Good evening.
So welcome to the
geology lecture hall
in the Museum of
Natural History.
I'll be introducing
tonight's speakers.
I'm delighted but
not surprised to see
how many people have showed up.
I want to begin by
acknowledging the Harvard
Museum of Natural
History for sponsoring
this event in coordination
with the Microbial Science
Initiative.
We're here to celebrate a
number of things around the two
speakers.
The first is their
book, which I think
we'll hear a little about soon.
And the second is an
exhibit on the wonders
of the microbial world.
And after we're
finished here, we'll
adjourn there for a
reception and book
signing and further discussion.
If some of us seem a little
more nervous than usual,
that's because this is
being live streamed around
the world on Facebook,
so there will
be all kinds of people
who can't understand
a word that I'm saying but can
appreciate all the pictures.
I came here 15 years ago.
And as you might imagine,
at a place like this,
there were lots of people
telling me what I should do.
And the best advice I
got was from a friend
named Chris Walsh.
And he said, do you
know this guy Roberto
Kolter in the micro department?
I said, no.
No, actually, I don't.
And he said, well, I
better introduce you.
And as I said, that
was 15 years ago.
Roberto was already
a fixture here.
He'd been here 20 years already.
And since then, we've
had a wonderful series
of scientific explorations
and a growing friendship
and travels together.
Roberto was born in Guatemala.
Most of his education from high
school on was in this country,
first at Carnegie Mellon, then
at UCSD, where he got his PhD,
and then at Stanford.
And since then, he's been
here at Harvard Medical School
in the Department
of Microbiology.
He's done outstanding research.
I won't say much
about that except
to note that he's won
a number of prizes
and served as president
of the American
Society of Microbiology.
What I really would
like to talk about
is sort of Roberto's
singular identity,
both at Harvard in the medical
school, at Harvard the larger
university, and
around the world.
In the medical
school, he's unique
because almost every
other microbiologist
at the medical school is
trying to kill microbes.
Roberto is trying
to celebrate them
in all their diversity
and the contributions
that they make to the planet.
And he also has played
an extraordinary role
in education.
Not only has he taught all
kinds of graduate courses
in microbiology.
He started the Microbial
Science Initiative
to bring a like-minded
community together.
He taught freshman
seminar for many years,
got me interested in
teaching a freshmen seminar.
And he just won't quit.
He goes all around the world
giving workshops, giving
educational lectures,
talking to young people.
One of his most recent projects,
one still being worked on
to show how selfless he can
be, is on microbes and food.
And for that, he's had
to travel to wineries.
He's had to travel to
artisanal cheese shops.
He's had to travel to chocolate
plantations and chocolatiers.
He's traveled to breweries.
And I've never heard
a word of complaint.
And so that's just
one small example.
So that's Roberto, one of the
people we'll hear from tonight.
His partner this evening
and in many enterprises
is Scott Chimileski.
Scott is a post-doctoral
fellow in Roberto's lab.
As an undergraduate, he studied
microbiology and English.
Then he got his PhD
in microbiology,
and then a few years ago came
here to work in Roberto's lab.
Roberto's lab, as
you might imagine,
is a rather eclectic place,
and Scott is unusual even
in that environment.
He came, I think,
because Roberto
is interested in studying--
well, Roberto, let
me start over again.
Roberto himself is a
very gregarious guy,
and so he doesn't like
to have pictures of just
a single bacterial cell.
He likes to have lots of cells
and organized structures.
He likes to have cells
of different kinds.
He likes to have cells
of very different things.
And those can make for
some striking images.
And Scott has become an
accomplished photographer.
It's not easy to take
pictures of things
as small as what
we're hearing about.
There are a number of
different techniques involved,
and Scott has
mastered all of them.
And together, they've
made a remarkable team.
Roberto because he can
give such an evocative talk
or write so glowingly about
microbes and the things
they do, and Scott, not so
much for his technical skills
but for his aesthetic sense, has
made images to match the words.
And the images are
really remarkable.
I can't get enough
of looking at them.
And in some sense,
they're very simple.
One of my favorite
early Scott images
is on the cover of the
Journal of Bacteriology,
which probably not everyone
here is familiar with.
But this particular cover
is called "Slime Mold Eating
Bacteria."
And the title says it all.
That's what it is.
It's a slime mold
eating bacteria.
And it's a still
picture, obviously.
