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 posetio Beloit, u Viskonsinu. Bio sam tamo kako bih odao počast velikom istraživaču 20. veka, Roju Čapmanu Endrusu. Za vreme njegovog rada u Američkom prirodnjačkom muzeju, Endrus je vodio niz ekspedicija u neistražene regione, kao ovde, u pustinji Gobi. Bio je značajna ličnost. Kasnije je, navodno, bio inspiracija za lik Indijana Džonsa.
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 Viskonsinu, održao sam javno predavanje grupi srednjoškolaca. I ovde sam da vam kažem da ako postoji nešto strašnije od držanja TED govora, bio bi to pokušaj da se održi pažnja hiljadi 12-godišnjaka na 45-minutnom predavanju. Ne pokušavajte to.
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 postavljali su pitanja, ali jedno pitanje me ne napušta od tada. Ustala je mlada devojka i pitala me: "Gde treba da istražujemo?"
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 postoji utisak koji mnogi od nas imaju da je to sjajno doba istraživanja Zemlje prošlo, da će sledeća generacija morati da ide u svemir ili u najdublji okean da bi mogla da nađe nešto značajno da istražuje. Ali, da li je to zaista slučaj? Da li zaista ne postoji neko značajno mesto za istraživanje koje je preostalo 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 je na neki način nateralo da razmišljam o jednom od svojih omiljenih istraživača u istoriji biologije. To je istraživač nevidljivog sveta Martinus Bajerink. Bajerink je krenuo da otkrije uzrok bolesti mozaika duvana. Uzeo je zaraženi sok iz biljke duvana i filtrirao ga kroz sve manje i manje filtere. I stigao je do tačke kada je osetio da mora da postoji nešto što je manje od najmanje poznate forme života - bakterije, u to vreme. Smislio je ime za svoj tajanstveni uzročnik. Nazvao ga je virus - latinski naziv za "otrov". I otkrivanjem virusa, Bajerink je otvorio čitav novi svet za nas.
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 čine većinu genetskih informacija na našoj planeti, više od genetskih informacija svih drugih formi života zajedno. I očigledno je da postoje važne praktične primene povezane sa ovim svetom - stvari kao što su istrebljenje malih boginja, pojava vakcine protiv raka grlića materice, za koji znamo da ga uglavnom izazivaju humani papiloma virusi.
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.
Bajerinkovo otkriće se nije desilo pre 500 godina. Pre malo više od 100 godina Bajerink je otkrio viruse. Znači, u suštini, imali smo automobile, ali nismo bili svesni formi života koje čine većinu genetske informacije na našoj planeti.
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 ove fantastične alate uz pomoć kojih možemo da otkrivamo nevidljivi svet - stvari poput dubokog sekvenciranja koje nam dopušta da učinimo mnogo više od pregledanja površine i gledanja pojedinačnih genoma određenih vrsta, omogućava nam da gledamo cele metagenome, zajednicu mnogobrojnih mikroorganizama u nama, na nama i oko nas i da dokumentujemo sve genetske informacije tih vrsta. Ove tehnike možemo da primenimo od zemljišta do kože i na sve između.
In my organization we now do this on a regular basis to identify the causes of outbreaks that are unclear exactly what causes them.
Sada u mojoj organizaciji ovo radimo svakodnevno da bismo identifikovali razloge izbijanja bolesti za koje je nejasno šta ih tačno izaziva.
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 vam dočaram kako ovo radi, zamislite da smo uzeli bris iz nosa svakome od vas. A to je nešto što obično radimo da bismo pronašli respiratorne viruse kao grip. Prva stvar koju bismo videli je ogromna količina genetskih informacija. Ako bismo počeli da istražujemo te genetske informacije, tamo bismo videli određeni broj uobičajenih krivaca - naravno, mnogo ljudskih genetskih informacija, ali i bakterijske i virusne informacije, uglavnom iz potpuno bezopasnih stvari unutar vašeg nosa. Ali videli bismo i nešto veoma iznenađujuće. Kada bismo počeli proučavati te informacije, videli bismo da oko 20% genetskih informacija u vašem nosu ne odgovara ničemu što smo ikad pre videli - nijednoj biljci, životinji, gljivici, virusu ili bakteriji. U suštini, nemamo predstavu šta bi to moglo biti.
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.
Mala grupa nas koji zapravo proučavamo tu vrstu podataka, počela je da zove ovu informaciju - biološka tamna materija. Nije slična ničemu što smo ranije videli; ekvivalentna je kontinentu koji nije ucrtan na karti, koji se nalazi upravo među našim genetskim informacijama. A ima ih mnogo. Ako vam se čini da je 20% genetskih informacija u vašem nosu mnogo tamne biološke materije, ako pogledamo u vaša creva, 40 do 50% te genetske informacije je tamna biološka materija. Čak i u relativno sterilnoj krvi, oko 1 do 2% je tamna biološka materija - ne može se klasifikovati niti uporediti ni sa čim poznatim.
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.
Prvo smo mislili da je ovo artefakt. Ovi duboko sekvencirajući uređaji su relativno novi. Ali kako postaju sve tačniji i tačniji, shvatamo da je ova materija vid života ili je bar deo nje - neki vid života. I dok su hipoteze za objašnjenje postojanja biološke tamne materije tek u začetku, postoji veoma uzbudljiva mogućnost: da je unutar ove genetske informacije sadržan potpis još neidentifikovanog života. Ako istražimo ove lance A, T, C i G aminokiselina, možemo otkriti potpuno novi vid života koji će, kao i Bajerink, iz korena promeniti način na koji razmišljamo o prirodi biologije. To će nam verovatno omogućiti da identifikujemo uzrok raka ili da identifikujemo izvor izbijanja bolesti s kojim nismo upoznati ili možda da stvorimo novo sredstvo 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 mogu da najavim da zajedno sa kolegama sa Stanforda, Kalteka i UCSF-a, upravo započinjemo inicijativu za istraživanje biološke tamne materije i da li u njoj ima 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.
Pre malo više od 100 godina ljudi nisu bili svesni postojanja virusa, oblika života koji čini najveći broj genetskih informacija na našoj planeti. Sto godina u budućnost, ljudi se mogu čuditi tome da smo bili potpuno nesvesni postojanja novog vida života koji nam je bukvalno bio pred nosem.
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 na karti sve kontinente na planeti i možda smo otkrili sve sisare koji postoje, ali to ne znači da nije ostalo ništa da se istražuje na Zemlji. Bajerink i njemu slični su dali neverovatnu lekciju budućim generacijama istraživača - ljudima poput one mlade devojke iz Beloita iz Viskonsina. Mislim da ako tu lekciju kažemo kao poruku, glasila bi: ne smatrajte da je ovo što sada znamo, cela priča. Idite za nepoznatim stvarima u bilo kojoj oblasti koju izaberete da istražujete. Mnogo je nepoznatih stvari oko nas koje samo čekaju da budu otkrivene.
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)