Carl Zimmer: A Planet of Viruses

good evening I'm Alexander Rose executive director of the long now Foundation and as you know we like to select a long short before each of these talks and that's a short film that exemplifies long term thinking this month's came from a friend of mine that Daisy Ginsburg and her team that's their works on the up an entry for the high jump competition and some of you may remember Andrew and these synthetic biology talk he mentioned that there's the student competition for synthetic biology and this particular group won in 2009 with their project called the E.chromi and I think it'll give you an idea of not only the summer the context of tonight's sock but also where some this may be going synthetic me in the future thanks E.chromi is an experimental collaboration and synthetic biology given to the end the Taranaki besides being interested in Tanzania direct from Tianjin care this activity that I can see the tail the book the naked eye when it's nice to Tianjin a machine I might need to pass joining us now is one of the winners of the item competition and science pride in his own I need to happen and I I can in an art hi Richmond to get into backing up by a bit like an ad attacking tell heat the confiscation of people in water because I don't have a ticket it actually held tight to what we have control over what level you get bacteria so it's on or off we can think of the generator which means that I can't change so the light they actually change colors the naked eye so what's a few days while the bacteria in a polluted river actually we just changed they probably wanted the table and you ought to obey me this was the basis of an existing use other ways that you too dishonesty blessed with this two storey high tension in the woods it's definitely much time you can come to all of the century these markets on which the school the changes that she is nice it's been three am there are quite soon in crumpled contaminants are awesome I fear it could also be used to I turned fifteen maybe protection to people who hunt for new opinion piece at nine by this simple prayer she customized to be monitoring chicken after succumbing he knew the whining to me responding in kind GC in the visible out it the twenty ninth season writes that the orange tree Kerry Stokes my thinking the angry by the time orange ten fifty nine at the acting thanks guys I've been wanting to help morning she has designed from the stocks in the kitchen sink he said it the exchange he's gotten used to be Stewart brand from the long now foundation i remember the day of computer hackers be seen with the bio hackers are few terrifyingly responsible which one would want to be um first there were two with a very large organist mostly bacteria of Burgundy of people really little guys tonight Carl Zimmer is a science writer and that interests me because scholars write about science are certain way for certain audience and it is generalized off very well by this write about their science or it will talk about it very well but the tip of the year focusing on the problems that they're most interested in securely outfits and accept finally corrected way forensic science writer journalist no so let's stop but is also aware of why it's newsworthy crickets in the general picture of that science that discipline in the world needs and the new situation to drop spend a lot of time keeping up knowing what the science but with a world where they fit together Carl Zimmer written this beautiful book small is a virus they look so he'll be signing afterwards and the other thing happening occurrences there's a perception right over there at one of these see him the twelve years Mr virus Carl Zimmer thank you Stewart and thank you all for coming so in my heart tonight is called viral time and it's the kind of title that needs a little explanation it's kind of a way of asking a question and the question for me it is what is time in the world a virus I'm having with any such question you have to start with ourselves talk about our own experience with time and then try to boot strap are way out from there I'm so so what is time for us um what is the day if you're in an airport and your plane is delayed and delayed and only legally and finally cancel and you spend the night in the air poor when you finally get out twenty four hours later that's a very long day on but let's say that um well you dealing with that you met some guy seemed pretty nice struck up a conversation with them a drink and then by the end of this twenty four hours he's had over heels in love with you and proposes and talked about it want to tell you it's hse scattering rose petals the new grave when you die you might say well wait it's only been a day so I made it I came in they can feel very long are we too short just depending on the scale of what's happening in it there is there's a natural timescale for our lives and their experiences and you know if you look across the natural world there are different time scales so on this is mainly clam meanwhile is minding its own business off the coast of Iceland when some English marine biologists vary rudely each raised it up and will take years to figure out how old that was and can actually age clams by counting rings on the shelves it turned out that was about four hundred four hundred ten of so when may mean the actually named after the devastating when he was the bar and doubt this was around that time in Shakespeare's writing his plays and so on I'm bad you know by the time Shakespeare is dead meeting was still im just getting started on its light and it has seen in of the rise of modern civilization and basically might've gone on living who knows how much longer if it hadn't been to justify curious scientists now it's due to hazardous exercise to try to get inside the mind of a clam we can debate where for the clams have minds but I am curious what it still was like for me um you know from that day they can feel so on to us what's it like remain it was it just like a few minutes Tom would name it feel like ten years was still not long enough to get to know another plant began to long term relationship I don't know I don't know on but it's certainly the expanse of time in the scales of time from a very different and safe for him a fly when in a flying marriages and doll I made this for only a day it were just a few hours so hot I would bet that that may fly would be more than willing to get married in that twenty for a period of time because it was going to be pretty soon I'm so in fact it might even have proposed to you the second to me now if you think about life in terms of these time scales on when you think about a virus may be a virus is kind of a Cami flies may fall on in a fit of pique of the viruses way of making more viruses happens really fast I'm now from a fly has to go from being in day to being adults and in reproducing in producing more eggs but that does take awhile but the virus are fast that this diagram here I just shows you the seven basic cycle of one virus this I picked out the flu virus they get them to get a virus which is basically genes and a protein shell it comes into it a host cell for key for him and that they're good they're gonna come into the cells that line your airway they're going to basically pop off their protein shell and the genes are going to start on being copy into new genes and those used in the retinue protein shells and then boom new viruses a can of pop that does not take long this can take matter of minutes or hours before you're having new virus is being assembled so that is basically live viruses um live in some ways such a different time scale than we did on it doesn't take very long for a virus infection to explode inside you I'm a single virus could over the course of a few days produce millions sometimes even billions of viruses and so when you get the flu or cold when you sneeze each one of those droplets is going to be noted with viruses because they replicate so fast so if you can kind of think of dad that little circle of arrows they're kind of like the hands of the clock and the clock is moving very fast and that means not just that you can have a lot of viruses um but it also means that those viruses are going and undergo changes that are very different than what were from you on because if it the power of the thing about viruses is that every time they copy themselves or that the cached copy the very sloppy so when we have kids of we might be might require you to them about hundreds hundred and thirty new mutations in their DNA but genomes are huge key Ch three the half billion nucleotides the virus is a very small indeed and they don't have a good ways of fixing dinner DNA their genes they also do