But it's really striking in
its composition and the way
you get a sense of how these
bacteria are being devoured.
Anyway, those are the two
people you'll be hearing from.
As I understand it, the
format is probably closest
to a tag-team
wrestling match, where
one talks, and then the other,
and then the first one again.
So Roberto.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
Thank you, John--
Wonderful introduction.
I'm touched.
And I should say this
is extremely exciting.
I'm very happy to
see all of you here.
John and Andrea and Mitch, as
you all know how excited I am
and how important I think
this is because I went out
an ironed my linen guayabera.
And they know because
they bought it--
we bought it all together.
So this is very
important for me.
When I put this
on, it's serious.
So I thank you all for coming,
and tonight is very special.
We're here to celebrate
the book, as John has said.
And the talk is going
to be a mano a mano,
and we'll be going
back and forth.
And I already will
now dim the lights
because I believe the
images are so beautiful.
And so hopefully--
Diana warned me that
this is soporific.
I think it's OK because I
don't think you guys will
fall asleep, at least I hope.
The wonders of the
microbial world--
so speaking about
wonders, I hope
you have been wondering
about this image,
because I find it so beautiful.
And I'll come back to it.
But one of the things
that scientists
must do as part of
their profession is we
must communicate science.
And we must do it in a
way that is effective.
And from my own
personal perspective,
an image is such a powerful way
to open up that communication.
And the image is
beautiful, and that beauty
can inspire or evoke in
the viewer a curiosity.
And out of that will arise
questions that if I can then
begin to answer or point in the
direction towards an answer,
then I think that gain of
knowledge that the viewer will
get is much more meaningful.
So if I can talk about an image
that I'm passionate about,
then I can hopefully make
that a little bit contagious.
Take, for example, an image
that is particularly dear
to me, that of my granddaughter.
So this is Amelia, Amelia
and her wonderful smile.
And so I am passionate
about Amelia.
And very easily, just from
seeing the reaction of you,
you immediately connect
with that image.
And now we can begin,
because immediately you want
to know, oh, what's her name?
And when did she do this?
When did she do that?
And da, da, da, da,
and does she look
more like your son, or
et cetera, et cetera?
So images have a powerful way of
making that connection possible
that will then begin to be
able to ask questions, answer
questions.
This next image is
fascinating to me,
and I wonder how many
of you have seen it.
So it's a beautiful image.
It's awe inspiring because
I can tell you about it,
and I can share some
of the knowledge
that I find amazing
that we as humans have
been able to accomplish
this amount of knowledge.
So this is known, the
eXtreme Deep Field.
It's a very, very
well-known image
that the Hubble took
after a 20-day exposure.
And it's been
focused, the Hubble,
onto one of the darkest
part of the sky.
It's an area very
small, maybe covers
the amount that covers the Moon.
So it's not a huge
part of the universe.
But in it are some of the
most distant galaxies.
In this image there are
some 6,500 galaxies.
Just imagine that,
what means 6,500.
And the dimmest reds--
the reds are the ones that
are traveling away from Earth.
The blues are the ones that
are coming towards Earth.
And the dimmest reds are 13
billion light years away.
Now we can not imagine
what is a billion.
We can not imagine
what's is a light year.
Now what is 13
billion light years?
Now this kind of image,
once I tell you what it is,
will definitely inspire
a certain amount
of awe and curiosity.
And naturally, you will ask
questions like, who am I?
What's all this existence about?
What is going on?
What is this Earth?
So it's this kind of images
that I think are so powerful
and make science communication
a wonderful thing.
But you know, I have a feeling
that not all astronomers
throughout history have been
able to communicate that kind
of enthusiasm to a crowd.
And why do I say that?
Because the wonderful poet of
the 19th century, Walt Whitman,
said something quite
interesting in one of his poems
that is collected in Leaves
of Grass, a poem that is known
as "When I Heard the
Learned Astronomer."
"When I heard the
learned astronomer,
when the proofs, the figures,
were ranged in columns
before me, when I was shown
the charts and the diagrams
to add, divide,
and measure them,
when I, sitting, heard the
astronomer, where he lectured
with much applause in the
lecture room, how soon
unaccountable I
became tired and sick.
Till rising and gliding out,
I wandered off by myself
in the mystical, moist
night air, and from time
to time looked up in perfect
silence at the stars."
Now what is it about
some scientists
that when you hear them,
how soon unaccountable,
I become tired and sick?
