 What's the greatest work of poetry ever written in the English language? You can tell I'm a college professor because this is a multiple choice question There's only one answer. What's the greatest poem ever written? Excellent choice wasn't written in English originally though. I've got it here It's within old English. That's right. I've got the correct answer here though. It's Milton's Paradise Lost The other possibility is Spencer's Fairy Queen But Milton's Paradise Lost this is it's one of my Loveliest possessions, I suppose it's a miniature edition of Paradise Lost And this is the edition that a young naturalist Carried with him when he circumnavigated the globe in the 1830s So Darwin apparently had a field jacket Cut for his The Voyage on the Beagle and he had a special pocket sewn into it that would into which he could slip these miniature editions He loved Paradise Lost and he committed large chunks of the poem to to memory and there's a vein of scholarship that actually suggests that the Some of the patterns in Paradise Lost are actually replicated in Darwin's On the Origin of Species published in 1859 There is a miniature edition and Darwin's eyes were much better Than than mine are now so I'll take my glasses off and I'm just gonna read you a few lines from the poem Need a microscope for this part of the talk actually In this pleasant soil His far more pleasant garden God ordained Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow all trees of noblest kind for sight smell taste and all amid them stood the tree of life High eminent blooming ambrosial fruit of vegetable gold and next to life our death The tree of knowledge grew fast by I Love this particular line And all amid them stood the tree of life and that's really a Metaphor that I used throughout the book the amoeba in the room If we think about Eden it's easy, I think to revel in the idea of an Eden when we're in a tropical rainforest or when we're When we're where snorkeling over a coral reef Less so when we're just going about our daily business in a city But yet this this theme and all amid them stood the tree of life is actually true It's true of us right now, and it's true of you As you sit and me as I stand So rather than talking about a tropical rainforest, I'm going to introduce to you a Little garden pond my garden pond in Ohio. I live close to Cincinnati and You know a PowerPoint will be useless here. You can picture just a little pond Six fish swim around the ripples from a little pump that circulates the water Frogs visit from time to time and are attacked by my cats This doesn't seem like a place of teeming biological diversity But when we look more closely it becomes clear that the little pond is a place of quite mind-blowing biological riches The water contains Trillions of bacteria ten times more viruses and the diversity of eukaryotes is incredible eukaryotes being Organisms like us our cells We have 23 pairs of chromosomes that are packaged in a nucleus in each of our cells and Other eukaryotes then also have a nucleus as the house where the chromosomes are stuffed and I'll talk a little bit about these these unicellular or microbial eukaryotes shortly, but looked out from a broad perspective We discovered that every kind of living thing really is represented in this pond And all amid them stood the tree of life. We don't have to go to a rainforest There are for example in the pond multiple amoeba zones Cryptomonad algae diatoms and water molds dino flagellates gorgeous Shell to me be called riserians colonies of sparkling green algae and an apple green Alga called the uglenoid that glides through the water if you look at these these organisms You take a little bit of time as I have done to look at them under the microscope. They are absolutely Beautiful this is one of life's great experiences at this time of year before the leaves are out in my part of the country my pond turns this this bright apple green and it's it's because of the Billions and billions of these uglenoid algae that bloom under these conditions of a quite highlight intensity and looked at under the microscope each one of these cells is like a Valentine's Box of candy at their heart-shaped and they they they move they they they sway to and fro and as they swim They they rotate and then they also swim through this wider guy. They're absolutely beautiful The dino flagellates in the pond have got little eyes called eye spots and they use these structures to find the optimal position in the water column For their photosynthetic activity The there is a dino flagella. Unfortunately, it doesn't grow in my pond, but you could find it in the In the ocean here in California. In fact, that's where it's been Studded it's a it's a particular dino flagella. It's a single cell. It's a single eukaryote cell But it has an eye sticking out from one side. It's a modified eye spot and absolutely beautiful cell and It really is an eye. We don't really know what it does, but it is an eye. It has a crystalline lens It's got a photoreactive cup and some beautiful work at Scripps Oceanographic Institute in the 1960s was done by this sort of micro Ophthalmologists where the scientists actually flicked out these eyes from these individual cells and and did some Probably is it this one or this one? He figured out that it had a 30 degree field of view and that this single cell could actually perceive Oncoming predators at a distance of a few centimeters or something like a copepod Rather than a sperm whale, I suppose and and and could swim out of the way of the predator This is a single cell and it's got this structure That looks like an eye and is an eye. Although we don't really know everything about what it does In addition to the figs to the figs to the fish and the frogs in my pond There are microscopic animals including nematode worms water bears and rotophers and when biologists carve up organisms into big Slices referred to as supergroups. So these are much larger groups than kingdoms of organisms We find in fact that the animals are united with the fungi in