete, ndoshta i zbuluar te gjitha kontinentet ne planet dhe mund te kemi zbuluar te gjithe gjitaret qe ekzistojne, por kjo nuk do te thote qe s'ka mbetur asgje per t'u eksploruar ne Toke. Beijerinck dhe shoket e tij japin nje mesim te rendesishem per eksploruesit e gjenerates se ardhshme - si ajo vajza e vogel nga Beloit, Wisconsin. Mendoj se mund ta formulojme ne kete menyre: Mos supozoni qe mendojme se e dime te gjithe historine. Beni kerkime ne materien e erret ne cdo fushe qe zgjidhni per te eksploruar. Te panjohurat jane gjithandej rreth e rrotull nesh dhe presin vetem per tu zbuluar.
Thank you.
Faleminderit
(Applause)
(Duartrokitje)