And it's our duty
to communicate.
And there's something that
scientists need to learn,
that there is a
way to communicate,
and there's a way to
communicate by having
images that evoke in the viewer
particular feelings, emotions.
Because if I show you
another image of the stars,
I think it will evoke
something in you.
So very few people here will
not recognize van Gogh's "Starry
Night," painted
around the same time
that that poem was written.
And it gives you a very
different sense of looking up
in the silence at the stars.
And once you see
that, I can tell you
that this was painted from
his room in the asylum
that he had taken his ear
off and he had walked himself
into the asylum.
I can tell you lots
of wonderful stories
that will learn a
lot about van Gogh.
So I think that what we
hope to do as scientists
is to be able to confer
some of that enthusiasm,
that passion that
we have for what
we do in ways that will evoke
questions because of the beauty
that you see.
And that, for example,
for a long, long time,
I've wanted to be able to
stand at a podium like this
and tell you stories or to
actually have a book that says,
look at this image.
And now I can tell you a story.
For example, I can't
tell you how much
I love a particular bacterium
that looks like this.
And not surprisingly,
we call these formations
that bacteria make
the van Gogh bundles.
And people like it.
People say, and why
do you call them that?
Because it reminds
us of "Starry Night."
Of course to make sure that
my colleagues are very sure,
this is artificially colored.
But they have a significance.
The blue cells are making
one particular compound
that is now helping the yellow
cells to move, which are now
bundled so that they
can use their force,
the physical force of
their growth to move,
to gain territory.
So we learn a lot
about these things.
And so I wanted to
tell these stories
because I want you to ask me,
and why are the yellow ones
yellow?
Because I painted it that way.
Why are they long?
Because they haven't divided,
et cetera, et cetera.
So there's lots of
stories I could go on.
Why are you interested in that?
It can go on and on.
So let me go now
to another story
that I would have liked to have
told you for many, many years.
And that's the
story of this image
that you saw at the beginning.
You saw this image.
And it said "Wonders of
the Microbial World."
And I asked you to
wonder about them,
and I wondered if you wondered.
But here they are.
I just look at this--
I want to look at it
from your perspective,
from your perspective.
I think it's beautiful.
You know, you see
these little droplets.
And I can take these
droplets, and I
can begin to tell you
about such subjects
as surface tension of water.
I can begin to tell
you because they
make these wonderful,
wonderful round droplets.
I can begin to tell
you about the physics
of a hydrophobic
surface that is now
allowing these things to form,
because the fungi that they are
growing on makes hydrophobic
surfaces so that they
can raise aerial structures.
And you may wonder, why
are they doing this?
And I can tell
you, well, you know
what's fantastic
about these microbes,
that they're making these beads?
They're also releasing
incredible number of molecules.
And these molecules are
such things as antibiotics.
Wow.
And of course you know
what an antibiotic is,
and we can converse.
Why does a microbe
make an antibiotic?
And I can tell you honestly,
we don't really know.
The ecological role of these
compounds we don't know,
except I would like to
tell you a little story
about a place where
we have learned maybe
how these are functioning.
And I do this in
honor of Jon Clardy
because Jon Clardy has been
quite involved in this story.
And so it turns out that
to tell you this story,
I have to tell you another story
in another beautiful picture,
which is the story
of leaf-cutting ants.
How many of you have
walked in a forest
sometime and seen
a trail of ants
with their little
pieces of leaves
that they're carrying, right?
This is a wonderful sight.
And you figure, why on
earth are they doing this?
Well, in the tropics, these
little leaf-cutting ants
are responsible for
a huge percentage
of the turnover of the leaves.
And it is a major activity.
And they take their leaf
cuttings down into their nest.
And so for a long time,
people thought maybe
that's what they ate.
But already over 150
years ago, people
began to recognize that, no,
they don't eat these things.
They actually take them down.
They chop it up because they use
it to feed their fungal garden.
What does that mean?
These ants are great farmers.
So what they do is they
chop the little leaves,
and they feed it so that
they can grow a fungus, which
then they go ahead and eat.
So they are great
mushroom eaters.
They love their mushrooms.
And they're fantastic
because they
keep their fungal garden clean.
Lots of fungi out there,
but they only grow this one.
And so for a long
time it wasn't clear
why it was that this
was able to make this.
They preened themselves
a very clean.
