The Next Software Revolution: Life. | Andrew Hessel | TEDxSanFrancisco

a lot of people tell me I live in the future I like that it's kind of fun I never look backwards but the future is coming at us faster and faster and I want to walk you into my world now I'm a little hard to define I'm part scientist part businessman part mm-hmm really a tinkerer I've pulled everything apart that I've ever owned see how it works with the exception of the cat I usually describe myself as a cell biologist and I want to introduce you to my little friends because we're all used to our cell phones but these cells which are the really the foundation of every living thing on this planet are really unknown to most people and that's because they're microscopic we didn't even know they existed until about 400 years ago and as you can see they're doing a lot of stuff there's a lot of things going on in these cells they're manufacturing proteins and lipids and organizing copying DNA and separating the chromosomes as the cells divide these are the most powerful little factories on the planet these can make thousands of different compounds these have been around for four billion years in an unbroken chain of life that continues to branch out and create new forms cell biology is absolutely beautiful and it's addicting if you start looking under a microscope at these little organisms whether they be bacterial single cells or eukaryotic cells like the cells that make us cells are so complex cells are so mysterious remember we've only known about them for four hundred years and we haven't had great tools to look at them we still ascribe their creation to deities we still look at we we we say to scientists if they try and monkey with this cell that they are playing God it's remarkable and yet these cells are everywhere we have 50 trillion cells in our own body and scientists tell us we may have 10 times more bacterial cells in and on us cells are everywhere now we've been D convoluting the wiring of cells for as long as we've known about them we've started to map the biochemistry and it's all tangled it's like it's like trying to untangle the ingredients in a bubbling pot of soup but we're getting pretty good at it because we're learning how to share information and record it in computers this is that wiring D convoluted this is really the wiring diagram of a eukaryotic cell this is from a from a database it's the overview the high-level overview and it's really the sum total of thousands of scientists working decades putting all this together now you can drill into this database here I'm just going into one particular sugar pathway that generates different molecules and you can start to see every compound every chemical that's made and every enzyme catalyzing every reaction this is a remarkable data asset and it's available to everyone and this is really again it's like looking at a complex wiring diagram of an of a computer chip or a car but more than that we can actually go down into the code the genetic code that makes all of these reactions all this biochemistry all this magic and that's because of this project that was started conceived in the 1980s a long time ago started a formally in 1990 first draft completed in 2000 and all the t's crossed and and essentially the project wrapped up in 2003 that's a long time ago 14 years since this wrapped up but it hasn't really stopped it just keeps it was just really the starting point for what we know with genomics the human genome project was successful because of the promise of sequencing the human genome the scientists said look it's going to be expensive we figure it'll cost about three billion dollars we figure it'll take 15 years but if we can read the of a human being we'll know more about cancer we'll know more about health we'll we'll just what what could be more powerful than understanding the program that makes people most of us has never looked at this data now we end up with technology that is accelerating to generate this type of data the first genome was 3 billion dollars the second one was about a hundred million dollars and I just had my genome sequenced a few months ago for under a thousand dollars there's there's been very few technologies this may be the only technology that has ever decreased in price and increased in performance so fast that most of us don't use know about or care about this is remarkable but things are shifting we're not just reading genomes anymore which today is informing things like our cancer treatments telling us what microbes are in the environment allowing us to really understand their food crops etc now we have been have got tools to actually start writing genomes and I don't mean modifying genomes modifying genomes the way it used to be done remember we've been doing genetic engineering since the 1970s modifying genomes is really just flipping a couple of bits here and they're reorganizing a few things adding in one new trait or ability maybe a few I'm talking we actually have tools now that allow us to take electronic data electronic code and turn it into genetic code to actually write DNA this gives us the ability to program cells to program them from scratch with intention with atomic control this is really powerful stuff and I've been exploring this field ever since 2003 when we wrapped up the genome it's what led me to this phanie autodesk autodesk makes design software ones and zeros we don't actually make physical products we make design tools and that's because to make complex things like cars or buildings or cities or to do visualization and simulation that is photorealistic like we use for movies you need really really powerful software tools design tools simulation tools and I knew that if if it takes these types of tools to go and design a car or a new phone we're definitely going to need this type of tool to design a metabolic pathway or to design a cell even a simple one I was really fortunate that in 2009 I got to meet the CEO and CTO of Autodesk Atta at a function and I said to them I love what your tools do but you only make dead stuff do you want to make living things too and instead of running they said yeah that sounds really cool let's look into that and they looked into it for almost three years and then they found it a life science group to do exactly that and I joined that group right away and while I was waiting for my HR paperwork to process I was sitting in New York I was thinking about the future and I thought man it's time for another genome project we need big thinking again because since 2003 when the last one wrapped up there was just dead silence about what we were gonna do next we'd gone into the world of omics but what are a mix it's just other data Sciences I thought what if we what if isn't it time for another genome project where now we write a human genome rather than just read it what what possibilities could open up if we did that and I don't mean and I'll say this right now make synthetic babies I'm saying right the three billion base pairs of human genetic code accurately properly put it into a cell and demonstrate that it works runs the cell and allows the cells to divide nothing happened after I wrote that article who was kind of dead air that was 2012 but in 2015 shortly after I just done this orientation at the