weird things like have sex with each other so safe to different strains of the flu come into the same sell the team I get mixed up and re package and also to have this bizarre high grade virus it wasn't there before so all this means that viruses have an incredibly high mutation me this graph years King gave you a sense of it so weird we are hired to carry oats I'm we have a fairly low mutation rate is that when things go but the flu mutates ten thousand maybe hundred thousand times faster depending on the estimates to see so what that means is that time even inside of your body lawyers said you're producing all sorts of new kinds of viruses a lot of those viruses are just big mistake they come out of the cell and eight they're just missed it's to their genes don't work they can invade another self again I'm in a few cases however there are actually able to do better than the other viruses and it just takes a little bit for a mutation to let a virus take over the population this happens again and again and again and again so when you're stuck with hepatitis or the flu or what have you viral time is so fast that the virus is actually adapting to your body they they are evolving to fit you during it this is actually a regular part of disease now scientists recognize is the evolution of the viruses with the new now that is just one aspect of what I'm calling viral time anything about them a fly I mentioned you know it comes out of the ground and eight as an adult the can with four seconds of the water and then they can live for today but he was alive it before actually if you take the full life with a fly it's not that short to say where quite captivated by being installed for just today I'm so so them a five minute visit different scale and what happens if the step back a little bit further when you say well you know in Nephi exists in a population of declines so maybe they're of May flies that are living around the stream maybe the population in a fight has been there for years or decades maybe centuries so at that scale of the many flies time operates and then in a very different way the same goes for viruses but just more so everything with viruses is very extreme and as I'll explain tonight so for example on you out there some viruses like to call buying a virus that causes the common cold you get it due to lousy for a couple days and gentle your immune system knocks it out and it's gone so that population of viruses in your body it was kind of living on the flight time after the chicken pox that feel different cut the chicken pox my retreat into your nervous system and come out decades later in college a shingle so that hepatitis a hepatitis C for example I can in India my infect you as a young person then you wouldn't even know about it for twenty years until suddenly the doctor says he endeavored to stop working so viruses it can exist at the different time scales just within one person but they can also wreak we can also step back and think about viruses and population so think of viruses is being kind of cool arrows of in any of the gene I'm iffy if you think of you know the hepatitis he not just in one person but in all that but I see around the world that the two hundred million people who are carrying the virus is inside of them you can start test different kinds of questions about how time works because there wasn't it's not like there was always hepatitis C it wasn't always a JV these things come into existence the way that they come into existence typically is that they have come into humans from some animal usually enameled it's fairly like us that's because they can use similar receptors on ourselves to get in a hurry have the equipment they can at least let them get a little bit of entry into into our biology Juan time just doesn't work out very well but sometimes it gets so if you have cases for example where on viruses are are trying to fuck with trying to sell themselves in a species that they just can't manage it so let's take made these for example and you know there are thousands of people infected their babies every year they get that bike darts and that's another rabid animals but they don't bite each other it it there there's no human rabies virus me know he's not biting each other right now I can guarantee about the future I can guarantee about what David Cronenberg would say that in any case as far as we know there's no shame in their rabies virus on so if if you are somebody given above the rabies in dogs and that since the line and us humans alone they would be no Red's cuz we couldn't support it that's that fire low cloud just doesn't exist now there are other cases where there had been little clouds and four so in two thousand too for example arm there was this epidemic kicking to be known as SARS and it is short for sudden acquired respiratory syndrome what happened here was that there was a virus that we just didn't know about the form which suddenly hit the scene in in China and Hong Kong people were starting to get on the court horrible fevers a few people were dying and so public health workers realize they were dealing with some some kind of act they were able to identify the virus that causes it was no viruses anyone seen before so he said where did it come from it took a little while to get to the bottom of it so that they first found stars in this animal called palms to that which is often sold in Chinese ammo marketplaces and the people that I caught the virus it jumps from the Senate's to people on that turns out having up to be the case because then scientists also found a lot more stars and stars like viruses in facts so it appears that that's um that is the virus me to jump from back in to say that any humans wary was circulating around now it's really fascinating to think about what happened with SARS you know maybe maybe the younger among you may not be quite clear what stars lines for those those of us to live through that we thought oh my God this is going to be far fine because the seven hundred people died of SARS and nobody really knew what was going to happen and people were carrying stars on planes to other countries on it was a terrifying moment top fortunately up people were able to stop SARS there's a pretty basic public health measures on identifying people were sick quarantine them are shutting down so the marketplaces and so on and SARS disappeared it has not been seen in humans cents so this was a viral cloud that only existed for really maybe a few months maybe more a little bit longer that we don't know about a short period of time its president out there there is no stars now that might illustrate how smart we are in the doing of viruses or it might show how lucky we are or maybe go and find a thing on there's any cases where we haven't been so lucky and where we have had them we have had viruses and tear our species and get established this can take this can take a while we have to scale back to no timescale of decades to understand some of these kinds of emerging viruses so for example about a century ago there were some viruses that infected chimpanzees that we didn't know about these viruses and chimpanzees at the time they didn't have a name the chimpanzees ever getting them they would be it's spreading into each other through sex perhaps infighting and transmitting it to block in any case this the viruses were attacked the immune system of the chimpanzee they were slow viruses they weren't like the cold war like Ebola they took a long time to make their effects fell these animals so initially the chimpanzees immune systems that could ward off the disease the virus at least keep it intact over the years that chimpanzees immune systems were rotated until they started to become stuck with things that only one gets that from it over this long scale viral time the chimpanzees started to weaken and die do it died years before the normal lifespan chimpanzee now we wouldn't have known about this chimpanzee virus if it hadn't been for the radical changes that we brought to the world a chimpanzee we started cutting down there for us to start making contact with them and in Africa people started hunting chimpanzees in large amounts for flu and that this is just a picture from that the Bush meat trade which started to become a very important part of getting protein in certain parts of Africa and he was probably in Cameron where this is Bush meat trade brought people into contact with what came to be known as agency initially there are probably a lot of failed attempts to cross that barrier minus eight Anthony uncertain to sway I'm there would be infections where people would pick up the chimpanzee viruses and nothing much came of that but there was this opportunity there was this