But for a long
time, people did not
know why it was, how it was that
they kept the fungal garden so
clean.
It turns out that
what was thought
to be waxy surface
on top of the ants
turned out to be
bacteria, bacteria
that are symbiotic, mutualistic
symbionts of the ants that
make anti-fungal compounds
that selectively kill
pathogenic fungi that
might infect the garden
but don't kill the fungi
that are the garden.
So here it appears to be
an adaptive situation where
the ants are providing a
home for the little bacteria,
and in return the bacteria
provide these compounds
that we saw in those
little beads in the plate
in the laboratory, a wonderful
place the antibiotics are
being able to be used.
But the story doesn't end there.
And I can tell you more stories.
I can tell you that these
ants, they have big, big jaws,
and they bite.
And so it turns
out I can tell you
a story of Llewelyn Williams,
a wonderful botanist
and anthropologist who was in
the Peruvian Amazon in 1920s.
And he discovered that
after the warriors,
the natives would have
wars, and they'd come home
with big bruises and big cuts.
Then the medicine woman would
take a jar full of these ants
and would take the
ant and allow the ant
to grab both sides of
the wound and pinch it
so that the wound would seal.
And surprisingly, the wounds
would never get infected.
And now we can
surmise, speculate
that these anti-microbial
compounds that the ants carry
because the bacteria
make it might
be the reason why these wounds
would never get infected.
So you see, for
a long, long time
I have wanted to tell
you these stories,
to tell the whole
world these stories.
I wanted to have
lots of pictures,
and I wanted to have
lot of text that
told the stories to explain the
pictures in a beautiful way.
But like so many dreams,
they sit up here,
and they don't happen.
And so they don't happen until
I was so fortunate as to May
of 2014, a little bit
over three years ago,
I received an email
from Scott Chimileski.
And I had no idea why I was
so fortunate, but it happened.
I got an email, and it said Dr.
Kolter-- he was very formal.
He said Dr. Kolter,
I like your work.
I'd like to work with
you as a post-doc,
and I'm also a
photographer, et cetera.
But I'm interested
in your biofilm work.
And I think I answered
within a few minutes,
Scott, come and let's talk
about what might happen.
I said, Scott, with your
talent, we could do something.
And I'm thinking,
hey, eventually
we could write this book.
But I think also maybe a museum
exhibit, things like that.
And so within two months, Scott
had written a whole proposal
about how we'd have a museum
exhibit, how we'd have
a book, et cetera, et cetera.
I remember telling him, come on.
Take it easy, Scott.
Maybe after two or
three years we're
going to have a
proposal for a book.
He said, OK, fine.
But anyways, interview,
he came and interviewed.
He wowed everybody
in the laboratory.
I said, Scott, I offer
you space in my lab
to start in the
middle of May 2015,
and we'll see where we take
these projects, the biofilms,
the museum exhibits, and
maybe the book proposal.
So he came.
He arrived.
I was thinking, maybe
a miracle will happen.
Maybe something will happen.
And the miracle came
by way of an email--
actually a letter that
I got around the time
that Scott was due to
start in May of 2015
that Janice Audet,
who was sitting there
and was the new life sciences
editor at the Harvard
University Press.
And she said, Dr. Kolter, do you
have any idea for a textbook?
Do I have an idea
for a textbook?
So I went to her office
and said, I propose this.
And Scott hasn't even
arrived at the lab.
I said, I think I have
the right project for us.
But we let it go.
Scott arrived in the lab.
We started doing lots of work.
And by November, we had
a proposal for a book.
We sat with Janice.
And by February we had
signed a contract--
February of 2016 we had
signed a contract for a book.
And all the credit
should go to Scott.
By October was the deadline,
and November, not even
30 days late, we
handed the manuscript.
It was sent out to review.
It came back with good reviews.
We developed another chapter.
And by February of this year,
we went into production.
It was a lovely experience
to set the images
in the right places
on the pages.
It was wonderful.
I must say, when
people ask me, how long
have you been working on this?
Well, really, working?
I don't know what that means.
I've been thinking about
it for a long time.
Scott worked on it
remarkably hard for a year.
I must say it was a really,
really wonderful experience.
That is the reason we
are here to celebrate.
And so this book called
Life at the Edge of Sight,
and you are welcome
to peruse it.
There is copies that we can see.
Is what we've been
telling you about.
