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.
最近我去了威斯康辛州的貝洛伊特市, 目的是為了宣揚一位偉大的20世紀探險家 Roy Chapman Andrews。 當他在美國自然歷史博物館工作時, Andrews率領一系列到地圖上未標明地區的探險活動, 像是這里的戈壁沙漠。 他是個不簡單的人物。 據說他之後成為印第安那瓊斯這個角色的靈感來源。
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.
當我在威斯康辛州的貝洛伊特市時, 我對一群中學學生發表公眾演說。 我在這裡跟你說, 如果有任何事比在TED這裡演講還要嚇人, 那就是試著要在45分鐘的演講內 掌握1000個12歲孩童的注意力。 別輕易嘗試。
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?"
在演講的最後,他們問了幾個問題, 其中有一個自此之後深印我腦海中。 有一個年輕女生站起來, 她問了這個問題: 「我們應該要去那裡探索?」
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?
我想普遍很多人認為 偉大的地球探索年代已經結束, 對下一代來說, 他們將必須去外太空還是深海處 尋求重要的可探索事物。 但這真的是事實嗎? 地球上真的沒有剩下的重要地方 可以讓我們探索嗎?
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.
這有點讓我回想到 生物學歷史中我最喜愛的探險家之一。 這就是未知世界的探險家,Martinus Beijerinck。 Beijerinck一開始要尋找 菸草鑲嵌病的起因。 他做的事是取出菸草屬植物的受感染汁液, 然後用愈來愈小的過濾器一再過濾。 到某個時候, 他感覺一定有比當時認知的 最微小型態的生命體-- 也就是細菌 -- 還要更小的東西存在。 他為這神秘的媒介命了名。 他稱之病毒(virus) -- 源自拉丁文中的「毒藥(poison)。」 在揭露病毒的過程中, 實際上Beijerinck為我們開啟了一個全新的世界。
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.
現在我們知道病毒構成地球上 絕大部分的基因信息, 比起所有其它形式的生命體的 基因信息加總後都還要多。 顯然地已經有大量的實務應用 和這個新世界有關係 -- 像是天花的滅絕, 預防子宮頸癌疫苗的出現, 而我們現在知道大多數子宮頸癌都是由人類乳突病度所引起。
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.
而Beijerinck的發現 不是500年前發生的事情。 Beijerinck在100多年前 發現病毒。 基本上當時我們已經有了汽車, 但是我們未查覺在我們的星球上 構成大多數基因信息的生命體。
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.
現在我們有這些驚人的工具 允許我們探索未知的世界 -- 像是深度定序, 讓我們可以做得比只看到表面還要多, 而且可以看某一特別物種的單獨基因組, 當我們看整個宏基因組, 我們身邊充滿了微生物的群體, 還有紀錄這些種類中所有的基因信息。 我們可以將這些技術應用在 從土壤到皮膚間的所有物體上。
In my organization we now do this on a regular basis to identify the causes of outbreaks that are unclear exactly what causes them.
在我的組織裡,現在我們定期 鑑定不清楚明確肇因 的爆發症的發生原因。
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.
讓我大概解釋一下這如何運作, 想像我們取了你們每個人的鼻腔標本。 我們通常會找 呼吸系統的病毒,像是流行性感冒。 首先我們會看 非常大量的基因信息。 當我們開始觀察基因信息時, 我們會看到一些普通的可疑物 -- 當然,很多的人類基因信息, 還有細菌和病毒訊息, 大部分都來自你鼻子內完全無害的東西, 但我們也發現了令人非常吃驚的事情。 當我們開始觀察資訊時, 我們看到你鼻子內大約百分之20的基因信息 不符合任何我們以前曾經見過的東西 -- 不是植物、動物、菌類、病毒或細菌。 基本上我們不知道這是什麼。
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.
對我們這些實際在研究這種資料的小團體, 其實我們當中有些人開始稱這個資訊為 生物暗物質。 我們知道它不是任何以前我們見過的東西。 它有點像是我們基因信息中 未知的大陸。 而且為數眾多。 如果你認為你鼻腔中百分之20的基因信息已經是很多的 生物暗物質, 再來看看你的腸子, 高達百分之40或50的信息是生物暗物質。 即使是在相對比較下無菌的血液中, 大約百分之一到二的信息是暗物質 -- 無法跟我們見過的任何東西歸類或配對在一起。
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.
一開始我們想或許這是人工製品。 深度定序的技術還相當新。 但當它們變得愈來愈準確, 我們已經確定這信息是一種生命型態, 或者至少當中有部分是有生命的。 當解釋生物暗物質存在的假設 都還在初步階段, 代表有個非常令人興奮的可能性存在: 那就是埋藏在生命的基因信息裡 是截至目前為止尚未被辨識出的生命的特徵。 當我們探索一連串的A、T、C和G堿基時, 我們可能會像Beijerinck一樣 發現一個全新的生命種類,而從根本改變了 我們對生物學本質的認知。 或許這可容許我們找出折磨人類的癌症病源, 或者辨別我們不熟悉的爆發病症原因, 或者創造出分子生物學的新工具。
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.
我很高興地宣布, 在斯坦福大學、加州理工學院和加州大學舊金山分校的同仁合作下, 我們正開始要 探索生物暗物質,以尋求新種類生命的存在。
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.
大約一百多年前, 人們不知道病毒, 一種組成我們地球上大多數基因信息的生物型態。 一百年後,人們可能驚訝於 現在的我們完全沒有察覺到 眼前就有一種新的生物種類。
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.
這是真的,我們可能記錄了地球上所有的大陸, 我們也可能發現了所有的哺乳類動物, 但這不表示地球上沒有其它可探索的事物。 Beijerinck和他的同伴 提供了重要的啟示給下個世代的探險家 -- 像來自威斯康辛州的貝洛伊特市的小女孩。 如果我們要說出這個啟示,應該是: 不要假設我們現在認為存在的就是全部。 追求任何一個你選擇要探索的領域中的暗物質。 未知存在於我們周遭, 且等待被發現。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)