Nyonya sch and the viruses were barking and the limitations that allowed some of the virus is to survive in the human body and get better and better at surviving the human body England from human to human then living in Japan he eventually they became HIV and said that the chimpanzee bars and this is of trade evolutionary tree that shows the relationship between those chimpanzee viruses and human rights so in this picture the few men of branches or yellow and see if he actually that on its likely that he take the jump from chimpanzees to humans three types they're demanding more times where Hatcher up and you can actually look at the mutations in those viruses the case is talking that it happened so much to see actually estimate when it this changeover happen probably happen in the early nineteen hundreds it's just so happens to be with all those changes the college about work hurrying in on in Africa where HIV got its start the way that but you can then track the spread of HIV by looking at at the mutation so you can see where it spread to other places there are people from Haiti who weren't in Africa at the time who came back to Haiti bought the viruses them there were eight you can track how it spread to the United States and so by the time a man that HIV actually made itself known as it were thirty years ago it actually been around for perhaps fifty years indeed been hiding because it had the stealth the way of passing through time the hidden fur for such a long period time in its codes those are hard to figure out how to link the symptoms to a particular bias now here's a case where when go back in time and look at the origin of the virus begin developing mutations you can even go back is that some scientists have two tissue collections they can find a taxi from as far back as nineteen fifty nine but it's not as if there were no viruses before the twentieth century when scientists could actually see viruses for the first time viruses have been with us for a very long time so it is a step back from a longer time scale so how do we know that viruses have been around for long time well they've come up to their marketing and human history I'm even in the names of the gift of viruses so let's take for example influenza and it has a nice friend too if you just stop and not think of us like to have the flu take him to win sound like a village somewhere in Tuscany or something it's an Italian word which means influence the inflows they were talking about was the influence of the stars that were believed in the middle ages the Renaissance to control or hell and in some cases to cause terrible epidemics this issue with fevers and aches and often get so so you can go back through history and see if the mark that certain viruses have left on that history he can even see the mark time people to sell so this is actually probably the oldest sighing and viruses in human civilization this is Randy's the fifth pair of Egypt about three thousand years ago and you might feel of the sea there lotsa lotsa Park marks on his face and smallpox so so Ramsey's in even the Pharaoh and could be felt by smallpox three thousand years ago so so viruses a span of human civilization hey we've gone from minutes to hours to days two decades centuries millennia but it's not as death before the rise of human separation in the dim sum certain you know we buy role of Eden we know that our early ancestors got sick with buyers to steal now going back into that that the prehistory of eyes before you know the records that we humans can it's not easy you can dig up a fossil of a virus that can determine by but you can look and viruses themselves and their genes as kind of the fossil record so for example there are some viruses like sea and the side of the Goliath where there's a really striking patterns about its evolution so we humans get one Constantinople virus and the cause is relative to that buyers are in other primates and if he if you go out along the branches of the sea and the evolutionary tree you go out on the branches of the primate tree as well so with that suggests is that these viruses have kind of day for her age along with their hosts haven't switched around a lot like assured that the AKP been very loyal to their house and hosts gives rise to new species they form new species too but what's really amazing to me is that there's actually a fossil record in our own Dino no one to explain to you how we know that I wanna jump back again to HIV now remember how I showed you before how low do with the flu updates HIV and viruses like it have a somewhat different way of going about their business they infect cells that when the effects of the gene scientists are still out their genes actually get inserted but precisely into the host cells seen so in effect they have become part of the host of Dino now typically what happens is that day they get into that genome and their genes basically instruct the seldom it lots of new HIV it to mean pops out of the cell and the adventures of just wipes out cheers guys and the story sometimes with these kinds of viruses something happens little bit differently so imagine what happens if one of these viruses the scoop of ice and call back to his madness to get them to and eight now imagine what happens when that aid is fertilized it becomes two stops others to cells both have the virus is the name and four selves they'll have a viral DNA in the genome too that would have a developed into an adult every single cell and that organisms body carries that viral DNA so in the sense that viruses has fused to its helps so you know if you think of a viruses is being kind it's been in the cloud metaphor and think of rivers so effective river of jeans going to time well now it's River and its hosts River have had merged together now when this happens that the destructive fires is called in and died in a spectral class meaning it's within now initially it may be possible for or that DNA of the buyers to produce new viruses that can go infect other cells or other posts um but in UK along with the rest of our DNA and after while those viruses just get saloon disabled biker mutations that they're stuck there that just because carry them along in acting let's have a lot of these and you can go look for the human genome a new beat going along as they like ok what to do for college in ok that's a team of four carat in and then you're going along the same well I did that's a gene for proteins known for a virus the KJV in our own gene you can see it it might be a little bit degraded that the signatures clarinet they can see in them actually multiple copies sometimes of these viruses because when Phil is the billion to the breakout in fact other posts they could still make copies of themselves they get put back in so there's one of these home which is called the time each year the K on when we have a number of copies in the genome and believe that they come from a virus infected their ancestors maybe say about two million tall the hypothesis but you know these this is just touches the DNA how do we know that there really a virus well some French researchers came up with a really clever way of testing this I'm so so this is the hypothesis showing how viruses go into a germ cell agar sperm and then eventually would become just part of the human genome to understand how the scientists on to get this out that that that these particular stretches of DNA really were from viruses let me give you ten of a fun experiment um let's say that said today a on several of your friend is on text is due and said hey you can hear the top viral time but now I phones tapped from this you know are correct but have you you get mistakes on so you get the you get all these different versions of the talk tonight a huge thing of what what what what what do they have in mind was the vigil message well you know leaving aside the ability to sue them the stage and you couldn't actually like look at that and to recognize the words this to say use your powers of deduction well up with you what needed to do is even just identify the letters every little different in each one and you can see here each one only has one that different and from that thing you can pretty safely assume that the regional title and final time that these issues did the offspring the mutant offspring your friends said well this is what these that French scientists to basically they they work their way back from these different versions of the virus in our genome and said ok we think that this was the original sequence of the virus that we think was a virus that infected our ancestors so they they synthesize this genetic sequence them a piece of DNA in the stock at the end human cell and on the whole if the virus so here