a single supergroup called the epistocons The the animal relatives in my pond then these fungi actually swim around with undocumented Abundance, we know very very little about the biology of these these organisms and these are these are fungi that have have cilia They're rather like human sperm cells and they swim around in the water There's far more genetic diversity in the pond in in the form of bacteria and archaea that are Like bacteria in that they lack nuclei. This is a separate supergrouping of organisms and then that genetic diversity again is eclipsed by the viruses because for every cell in the pond There are at least 10 to 100 viruses that prey upon that cell Tremendous genetic diversity in the pond and here's something that that's surprising After centuries of taxonomic inquiry and using the latest molecular genetic methods So these are referred to as as metagenomic methods We're still unable to document all of the life in my pond Which is why it should gain National park status soon, but we could say the same probably about I'm sure we could find a pond around here pretty quickly And all amid them stood the tree of life. It's interesting with these metagenomic methods that I write about these methods in the book trying to boil things down to some sort of Straightforward descriptions the cost of these methods is as plunged. It's absolutely an astonishing technological Achievement business achievement, too About 10 years ago. It cost 95 million dollars to sequence a human-sized genome Today we can sequence we I can do this Scientists can sequence a human-sized genome for less than $6,000 So I thought about this a bit and I thought if we could apply the same economies to the automobile industry I could go out and purchase a brand new Rolls Royce for less than the cost of a of a Thanksgiving turkey Unfortunately, I don't drive a Rolls Royce Hasn't happened yet So we'll all be having our genome sequence pretty soon But even with this technology the the the the genetic variation the abundance of organisms in the pond over a trillion cells It's just it's impossible We could keep sequencing and I don't think we'd ever ever get to the bottom of of it Earth air and sea let me just talk a little bit about The spectacular numbers and diversity of microorganisms in different locations each pinch of soil teams with tens of millions of bacteria And hundreds of millions of viruses and is permeated with networks of fungal filaments These organisms control soil fertility and support the growth of plants while other microorganisms coat the surface of plants and Also colonize their internal tissues So when we look at an individual plant arose In fact, we're looking at a rich biological community. We're not just looking at one organism And the same is true of us trillions of bacteria I'm sure you're aware trillions of bacteria live in our guts and they affect every aspect of our well-being and I'll come back To the human microbiome in a couple of minutes Our air supply is microbial to Spores of fungi float into our lungs with every breath and there are plenty of them to go around with an estimated 50 Million tons of spores ejected into the atmosphere every year and that's just that's not just a guess There are reasons why we could talk about this as you beautiful science That actually allows us to come up with this admittedly ballpark estimate But 50 million tall tons of spores 50 megatons of spores Flung into the atmosphere every year. These particles are the bane of the asthmatics existence They affect the chemistry of the air and They even influence patterns of rainfall I've got a graduate student doctoral student in Ohio That's actually looking at this some of the chemistry involved in that extraordinary claim that claim that micro organisms can affect can affect Rainfall patterns seawater seawater is a soup of microbes Most of us left document documentaries about killer whales sharks are of course always a reliable draw on television And it's easy to ignore the fact that microbes run the show For the animals a cup of seawater contains a hundred million bacteria Trillions of four excuse me billions of predatory viruses. There's a single kind of photosynthetic bacterium That absorbs more carbon dioxide than all of the world's rainforests a Single kind of cyanobacterium it grows flourishes in the open ocean It's a greater refrigerant than all of the world's Tropical rainforests diatoms actually marine diatoms that the beautiful cells Circular centric diatoms they form these glass boxes beautiful things to look at in the microscope But they're responsible for about the same amount of photosynthesis as the cyanobacteria So together if we look at the diatoms and the cyanobacteria They're doing more to control the climate than all of the green Plants on land microbes get more air play in extreme environments where nothing else lives There are these are care that I mentioned earlier there There are separate grouping of organisms from the bacteria. This was recognized very controversial at the time It was recognized by a scientist called Karl woes in the 1970s But the Archaea were a separate group of organisms that lacked nuclei They they're actually They're prolific there. They're almost everywhere, too But we tend to associate them with extreme environments. So there's an Archaea that lives Is capable of Continuing of capable of cell division at 121 degrees C Celsius Which is interesting because 121 degrees is the temperature that we use in a lab or hospital autoclave to sterilize Instruments so this organism it's called pyrolobus. Actually, it's a strain called strain 121 because it divides it 121 degrees C and in the paper that first described this it was Great witticism for for a peer-reviewed scientific paper. It said that it's chilled below 90 degrees because it quits dividing So it has to work between 90 and 121 degrees Cold environments. There's a there's another Another Archaea that divides only once a month at the bottom of an Antarctic lake Methanogenium I think it's frigidum is its Latin name