I've been telling
you already some
of the stories that are in it.
And the fun part, I must
say, started around February
when we signed the contract.
We had made a proposal,
but we didn't really
know what the book
was going to be about.
So we had said, this is
what we're going to write.
But now we had to get
down to the nitty-gritty.
And it was a lot of fun.
I must say it was one of the
most fun experiences I've had.
We started dreaming.
And we said, why don't we start
from looking out in space?
And then we thought, well,
let's go a little history,
and it was fun.
And part of the project was
that we needed the images,
and the images needed travel.
And while I was
visiting the breweries
and the wineries, poor Scott.
He had to go to Holland
and Greece and England
and all of the national parks
that he could get a hold of.
And so we sent him off
looking up at the stars.
And so with that said, I
want to have Scott come up
and tell us a little
bit about what he did.
[APPLAUSE]
Thanks a lot, Roberto,
for the introduction.
And thanks everybody here
for coming out tonight.
I want to start out by arguing
with you a little bit, though.
And that is that I think
you actually deserve most
of the credit for this book.
But we can--
No, no.
--we can argue that later.
So here we are on the first
picture of the book, which
is the cover of the book.
So here we're zooming in
on the cover of the book.
And I don't know if anybody
has any guesses as to where
this is, but this is Yellowstone
National Park in Wyoming.
And so this person
over here on the right
is standing on a
wooden boardwalk.
That's my brother, Andrew.
And we had this beautiful
experience this night
at Grand Prismatic Spring.
This is the largest hot
spring in North America.
And Andrew here has
his headlamp on,
and he's shining his
light into the distance.
And it's a completely
otherworldly place on Earth.
You can see there's actually
a shooting star coming here
through the sky.
You can see these colorful
streaks radiating out
across the landscape and
hazy blue steam clouds,
bubbling sounds coming from
all directions, a completely
surreal place, And all of
this with the Galaxy above us
and all the wonder of the sky.
The orange color you
see at the bottom
is actually produced
by microbes.
So these are microbial mats
that cover the entire landscape,
and it's a place
where microbes become
visible to the naked eye.
So telling you
about our journey,
my brother and I, how
we went to Yellowstone,
makes me want to tell you a
story of how we got there.
And what I mean by how we got
there is not how we actually
went on the plane
out to Wyoming,
but how did we all get here?
How did we get to Yellowstone?
How did we all in this room
come to be where we are today?
And it reminds me
of this great quote
from a local poet, Louise Bogan,
who was born in 1897 in Maine.
And the quote is,
"The initial mystery
that attends any journey is,
how did the traveler reach
a starting point in
the first place?"
So what I want to
tell you now is
the story of the origin
of life in a nutshell.
And there's lots of details
that are going to be worked out
for a long time with respect
to the chemistry involved,
but we'll just do
a quick little run
through of some of what we
know about the origin of life.
And it actually doesn't start
with anything that's alive.
If we want to talk about
the origin of life,
we have to begin
with a supernova.
So here is a supernova
called SN 1987A.
It's called 1987A because
the light from this supernova
first reached Earth in 1987.
And this is where a lot of
the heavier elements that
make up the human body and
make up all of life come from.
They are created in a star.
And then as that star
dies and explodes,
it sends that matter
out across the universe.
Some of those heavier elements
end up in places like this.
This is a nebula called
the Carina Nebula.
And these are interstellar
clouds of dust and matter.
And these are the factories,
the birthplaces of stars.
These are where stars are
born and where stars die.
After you have a nebula, you
have the creation of a star,
and then you have the formation
of planets around that star.
So here you can imagine this
is a star that's recently
been formed in a nebula.
And this here is called
the protoplanetary disk.
So here you have the
newly formed star
with initially all of this
dust and other materials spread
around the star.
And over time they coalesce.
They knock into each other.
And from this celestial
violence, planets are formed.
And so this is how all planets
are formed, including Earth.
So now that we have Earth, the
Earth that we had at that point
was nothing like the
Earth that we know now.
It was probably closer to what
we imagine as Hell, in fact.
This was the Hadean Eon,
and the Earth was hot.
It was molten.
It was so hot, in fact, that
it was above the melting point
of iron.
And during this phase, which
was called the iron catastrophe,
the heavier elements,
iron and nickel,
sank to the core of the Earth.
And this is how we had
the formation of the core.