we have a virus we've been caring for two million years then hanging on quietly minding its own business and these scientists have the gall to bring it back to life for these actually pictures of the virus biting out that the new viruses biting and of itself when it put that that gene sequences now is just two million years actually on you things you can track the evolution PC these things way either when the lazy today that is look at her relatives so for example there are some viruses that are found only in R us and our closest relatives like the great apes so they must have they must have infected our ancestors at that point in time the common ancestor grade eight which led say that the milling years ago you can find other of these viruses that in the genomes of humans these old world monkeys to that pushes you back for their intense tell you can find others that in fact all the sentiments the Christian fiction back way back in time um and what's really amazing is that there are a lot of these viruses in your team scientists have identified about a hundred thousand elements in your genome they came from buyers now to put their perspective on we all have twenty thousand protein coding genes that takes up about one point two percent of biking on viruses the same stake of about eight or nine percent so you could stay here about six times more buyers than him if you're so inclined so so which were dealing with with the timescale that up there there we carry in our own bodies dad is really you start to get into unimaginably old periods of time I mean I just marked an era where the Grand Canyon for it and you have viruses that are older than that in your own genius on this is a this is a deeply where car concept I mean that to think of our human genome having been gradually eroded at the Grand Canyon for millions of years by viruses the genomes did you know go willingly we actually have lots of jeans that seem to be specifically adapted for fighting off the viruses as they try to enter the genome and then as they try to replicate we try to put a stop to this because it can be very disruptive I mean if it is of Irish pop stand and does and he happens to plug itself where there's that really essential Jane the can be trouble on the Wii allow director viruses are set to cancer so evolution has favored defences against these things that's not to say that these viruses haven't ended up being useful actually mutations can essentially borrow some of the genes from viruses and use them the benefit us and my favorite example is the most darling one that is one that's involved with pregnancy so up in order to time in that in order for a day embryo a memo in Rio to develop just a sentimental and beyond I'm a pastor far percent of which attaches to the uterus and in many groups of mammals what happens then is that there is the later the farms here the surface a purplish cells here that the layer that allows the embryo to drop in nutrients from the mother and aunt to attach to the TV or in law it's a very distinctive because it's formed by cells within the walls between the cells break down to earth to serve they opened kind of later a psychopath so she's basically there's a protein that makes that happen if you knock the gene out from my face they cannot reproduce it is if they go to an ambient not to be able to farm that linger the fat protein and protein comes from a virus actually does this have happened repeatedly in evolution different Emma lineages of actually borrowed the similar a viral genes to make that later so the weather for viruses none of us would have even been born now I'm taking you back now about a hundred million years but really to appreciate the full scope of a viral time I need t actually um take it back to that for and to do that we have to service levy leave the mammals the high eying me the animals behind and look at really that the most important host on the planet those are the microbes they outplayed us they're much more important in terms of the biology or chemistry of the planet this is really a microbial planet and those microbes are heavily infected with their own viruses that are called bacterial stages on so this actually shows did he call eye which is his being a witch is actually popping out lots of new faces that and often in fact at them so where can you find these pages well inside of all of you I because you have trillions of bacteria inside of you that you depend on for your health and survival and they are getting infected my gear Levi pages that each of you who image also think of so the Yemen you have far to show in ages the study right now he knows well in your lungs your guts on and you're eating them everyday and yogurt pickles are all sorts of different foods you of your picking up new faces and the breeding inside of you and leasing them and the environment leave it at that I'm sorry to have the chrome eyes reason to think about these things anymore but in any case on your incredible diversity of pages inside the estimated about fifteen hundred different species dwelling inside you but they're not affecting you and I making you sick or thereafter year bacteria so Jimenez and other animals are wonderful places to find pages fat there are lots and lots and lots of other places to find so here's a pic of the cave of crystals it's about a mile underground of those are actually crystals that have formed their own in sixty times actresses like the biggest the biggest crystal ever found on the tomatoes place there were any space is partly because it's incredibly hot I am but also because they don't want to infect it with their bacteria they actually bacteria that live in the water that comes in to the escape from the surrounding rock and they get infected virus that infected the scoop up a spoonful of that water you have two hundred million viruses this may not look like a good place to look for viruses I'm back in fact it's a great place to because the couple miles underground under the eye station St and our guide their cynical a cost that make the stock is home to make a system dominated by bacteria and those bacteria have lots of viruses even actually a viruses that infect other viruses which is interesting on but in any case I'm just about anywhere you look honor where there's life there are viruses the ocean actually he was thought to be pretty much virus free for a long time people to stop while hiking viruses and see what Stuart Park we know better now actually in if you take that spoon and scoop up the spoon of seawater you find a billion bytes this sin that spoonful so there are viruses and saw an older viruses and all sorts of other places and so that leads scientists to say well how many viruses are there in an obviously they can count them all up that they can do surveys and they can estimate from sampling and oceans soil and sediment and so on and this is the number they come up with is the big number the one with thirty one years after that so on it's kind of hard to think about how many viruses that is and my favorite a way that scientists to try to wrap their heads around this to say what would happen if we took antivirus under and stack them one on top of that never explained how they do that in any case ah they sit well with it extend a mile into the air when you go to the moon we did go out of the solar system when he answers to all that is now because actually you go a hundred thousand light years have an aeroplane you do a galaxy that's actually two ago galaxies um seven hundred million with he start a new start to get fuzzy on these numbers after wow because they're just so many yes some say that aspect hundred million light years yes you go way past due up again you don't so what does that mean that the most abundance organism on earth by far for viruses there's a bike all the book plan of buyers hse and if you wanna add up organisms and I consider vs artisans viruses away at the top of this but is that the drop one of the things that means is that viruses our planetary forces so on you here's another example of viral time um viruses are continually in effecting my code in the ocean I'm busy and there's a vast number of infections that are happening every seconds and in many aka those cases they are are making lots of copies inside this bacteria and blowing up the bacteria to get in there jumping on the card inside the bacteria into the ocean the viruses kill half of all the bacteria in the ocean every day now what happens the carbon scientists don't really know because they did just enough to get this math out when the last few years and they are saying wait a minute this is incredible this is a colossal amount of carbon that some of it is probably thinking down to the ocean floor some