White House about inspiring inventors to go out and invent I end up at a meeting for something called the synthetic yeast project and this is actually the most sophisticated genetic engineering project on the planet they're synthesizing a yeast genome which is about 12 million base pairs of code that's pretty cool 16 chromosomes yeast are more like us than they are like bacteria and the project was going well and I said well what do you want to do next and they asked me what do you want to do next they say I think you should do the human genome wrong audience it was like but I noticed something all the old people were kind of looking frightened and all the young people were like oh because the first genome project ignited my career they saw the potential that this could just open doors so I felt I had to push the boundaries because again I had this new ambassador position to go and push people so I called up these two scientists I called up George Church he's famous in genetics super open great sense of humor open mind you know just love the guy and I said George you were part of the first genome project I nominate you to be the leader of the next genome project to write a human genome and it took about 30 minutes on a phone call to forget him - for him to say yes but he had one condition he said the leader of the yeast genome project that's doing all this amazing genetic engineering needs to be a part of it that guy's name is dr. Jeff bucha and Jeff is at NYU and he's kind of the polar opposite of George he's he's really quiet and thoughtful and really really thinks about things a long time and he wasn't so sure that this was a good idea and that he wanted to attach his name to it but he did after three months of thinking about it he saw the value and I have to hand it to a nancy kelly a close friend that is a lawyer and as really good at putting scientists together and working with them for for bringing Jeff in and together we formed a little team of people that created a nucleus for the next genome project two world-class scientists one crazy catalyst and a lawyer that could do all the paperwork and manage a complex project so we just need one more thing money you always need money to do anything so I went to see this guy this is Carl bass and Carl was the CEO of Autodesk at the time and as you can see he's a pretty casual guy this is his work where and he's a maker and I I said Carl I you know I like to chase cars I I think I caught a train and I need some help he said what do you need and I said I need some money he goes how much I said Lots he goes give me a number okay I said well I think we can get going with a quarter million dollars that's enough to bring scientists together let's see if we can't kick started with that what else do you need I need your rolodex because I got to call a lot of people and ask for more money and he said done he was a seven minute conversation with that check in hand things got rolling and we started writing a white paper we started organizing we started calling other genetic scientists and thinking about this paper week we talked to editors at journals and we organized a meeting in New York in May 2016 that got branded as secret we already knew that putting human in front of genome was going to be provocative for people particularly when you add synthesis but when you put secret in front of it oh my god it's so good scientists don't get any tension and all of a sudden we got a hundred million pageviews in 200 different news sources and suddenly everyone was talking about the next genome project so cool but it wasn't really secret that's the I wish it was but it was published just a few days later and in fact we had a hundred and thirty-five people at the meeting and they're tweeting it's not like it's that secret but the genome project right was published and honestly I wouldn't have thought in a million years that I'd end up working with these eminent scientists pushing them to do something like this and getting them to think about this and again we created a website around this and started to pull people in and start sharing information but everyone always asked me why do this come on we make human genomes all the time your genomes were made we roll some dice in a bedroom boom you got a human genome why do we need to synthesize a human genome and the fact is we don't but we are synthesizing viruses and bacteria and reprogramming cells and there's an entire industry flourishing around this and we don't have things like standards ethics international collaborations we don't have the networks of scientists working together we don't have the funding to bring in people and engage them and we weren't communicating with the public well most people had never heard of synthetic biology this is just an overview of some of the companies that are doing cell reprogramming and synthesis there's more than I can keep track of today it's a growing industry worth billions of dollars and probably trillions in the future we need the tools and the technology and a framework for doing this type of engineering because it's possibly the most powerful and important technology humans have ever created CRISPR a gene editing technology is all already being used to do genetic surgeries on human embryos and and for many other tasks it's an amazing technology but what happens when we can synthesize human genomes because every time one of our cells divide a human genome is written we need to start thinking about this stuff now today ten years early I'm not too worried about it because this little girl my daughter named Rosalind after one of the scientists that was instrumental in discovering the DNA molecule or or we just call her row or row row row it was my teacher she was made in an IVF lab in new york ivf forty years ago was pretty controversial it's not today there's five million kids by ivf and i tell you if we if they end up this way naturally or if we do a little genetic surgery and they end up this happy or even if i upgraded her so she didn't get things like cancer can see in the dark I'm a happy camper she's teaching me but there's darker visions and if you've seen this movie you've probably touched on some of those visions it's a great movie by the way go it's probably the best movie and bioengineering I've seen in 20 years but here's the truth biology is the only sustainable technology that we have you don't have to mow down a rain forest you just make the rain forest work for you it's infinitely scalable it's not going away it's been around for four billion years and it has a simple programming language that is universal we're adding a billion people every 12 years still I think this is the technology that heals our world meets all of our needs gives us a better standard of living cures our diseases I hope that you learn a little about synthetic biology I hope you check out the genome project right and the amazing people now for 200 scientists from a hundred institutions around the world that are organizing I welcome you into my world and when you look back in ten years you'll say he was right dare to know you

Channel: TEDx Talks

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Keywords: TEDx

Id: JbZiJpbY-MY

Length: 18min 52sec (1132 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 31 2017