The most acid-tolerant thing there's an Archaea that can grow at pH 0.06. That's more acidic than battery acid How is this possible? radioactive Resistance there's a bacterium called dinococcus that survives 15,000 grays of ionizing Radiation humans a toast of five grays, you know total absorbance So this thing can survive and actually the reason we know that is is tragic, but interesting, but it's from studies of the Very careful studies of the first responders to the Chernobyl disaster in the 1980s You know exactly what kind of dose we know exactly what dose they have radioactivity they received and we can look at the Consequences to that to their health We don't have to go to such extreme places to find extreme or interesting environments are our own homes our bathrooms and our Laundry rooms are Places where we find incredible microbial diversity We think about a bathroom and a hot water faucet. I mean there are lots and lots of microorganisms including fungi There are very hot places then in a bathroom there are very Alkaline conditions that we find in a laundry room laundry detergents Very very alkaline conditions and you'll find incredible diversity of microbes in these places a dishwasher is a place of extraordinary diversity Yet to be accorded national park status These organisms make extraterrestrial life seem plausible And the current interest is in Jupiter's moon Europa Saturn's moon Titan and all of these Goldilocks planets that are discovered With what every week we hear of new Goldilocks planets So how have we learned all this? Microbes are everywhere But invisible or they were so before the invention of the microscope in the 17th century The revelation that there was more to life than the immediately observable was a discovery of immense significance and Yet this was sidelined by a continuing What? narcissism self-obsession with our own specialness and Linnaeus and other or Linnaeus and other natural historians of the 18th century Cataloged plants and animals and just ignored the microscopic majority Linnaeus was particularly upset with the fungi he had no Interest in them. What did he call them? I think he called them. He gave them a name at one one edition of the system and naturally The 18th century called it said we'll just call them all one thing fungus I do forget Chaos fun fun gorem all of the fungi chaos fun gorem. We're just going to ignore them When microbiological inquiry was restimulated by Louis Pasteur in the 19th century It became the science of germs and infectious disease The point was not to glory in the diversity of microbes, but to exterminate them And so even in the 19th century most of life was disregarded and We still teach biology most of us most biology teachers K through 12 and in college to Teach biology from a very macro biological perspective that elevates humanity and so the situates us as the triumph of a three and a half billion year old evolutionary process It's interesting if you look at You can you know Google image this or go into a school classroom and look at look at trees of life And it's it's amazing and in still in many many textbooks, too That you've got it's mostly animals and most of the real genetic diversity and metabolic diversity of life Is hidden under a an amoeba or a hairy bacterium at the base of the tree? This is still the way that we we look at a biology Plenty plenty the The elder was it the elder plenty the elder died in 8079 for Suvious he was so interested in seeing the volcano anyway got too close and He perished but plenty the elder published the Historia naturalis and you can buy this in the lobe classics edition It's like I twelve volumes. I think and in this book plenty had this very modest goal of Documenting everything in the world And he got to thirteen volumes twelve thirteen volumes and he perished at the Suvious didn't quite get there and It's actually a fascinating read or parts of it are he describes all these strange animals that are based on descriptions from Travelers at the time, you know many-headed monsters and Snakes that could destroy you by looking at you or make you pregnant or amazing things fascinating book So it's obviously futile Plenty ask to to to to engage in this this this idea of just documenting everything Thinking that we could know everything but the thing is I think we're still doing this and If I give this talk in Boston, I have to be very careful what I say because The deity that is EO Wilson is the Harvard professor there, but EO Wilson put his name behind and a brilliant brilliant biologist and Specialist the EO Wilson put his name behind the tree of the encyclopedia of life projects some years ago it's really really interesting and this is this this exists on online and Scientists can upload descriptions of different organisms and in the original sort of mission statement It reads just like plenty we're going to describe Everything we're going to put a lot of resources into this and we're going to figure out what's on earth Figure out all the species name them on if you go on there What you find is that most of the time it's new species of crabs and lobsters big things that have been described There's a few microorganisms there But it's mostly animals There are some really big names in in biology in Europe to Lord May of the Royal Society. He had a paper in Paper in science. I think it was last year But there have been a number of these sort of calls to action where we need to the argument is that we need to document all of the species on earth and that we need to put What would be hundreds of millions of dollars into this activity global activity to name everything? There are so many problems with that enterprise that I'm only going to tell you about two of them One of the problems is that it's impossible We among the microorganisms for most most of life. We really don't know what a species is. There's no species concept It's philosophically unsound We can't possibly document species when we really don't have a proper definition of what a species is Most of life doesn't operate like