of that night actually be fertilizing the growth of microbes in the in the upper ocean it's probably having a huge effect on a lot of different things one of the things maybe this climate because by screwing up the carbon cycle as it were on their affecting how much carbon that the the ocean can absorb from the atmosphere and thereby helping to set decline because they meander through the carbon dioxide is trapping heat scientists can say no it wasn't for viruses the year to the summit degrees warmer colder because there are many complex the fact that the hours we just don't know yet we know it's gotta be picked now the other weird thing about viruses in the ocean and this is something I'll get to the morgue the town the second is that not all the viruses a killing their hosts a live viruses I'm actually regularly insert their their genes into a microbial host an upset to just hang out that they can still every now then making viruses and pop dotted the need to but pretty much their long for the ride and blend of these viruses go from house to post they can sometimes pick up posting and carry them along with them and then after awhile they can create the hall kind of shopping cart full with jeans which they can bring to a new house and actually some viruses floating around the ocean that carry a whole bunch of jeans for photosynthesis at the cathode synthesize on the row with the deal is that going to find them a bacterium the infected in certain genes into that into the micro in all a sudden the microbe turns green in the sense that they can now for the synthesizer couldn't before but it gets infected a concert harnessing harvesting family and its believe that about ten percent the five senses in the ocean and is produced this way in each of them from MIT has been setting these bacteria and viruses that infect them and he she has just found that this is happening around the world so in every breath you take you are breathing in them some oxygen from viruses so the reason that I am talking so much about microbes and viruses is that for a long time that's what this planet was light it was a microbial planet this is a picture of string the lights which are microbial mats these are from Australia and God these were the you know the big players on the planet I'm for perhaps the first cup of the early years the Eastern allies are loaded with viruses and so that's a pretty good clue that they were viruses on the very early year another way of thinking and how old viruses are Earth's history scale is to look at the tree of life on we can look it doesn't God inspector prices showed you before on bail in the back about hundred million years before the signal gets kind of fuzzy so than scientists at the look of the viruses themselves this is a tricky thing because the viruses in maintaining so fast that it can be hard to really see it be history in their genes because I'm a bit begin a new tape so much that sometimes the country races its own record of that stuff it mutates and eat it again in the teeth again you can get to the reconstruction of the show by we've caught a growing catalog of virus tea they're being gathered by people like Craig Venter so after Craig Venter on let the deep fried that effort to sequence the human genome on he took off on his yacht with a bunch of other scientists and they started scooping up sea water and basic wage the sequencing every Gina to find and there are millions of jeans many of which were from viruses and so has scientists have more of the sky data to look at the start the season really be patterns to the proteins this is kind of a classic now classic view of life so we are part of that you carry a branch were about here and there scientists recognize the main branches the bacteria beach area and new Ikea well by looking at these viral genes scientists have discovered that the pri we are and this is there to protect me from the time illustration actually published in scientific paper but I did I I salute their subjects they've got bacteria bacteria Ikea and you carry us over here the three domains in the here and have them I will bring each the ease of use or virus strain fire scenes that are really lay off on there and scientists are now arguing that she should recognize the fourth domain why as represented by viruses not all viruses but a particularly interesting bunch of them called giant irises which were discovered just a few years ago um that I've been sitting in front of us who didn't realize the verses seem to be they've site is really just thought they were bacteria on but it turned out to viruses that to seventy verses with way too many genes in them and just way too big he recognizes this on in any case so that was her see the viruses have this incredible ancestry and jeans I slide the point of these things here this looks a little bit different than Darwin's branch in heaven that's because the viruses are viruses would shuffle jeans back and forth between the different domain so so in all of life it is that the product of this this this mosaic created in large part by viruses and this is a process that still going on the eco lie outbreak at the start up in Europe in May on turns out it's a strain of Nikolai that seemed totally harmless before in the case of the virus has delivered a bunch of teens to turn it into this vicious killer so this is you know we've got two times guilty and that the timescale of last week in the timescale of four billion years on he got a lot of people I have him home okay with that viruses start an ionic anybody really knows that but that there's a certain logic that leads you to believe that viruses were there as soon as there was anything that we consider a line basically thought it tasted great with him making a living you just you just exploit others and feed on fortune the cheating is it is a very successful strategy in life and so you can imagine you don't even need sell for the damages that Jane floating around in there interacting with each other and use these jeans are being very polite with each other and working together and cooperate in the producing more copies than snow Becca be a great target for a virus that gets those those jeans and a copy of itself it themselves up that the last issue that a lot of talk about in terms of the deep passed by his DNA the DNA is this marvelous molecules double stranded way of storing information and on it's that event peculiar virus that has practically a molecule home inside his head up at a hard time trying to figure out how DNA of self involved from the building blocks of mine fortunately there there's a pretty clear possibility for what came to fourteen when DNA is used to make proteins a single strand version is produced on Friday and turns of the Arctic has lots of other things herself too on and so it can be an ideal that kind of a good team and approaching Sunday we started our day and then went to the end how did we do that I did that happen on Patrick for Tara French researchers pastor Institute argues that actually viruses involved in a first they would in fact RNA selves and the RNA cells would attack them in the same way that bacteria that can attack the viruses that infect them so there were some viruses that involve the double standard version of the genes which could take it then it was a great way to get into your host and protect your jeans so they wouldn't get caught up and then eventually on the hosts co opted the DNA and used it for them the very very um obviously very speculative hypothesis but is something that you can test by looking at the viruses and very exotic microbes in Suntec to stimulating of research on the weirder forms of life under so the past I just wanna and the talking briefly about the future IMO is a little leery of trying to time to to look into the future I don't think anybody does a good job of it and use of all myself however worry we're here at the long now and we're thinking about the future so there are few and far my guess is that I can make what is to expect more flu that visiting am sure we will continue to have the flu I'm that our children will get the flu grand channel to learn will get it on and not only that but we're going to be on fighting the flu we're not going to eradicate the problem is that as I mentioned before prices are very these sexy they like to mix it up and this is a diagram showing at two different viruses in oneself can produce these new kinds of viruses he's a viruses that can escape our immune systems attack we can escape for a vaccine that is why we need to take the vaccine every year and this is a diagram showing what happens over the course of the year this is going to continue to happen we're not going to be able to stop this process every now and