This was a purely physical
phenomenon that happened,
but it triggered one of
the most important events
in the origin of life.
And that was the production of
a magnetosphere around Earth.
This magnetosphere is driven
by the core of the Earth
as convection currents run
through the outer shell
of the core.
And what the
magnetosphere does is
it protects Earth
from solar wind
that's constantly
bombarding the planet.
And if it wasn't for
this magnetosphere,
life could have
never arisen on Earth
as we know it because one
thing that the solar wind does
is it strips off the
atmosphere of planets.
So without this little,
cozy protective bubble,
the magnetosphere
around Earth, we
could have never
produced the atmosphere
that the biosphere, so
much of it exists within.
And all of this
high-energy radiation
would have damaged life.
So now we have a magnetosphere.
And these are really
abstract concepts.
We can't see the
magnetosphere directly,
but we can visualize
it in other ways.
And I want to just share
quickly that we can actually
listen in on the magnetosphere.
[WHALE-LIKE SOUNDS]
So recently there's been
a couple probes from NASA
out circulating
around the planet,
and they've been able
to take collisions,
the turbulence created by the
interaction between solar wind
and the magnetosphere, and shift
these changes in frequencies
into the audible range
so that we can hear it.
So this is what
the magnetosphere
sounds like as it's
protecting life on Earth.
We can all just
take a quick listen.
It's remarkable to me
how this sound sounds
like spring peepers or
whales in the ocean,
and how patterns in
nature repeat themselves.
So now we have Earth.
Now we have a magnetosphere.
We have a core.
And what happens is magma that
seeps up through the mantle
creates hot spots on the
surface, near the surface.
And so here we see the magma
is heating some groundwater,
producing thermal features
on the surface of Earth,
like hot springs.
And so these thermal
features were very common
on the early planet.
This is what one of
these thermal features
might have looked
like back then.
This is from Yellowstone.
And this is the shore
of Yellowstone Lake.
And you can see here this
little tiny hot spring
and the bubbling sounds
that are coming out of it.
When you stand next to one
of these thermal features,
actually you can feel
the ground pulsating next
to some of the bigger ones.
And because this all
comes back from the heat
of the planet and
the core, it's really
a way of sensing this
enduring heartbeat of Earth.
So here's another
thermal feature.
This is a geyser.
And this really could
be one of the next steps
in the origin of life.
So we know that geysers,
down on the inner wall
inside geysers, you can have
the production of fatty acids.
And that's one of the very
most important chemicals when
it comes to the origin of life.
You need to have fatty acids to
create a compartment, a cell,
to separate the cell
from its environment.
So you can imagine that these
fatty acids are being created
on the inner walls
of the geysers,
and then they're ejected
out from the geyser.
And floating on little
particles of steam and water,
they might land and
settle into a hot spring.
And that's really important
because in the hot spring,
these chemicals can exist
at higher concentrations
and begin to interact
with each other.
So here's an animation of what
fatty acids do when they're
at high enough concentration
under the right conditions
all on their own.
So this is a self
assembly process
where the fatty acids are
forming a vesicle eventually
through several stages.
And this is one of the
most critical steps
for the origin of life,
getting that compartment
to divide the cell
from the environment.
Meanwhile, all the
chemistry was there
for the production
of RNA molecules,
which is believed to be the
first heritable material.
So as the vesicles
were being formed,
you also had the
precursors of RNA forming.
And initially they could
copy right off of each other.
So this is a
non-enzymatic replication.
RNA is actually copying itself
using another RNA molecule
as a template.
So you have the cells forming
or the protocells, the vesicles,
and then the genetic
material, RNA.
They then combine.
They enter the cell, and
you have a natural lifecycle
for these protocells,
which is actually
driven by physical conditions.
So just by introducing
some mechanical forces
around these protocells,
they'll divide on their own.
And then you'd have
two protocells.
And eventually through
many more steps,
we get the first microbe,
what we would call a microbe.
So here are some microbes
from Yellowstone.
These pink cells
are cyanobacteria.
And from the first
microbes on Earth,
all life evolved from
those first cells.
So I like to say that
microbes gave us life.
At this time,
microbes were actually
anything but microscopic.
So this was way before animals
evolved, so microbes really
reigned free on the planet.
They had no grazers
like snails and things
like that to eat them,
so they formed all
these macroscopic structures.
And these would be
everywhere across the planet,
on the shores of lakes
and on the shores of seas.