us So that's the first thing it's futile on those ground. The other thing is why would we do this? Why would we take funding from other areas and engage in this this this this Pliny ask cataloging of biological diversity? What before it all goes extinct What's what's the rationale for doing this? And actually that one of the one of the papers actually says that it's only by knowing how many species are out there that We can properly document rates of extension extinction. This seems to me to be Perhaps even morally reprehensible. We're trying to create sort of some stone tablets or E tablets That that was that the aliens can come and find them Some years from now and say boy. Look at what a mess they made they managed to Kill 10 million species in a short space of time anyway Medicine more positive news each of us carries a microbiome of 100 trillion actually probably one quadrillions the number that's going to be published. I'm going to be discussed More frequently in the future about one quadrillion bacteria in our guts Kilogram or so of pure bacteria in us right now Along with a smaller number of Archaea there are Archaea then our guts that are responsible for methane production and Lots of single celled eukaryotes to including fungi and we don't know what most of them do What do the ones that we what do the known knowns do? So when we eat plant carbohydrates complicated Sugar-based molecules the human genome actually lacks the instructions for breaking down those materials We're very very good. We're actually better than the other great apes surviving great apes at breaking down starch But when it comes to the other large polysaccharides, we can't break them down We don't produce the enzymes necessary to break those materials down those materials are actually the the enzymes to break them down are released by bacteria in the gut and These bacteria then release short chain fatty acids little molecules that we could look fuel our metabolism We can burn those things errant populations of bacteria Are linked to all kinds of autoimmune autoimmune diseases there may be a relationship between asthma and disturbance to the Infant microbiome so these organisms are important for our digestive activities, but also for our health and well-being More surprising still Are the results of experiments on mice which suggest the aspects of our behavior? Particularly levels of anxiety may be modulated by organisms in the gut. These are absolutely beautiful experiments where in There are these facilities. They're not a biotic noto biotic Lines of mice rats also that lack bacteria in the guts and they have to be given a special diet So that they can absorb enough calories to keep keep going But what they found in these experiments or with observing these animals is the ones without the bacteria in their guts are Less anxious they do all kinds of weird things that mice wouldn't normally do So if you put them in a maze They say okay. We'll just they do they say what to one another We're just gonna wander around here, but we're not going to get stressed out and they they don't seem to be worried by dark places and They're just not doing a lot of twitching of their whiskers and So there you go these bacteria in the mouse gut seem to modulate the Behavior of the mice and what goes for mice surely goes For man or likely so when you eat slice of toast in the morning full of complex plant carbohydrates in the wheat Perhaps if you look out of the window and you feel happy who's sending the signals Because the calories in that toast are not going to be released So you're going to get the sugar burst from the starch But most of the calories in that toast are not going to be released for hours after you Swallow it last point philosophy I um My job part of my job then I'm in a part of my job is administrative that I run this undergraduate program and it's The Western program and it's an interdisciplinary program. It's exposes me to Lots and lots of different subject areas our students study Certainly some of them study scientific subjects, but others are studying all kinds of other things and I so I have to become Quite adept at bluffing my way through different Meetings with faculty so that they don't know that I have no clue about their own areas of specialization that I'm a science and so a scientist and So I have to come up with different Phrases that I can use that seem to suggest that I'm learning in their areas and So for for anybody that's a theologist I use always use the word ecumenical because nobody knows what it means. I Don't know what it means for philosophers. It's some Cartesian Yeah, that would be Cartesian wouldn't it? so it gets a Cartesian way of looking you can apply that to Changing the oil in your car. I think it's great. I've got a car. I should that should be the next book or come up with You know phrases for bluffing your way out of Faculty meetings, but anyway speaking of philosophy Vast knowledge in this area We are as I've described in the last few minutes mobile ecosystems in the 17th century Descartes said I think therefore I am But this faith in the integrity of the individual seems a bit naive in light of all that the new biology is teaching us So I'm just going to read a brief excerpt here and then open this to questions Surveying the solar system for its natural resources the perceptive Extraterrestrial would report that our planet is swarming with viral and bacterial genes The visitor might comment that a few of these genes have been strung together into large assemblies capable of running around and branching toward the sunlight It's time I believe For us to embrace this kind of objectivity and recognize that the macro biological bias that drives our Exploration and teaching of biology is no more sensible than trying to evaluate English literature by reading nothing but a harry potter book The science of biology would benefit from a philosophical reboot And I do thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to Come and listen to me talk about microbes for half an hour. So thank you