then um flu viruses and take a shit me we go from different combinations of the existing flu viruses to something that really different from what we've seen before where they come from they come from birds and bird back to the flu is I've got an infection they get sick in the gut but they can make a second or Airways all the game and lose all the human flu strains purchasing these three groups lots more flu virus but the diversity of you that could make it into us a lot of easy to be dead and infections that someone didn't make it through the swine flu as two thousand I was actually a cocktail of a cup of the pig flu was a human flu but the bird flu it's just a big old orgy going on out that eventually produced what is now all of the dominant seasonal flu strain and yet I don't expect us to be getting rid of these terrifying factors anytime soon I expect will be to have investors guilty finding in all that means great opportunities to make more flu I am now they're probably going to these other cases where buyers to show up that weekend even seen before so there's an interesting study out that it had been about three times they came out recently but hepatitis C and six two and a million people there until just a couple weeks ago there were no reports of any hepatitis C like viruses out there and animals the people said where did that come from on and a lot of people I will maybe get from chimpanzees because you can actually an experimentally in fact a chimpanzee with hepatitis C I and that they are actually being studied in terms of developing it as hepatitis C treatment that way well on some scientists actually discovered the the first close relative of hepatitis C that thing with that of adopting all those yellow that the hepatitis C strains um they actually discovered in unexpected places so you can see it's called CHP what does the C stands for eccentric a night there are these dogs that were suffering from respiratory diseases and candles and scientists for China to go with the virus was it didn't match any virus they'd seen before in the sequence the team it come from a virus that is a lot like hepatitis C so if it's likely that I released one of that one of the strongest hypotheses to explain this virus is that he went from God to humans that doesn't mean that you got into the hepatitis C but what does mean is that no viruses are going to continue to jump into our species sometimes from unexpected sources now it's easy to talk about viruses in the future to get kind of crazy on the end of the many science fiction Louisa been made like that's not to read it but twenty eight days later an outbreak on and you know that there are some pretty insane viruses out there in the real world back to the virus is actually in fact in sacks and they wrote these incredible numbers they actually make the caterpillars on and then they can do is get the urge to climb up to the top of the tree to get was called treat of disease and then they hang off the trees the viruses may be these bizarre things and then it was the FHA the fact buyers loaded caterpillars literally does all the virus through the season and signed it dissolve the caterpillar entirely and viruses rain down on the leaves below where they can be eaten by a cat if you go out in you by a head of lettuce or cabbage today it's probably covered with millions of active it's okay though the caterpillar and ten on so you know when you see the tears of you say oh my God you know we're going to get some incredible viral strains can make a snow blow up in the Solomons trailer other people and us I don't I don't buy that I don't think so I mean I don't think that that the disease were to be wearing a bow to do the things that people just don't think that there were going to be worried about a replay of nineteen eighteen to fifty million people died billions of people actually got infected with this this particular strain of flu Cueto who coolly fifty nine people died he was able to be so devastating as it could spread so easily and part of that meant that it wasn't totally fatal it was an unpleasant science fiction he is just for fun and so that you ended up with this belt of the small fraction of people infected and die but still because infected computers for the planet the death toll was established um yet another possibility it might be an HIV like hepatitis C like to wear maybe there's some new buyers are already among us and we don't even know yet it's not going to make itself known for years and by then babies can be a global epidemic that's what happened to see agency I don't dive don't be too pessimistic the hell are we have had a few trips to smallpox for example is now restricted stars in only two laboratory United States and Russia that's it render past which is a virus that kills counts on so we had some triumphs on there you have to do it on a certain kind of viruses can can enjoy this well can suffer to pay this kind of day I think with things like a KJV what an assertive have a slow gradual conquest so you can see actually gone deaf adult and child deaths today's actually in that on the decline and there's finally some research that suggested maybe we can actually Medicaid providers to controlling the difference on you know what what I think it can be really interesting turns the virus is positive for the upside of this so I mention you know never to be with the virus is because they help us stick to it the uterine wall of we actually make some viral proteins in our brains the videos of what they're doing there but they clearly come from from viruses that became part of us on those back to the viruses and on they're great for pesticide it's a great way to kill off tested only on hand you can actually genetically engineered viruses so that instead of baby like to make these protein balls with the viruses and that it like a fruitcake he was naughty you didn't get a virus of it that it may consider that the regular back to West protein makes any protein just about you it's actually very important technology on we actually know right now all have viruses building batteries Angela Belcher them like she has pioneered using viruses this and so on little robots as it were to assemble thing is despite engineering them so that they can grab helmets and assemble them together on and they do it very quickly fo and finally really that them that the most interesting idea the most speculative is calm what if we can and use viruses to treat the whole planet he has been a lot talk about geo engineering our way out of it really got ourselves into on viruses are exerting a huge control over the planets by a cute chemical cycles and probably climate so we were to an engineer viruses to you to alter bacteria in the notions of what could we do I don't know ah Nate I don't know too much about the future I'm pretty sure of it humans will be around in a couple years but I am sure that as long as there's life on her there will be part and that is the one prediction that I will be I'll make the total cost thank you so much for coming and I have said most sensational I'd like to think the speaker whose purpose is to be too Florentine the the law now the future they enjoyed it so long when term I came across recently doing research on mostly microbes but then see how the bar are these DNA the steam transporters there's a term called the canteen all the fun on puts it and do you think it's a way to think about stuff so that hand genome is via a term like enough once I started sequencing the genomes of them of bacteria so for their full days sequence the genome of eco line or rather I should say the sea currents one kind or the coal mine that standard laboratory one that everybody steady cook it well in the decade twelve pray about three thousand genes now we know he caught well then the sequence another string to be cool I agree that the next one they did was one called a one five seventy seven which is the one that's on makes hamburger little dodgy sometimes if you don't cook it over with ruined because the spinach outbreak few years back the well will seem like a couple different no jeans in it that to make it kind of unhealthy as opposed to harm us up and I found I think it is about if an advocate roughly like a wicked third of the genes from K twelve were missing from one person extended by first he was crazy basically there was ever the backbone of the country call a team that though there were hundreds of genes that were not shared that so you have to read and Bagram like this in the sequence another in collecting on and they discovered that it had something in common one in the oven and for that and I get three vendor they started to get liking of twelve circles and diagrams after Whelan said this is crazy