Now we have to go to special
places like Yellowstone
to find these, where
the conditions allow
the thermophilic microbes
to grow but not the animals.
And so these are some
macroscopic structures formed
by microbes in Yellowstone.
Now we're back to the
beginning of the journey
here with my brother, sitting
here next to Yellowstone.
And what we're going
to do now is come out
of the darkness of Yellowstone
and into the light.
And this will start
Roberto's next section,
because now that we've
learned a little bit
about the natural
history of the planet,
the question is, how did people
come to learn about microbes?
What's some of the history
of humans studying microbes?
And so, Roberto, what do you
see when you look at this cliff?
[APPLAUSE]
Wonderful, wonderful.
So Scott asked
me, what do I see?
I see microbes.
But then again, no matter
where I look, I see microbes.
But actually, as you will
see, these are microbes.
But what I also see--
and for this I want to
take you back a little bit
over 300 years ago, 1660s.
There's a tourist
visiting-- yes, there
was tourism back then.
There's a tourist visiting
the White Cliffs of Dover.
He's a textile merchant
from the Netherlands.
He was inquisitive
and a curious guy,
and he looks at these cliffs,
and he penetrates them
with his insightful observation.
This is what he tells
us of his observation.
"Out of curiosity, seeing the
great chalk cliffs and chalky
lands, it set me thinking.
And at the same
time, I also tried
to penetrate the
parts of the chalk,
at last I observed that
chalk consists of very
small, transparent particles.
And these transparent particles,
lying one upon another is,
methinks now, the reason
why chalk is white."
Is as an observer goes
and looks at these cliffs
in a very different way.
And he goes back, gets on his
boat, crosses the channel.
I'm always reminded that people
from the rest of the world
call it El Canal de la Mancha,
or the Canal de la Manche,
but for some reason
the English people
call it the English Channel.
But that's not
part of the story.
He crosses the channel,
and he goes back
to his home in the
small town of Delft,
painted here by Vermeer around
the same time as our tourist
wanders back home.
And he has this inquisitiveness.
He wants to penetrate
everything that he sees.
And he goes to the channels that
are characteristic of Delft.
And there he's investigating
everything around.
He looks at the grasses.
He looks at the mosses.
And he collects small samples.
You get the feeling
that I like droplets.
That is the case.
So imagine he collects a sample
from one of these mosses,
and he has this wonderful
capacity that nobody
else in the planet has.
He can grind lenses
so fine that he
can see through
them and magnifies
whatever he's looking
at in a remarkable way
to see things that nobody
has seen before in scales
that are unimaginable before
this by the naked human eye.
He puts these little droplets in
this little instrument of his.
He listeners to the neighbor
playing the viola de gamba.
And he peers at this
droplet of water.
And for the first
time in human history,
he sees a universe of living
things that are so small that
the eye cannot see.
This is the moment where
microbiology is born.
Imagine yourselves seeing
this for the first time.
Nobody's ever told you
that such creatures exist.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Yes, you all know I am talking
about Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.
Let's see if he appears.
There.
Born 1632, died 1723.
That is four years.
He was born four years
before Harvard was founded,
and he died at a nice age of 91.
How I wish that I could stand
here with hair like that.
Someday, someday I'll
be able to do that.
Every microbiologist now
knows this wonderful diagram
that comes out of his
observations, which
I call the A, B, C, D,
E, F, G of microbiology.
And by 1683, he wrote, "All of
the people living in our United
Netherlands are not as
many as the living animals
that I carry in my
mouth this very day."
He recognized the remarkable
abundance of microbes.
Everywhere he looked
he could see microbes.
He called them
animalcules because he
had no better word for them.
They were little animals,
as you saw them there.
Let's go back to the cliffs.
And let's recognize
just how right he was.
See, these cliffs are remarkable
because the cliffs are chalk.
But they are the result of the
sediments that have laid down
in the bottom of the ocean.
And they have laid down
there through the millennia
as small shelled algae.
Photosynthetic microscopic
algae are living and dying
all the time, shedding
their small shells.
And they fall into the sediment.
Sediment is now
hundreds of meters deep,
and you can find this sediment
across the entire ocean floor.
And it goes from
Newfoundland to England.
And if you go now to land,
it goes through England
all of the way through Europe.
All of that is
based on chalk that
is the sediment that was
accumulated by this algae
dying and shedding their
shells through the millennia.