the snow they're very few genes that on eco like from a coal mine but no call no one eco limit of three thousand genes the painting that is pitching phenom all he could equalize I think they're up to twenty or thirty thousand more genomes in jeans and empty so and those genomes of it those genes are being moved from string to string vampires and so it's happening all the time typing in our bodies is happening in the environment on say you can't see yet safety you can just think of it being a genome for a speech he can do much more dynamic and complex than that so we're going to plant trees to cheat we are yet to it yet I might add and viruses etc there are other things to do it I mean that that that the virus is a show that showed the picture the cave of crystals in Mexico viruses in there of their closest relatives seem to be on the absurd the world in the oak so the virus is a traveling down probably two underground the connection it across the world viruses travel really fast you know the date they showed up with Bel Air show that the United States the ninety nine and a few years there across the whole time so the catcher in the airplanes details so just who travel to the ER up though the more likely to do the traveling birds in him if there is a case of West Nile virus on the uphill travel yes I mean that they are there our own plant viruses that are in it that spread across countries very quickly and so they might be reading on call and think that um in naked viruses don't do that well here that's why flu virus is the key to the bad winter because the trap of pain it's a nice new venue it's more likely to do to make it stick it in the summer its knees they get ready Venice Americans of it on the floor so commercial areas is a question of the goal is for any company referred to species due to the fifteen hundred species virus on board us what species but the species are a whole article about what is a species then on it is not even easy to define species among the animals and plants they get the virus is it's this kind of a night there and I'd even with microbes to mean basically done when I say species went up about a virus and in a relatively distinctive lineage that's different than on other kinds of viruses to sell the microbial guys talk about church functional species like the units from the set also claimed viruses reduce car handling issues um I don't think this thinking about virus species gotten that far as actually like a lot about the safest in a manner that there are so intense that the idea species is something that the really developed hats humans looking around the world to know what the what not he and um it's it's cut it at the quaint concept that doesn't really work in the microbial World series fifteen hundred for a piece with you but what's the number actually specified it really if it it all comes down to the tree the the evolutionary tree so these are fifteen hundred on this week's twenty yes I did wear where you know this is that from me and cleanse our car a really close to each other very very far away from the pages and so on if it's morbid evolution perspective let the record show use weaving poses hands very rapidly although not the only one we all crispy lot of clock has a question of stage therapy was exploring the early twentieth century could it be re thought yes it could be so I'd didn't have time to talk about this are thinking of it so pages were discovered in World War one by a Canadian foreign doctor named Felix derail he was cheating soldiers who were sick with dysentery France during the war and this day was horrible a killer at the time nor the back street on and he was analyzing them in one of the things they would use they would filter the stool samples and so he would actually fill temples and folded them I'm in a mix of water many would filter them finally few porcelain this too small for the cure to get through any of this clear solution and it can take the solution and then he would be to put it into a colony of dysentery bacteria to form the colon and he would kill them and he realize that Woody have worms viruses the only effect a cure for a controversial I get the time he had Nobel Prize winner saying you're crazy this is not right they turned out to be my palm and he immediately said I could use this to treat my knee patients the day and he was he would go and do one spectacular case after another cheering people with pages on it was such a sensation that others can read the book Aerosmith um that's based on develop into a movie out of it so a movie star now this my relatives and he actually went into business the company that became L'Oreal maybe the start of stage and say you could use sight and out to disinfect alone antibiotics from Tully knock this out in the West I'm in and people are shifted end of the text however fav therapy this known surviving the Soviet Union and there are researchers there would learn from derail his visit there and kept developing the face therapy Soviet soldiers are more wind would be treated with the moon sun on the front it to be the tree with pages applied after the father said the union the egg if it's fair to start to trickle back into West and now we have this horrible prices in the end of the next fakes there the stern of a kind of attractive again knowing that what was his or her well about it yes well for starters be no antibiotics on asana banks fail um we have very few new ones coming down the pipeline so we're getting to situation we have certain resistant strains of bacteria where you really hope that no one really heavy duty engine but it works on them because you got nothing else where at that point that we we had to spray fifty year Ryan wear and a button with a silver bullet to have everything and were starting to come to the end of that report doctors are dealing with patients they cannot treat don't have the job so and about ethics were just which are essentially in a chemical produced by microbes on it takes a very long time for them to go through the pipeline be developed we've got in nature has always pages I'm just at the ready to make it just you know and then for each a species of bacteria on their lots and lots of different species of the sages Beckett attack to say have this ready made no firm in Hokkien bleeding the devil we can engineer than now to make an even more effective so faint that the Mike finally come back this reduces Christian right feeling that it was so much death and destruction when we see more viruses to make smarter better looking on with but most were there for everyone there that there would be great um bought him a lot more like Jimmy coming up a virus is presumed that to make a smarter wonderfully and well certainly viruses are up to the viruses are an important part of gene therapy so viruses are being used as vehicles deliveries jeans to sell these therapy to cure disease can use their people like that to you it the you would have to figure out something that could could effectively and reliably in fact an embryo her for a light day and always insert in the right place I mean it's it's it's a tricky operation so the other for the caterpillars shoes crafted explode and assault you can do stuff like that can employers can make them smarter and more beautiful longer live for I think it's easier to make a caterpillar explode dissolved into making caterpillars this is such a debate that's my guess back to death and destruction a question from the area and that's easy of this anyway we would know if viruses that cause species extinction that's a good question were in the future of the future well um if it's conceivable on it's certainly the way that there are some viral ad breaks going on these days I'm there they're quite surprising how ravaging the owner and um so for example I mentioned to him that he and I do this for traverses the devices become one of us well um koalas right now actually dealing with I'm a really nasty lecture virus that is good and can stare and but it's also at the same time inserting itself into the genome so yes some cause that have that in all their souls in another's that dumped in the summer dying of cancer and calm it's really windy situations where there is they're just wondering if it found this could just do that to me you could can conceivably wipe them out unless you know the four say there's that if you cause I cough on an island haven't done this for us but so so yes it's imaginable that it is imaginable conceivable that some species have gone extinct because of buyers on with legal for use now of whether some researchers are testing this by looking at for sample of some of the species that died off a species of mammals that the top again unless I see them and they suggested that maybe few minutes showing up that nor does America have brought with them viruses and has a mini spread like crazy it and said actually trying to look for certain viruses in the frozen fish in the so was a speaker's chair we got to become a nation and its really when your parents showed up in the world that brought smallpox that chair you know that your tip the scales a question from me she had the youth are pre as precursors to viruses or perhaps degenerates or is this is the subject car the trio's our time miss all the proteins and home they when they come into contact with other proteins taken to the force then as it were to take their configuration and on its daily believed to be what's behind that cow disease and some other diseases like Koo Roo I'm an eyelid it's say that they're probably at their religious I think that those are just certain time and spun off from mammals are there these animals that are producing proteins and is to say a weakness of the particular kind of cooking I don't think that it has a youth the origin of viruses but so pretty up there or not crusader forces well they they will baby they certainly do raise this interesting question of what it means to be alive which is a question that people often ask my biases the move she's thinking ur sms therefore lot to us right so so so try and set some of the characteristics we think of and it's called findings being alive viruses have more of this thing so I would say they're kind of live if the couple decided to kill chili sauce reaching home tutu question is how much evidence for extraterrestrials viruses link to you given the steel viral national mutation you worry about synthetic buyers I'm ok so I'm if it's there there's there had been a bit of cleavage for quail canteen this idea of that viruses are raining down on us from space there's no evidence of that and down the week viruses are very much part of this bias here when you look at the jeans on and on aliens you know it but it's really interesting to think about I mean could they can of silly manage interplanetary travel times when the Chivas bacteria two viruses the Rockets knocked off years ago the market enhancement irises on board I would need something for those guys to infect them actors eyes in order for them to prosper back but as we saw how difficult it is for virus to get from you know that a mammal the humans um it that's not a done deal because you know if there is life on Mars it's probably fairly different than leave issued from of Greenland viruses ever hop from the list of speech yes they do yes and fortune the humans can typically viruses two species chimpanzees and gorillas are actually suffering from some of them some viruses are picking up from human contact which is to serve raising some questions about how much it or isn't even recent addition the grey skies week and we can bring them viruses that before that's can put it out in the pictures this is of the seriously out of the tree but this is some of them about materialistic is forgetting what flew her one for much of which we are releasing a memory we're not putting her on where that word out that in our bedding and the plants that their bed soon but just wherever in the neighborhood people laugh and I know gorillas are getting hit it's not clear to getting it from the surf it's coming from it it's the clouded the issue here I mean you are probably stopping terrorists is as we speak to the correction all in vivid detail right off you can view your IQ I don't know true everybody interim the seminary this game the fear that there were some people watching the video don't get that effect their loss his closing statement you're cool bought to catch a cold compress to catch a flu it takes more than one for sch it seems a good take some kind of thresholds quantity of the neo cloudy Cami and a certain level of sensitivity and receive her all that stuff but the quantity streak going it you know the guy behind you in the airplane sneezes was is different in that the species point to it up obviously the more they sneeze them more like the movie to get infected but you know a droplet could do it I mean a lot of viruses in the Joplin so it and yet takes more than one fat more than one virus to two to ensure the effect that in a single drop with me all the whole point of it so on didn't take much I would initially with the enormously Porsche career and we are if we are as susceptible to that small quantity of butter well and if if that if those viruses can get through all your defenses and they might be enough to make he said but Mr way we know we we are picking a virus is all the time and we're doing pretty good job of knocking them out we're just working every day where were were waging war and sometimes we don't notice that sometimes you know you may dislike wake up went into it so good and you just take it easy for the day in the next day you're here feeling better that might've been in L a via media bias be having it so it's it's happening all the times for bodies may be doing its own feature for you well they're there they're doing their own anti viral there there they're attacking Ryan was served for rule we usually deal with the players go to standard the new system or something he had just bought well there's there are lots of different ways to calm in a week and our bodies can make antibodies to recognize and attack some viruses on we actually have um you know genes that allow cells that are being invaded to to to fight off them we have some very cunning kind of strategy is encoded in a challenging don't suffer example on we have proteins that interfere the specter of viruses so that they mutate too much he increased the meditation and have been in prices and basically that meant that they have seven new facial meltdown so that they become less able to spread so so so so we had our own selves are tweaking the patient or a virus which is amazing well soon like locking up the league defeated by slowing down every teacher in the computer by speeding up to the Jews it's been yet actually there are about to researchers who are trying to adapt that concept bike if you had hepatitis or HIV you could take a pill that would increase that would that would be able to increase the mutation rates on so that the virus is the Pentagon this mutation overload but your own cells of the fallen and you know that's actually for age envious actually in clinical trials keep them to question the future you went to a list of things expect to happen you've been tracking this time it's an arguable point of science by Raul a tease moving very rapidly lot of everything and more discoveries and his understanding of that home but your sense of how the science will proceed to connect with it but what remains to be discover what's important um what do you think you'll be reporting for the next while scientists you keeping an eye on yet oh well live in a time when a couple things so I'm I'm really fascinated by the people who are looking for buyers is in extreme environments because they're really stretching out our understanding of where viruses live and what they can tolerate um I mean really viruses are the frontier of bio diversity because I mean if you took the place also frontier of evolution the fear that the evolutionary apparatus yes he described the ruins behind the times in a I don't assess a bad virus that he just didn't quite realize that the debt in it what they were capable of but of whether I can swim and buying you know these people looking for him buyers in the environment is that it if you take a catalog all the genes honor um probably most of them are viral g if you look at the diversity that the differences among teens most of that diversity of jeans is in the world viruses for them so if you want understand life on earth in its full complexity we happened to viruses and we've only just started I mean if you go I mean we have high school kids doing science experiments with a scoop up some dirt and they get to name virus is nice in a new species come that he had most of the viral genes are you scoop up and seawater soil or what have you they don't have any clothes counterpart in all the databases and jeans in the world so heavy so it's not like air purifying one little certain minor variation on unknown virus keep finding things are just out in left field every single time of the providers on and so to does that and then I'm also curious about I'm looking at what's going on inside of this whatever what are these the virus is doing for us inside us the four trillion the unsteady thank him for the village now thank you for that the uh the uh uh uh uh the in room mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm balloon loony the mm it it the