That alone tells you
that microbial activity
has been going on on this
planet for a long time.
And today, today we can go
back and reread the statement
that he made about
small particles lying
on top of each other is
what makes chalk white.
We look with the most
powerful electron microscopes,
and what we see is
this remarkable image
of the shells of these
photosynthetic algae preserved
in this chalk.
This has been going on
for a long, long time.
And what happened in the White
Cliffs of Dover is wonderful,
because for many
millions of years,
England, what we know
currently as the island,
was connected to the mainland,
held a huge, huge lake, which
is now the North
Sea and the channel,
until some time, some
300,000 years ago,
in the first original Brexit,
this whole thing fell off,
separated from the mainland,
and revealed the White Cliffs
of Dover, where you can see
hundred-meter-high cliffs all
made of chalk.
It gives you a sense
of what microbes
have been doing on this planet.
And if we come out of this view
of the White Cliffs of Dover
and look at it from the sky,
where we have here Ireland
and England and the channel,
and this is the Atlantic
Ocean, what you see is
this remarkable feature
of the algal blooms.
These are microbes.
These are microscopic
organisms that
bloom so large that they
cover hundreds of thousands
of square kilometers
during a bloom.
And what's essential about
this is that in blooming,
they are capturing
CO2, making themselves
some of these shells, which
are calcium carbonate,
and also making living
matter, fixing the carbon,
and thus allowing the
whole planet to have
a primary producer of food.
And this is just
one of the many ways
that the microbes
have been shaping
the planet for millions of years
and continue to shape it today.
So when you take
your next breath,
consider the fact that the
oxygen that you are breathing
is likely to have
been produced by one
of these microscopic
algae on the ocean
during one of these blooms.
But I think Scott has stood up.
I think he wants me off
the stage, and he is right.
I think it's time to
come back from space.
We'll go back to
space later, but it's
time to come back down to Earth
and spin the globe a little bit
and talk about some microbes
not out in the ocean,
but a little bit closer to home.
So now we're looking again
at another satellite image.
But this, if anybody
recognizes it,
is nearby at the border of
New Hampshire and Maine.
So what we're looking at right
here is actually Portsmouth.
Many of you probably
enjoy going to Portsmouth.
And now we're going
to zoom in up here
on a forest in the town
of Kittery Point, Maine,
where the Kolter
Lab has actually
been going on a yearly retreat
for nearly 30 years now.
So we're going to zoom in
onto this patch of forest
here in Maine.
We're going to go
into the forest
and look at the beautiful forest
floor with these diversity
of plants and trees here.
We're going to zoom further in
and focus on the forest floor,
and particularly the leaves
that make up the forest
floor, the leaf litter.
If we plucked any one of those
leaves out of the leaf litter,
not only in Maine,
but anywhere--
it could be right
outside the door--
and look at it under a
scanning electron microscope,
this is what we would
see in this micrograph.
This is the leaf in the
process of being broken down
by microbes.
You can see at the bottom
where the leaf tissue has
been degraded already,
leaving behind only
a kind of a skeleton of the
vascular system of the leaf.
And we'll zoom in further down
into this little patch here.
And we can see a closer look
of the actual microbes that
are degrading this leaf.
So all of these long
filaments are fungi,
and there's all sorts of
different microbes and bacteria
living and growing
off of this leaf.
And as they do so,
they're producing enzymes
that break down the leaf.
And slowly over time, these
leaves turn into dirt,
turn into soil.
And it's the soil really
that forms, of course,
the foundation for the
forest and provides nutrients
for the entire forest.
So what we're looking at
here in this one image
is really one of the
most major living forces
of the forest, one
of the processes
that is driving
the entire forest
ecosystem, the microbial
breakdown of leaves
and other organic material.
If we look at the
leaf and we want
to talk about what do these
microbes do when we take them
into the laboratory from
a place like the forest?
So we take this leaf.
We press it onto an agar growth
medium, now working in the lab.
And what we see is
after several days,
we're left with the patterns and
different pigments and colors
produced by the microbes
that were on that leaf.
We give them a nice,
cozy place to grow,
where they have
plenty of nutrients,
and they form colonies
made of millions of cells.
These colonies that we find
on leaves or in the soil
or anywhere have a remarkable
diversity of structure and form
and colors that match
an artist's palette.
These are naturally produced
pigments produced by microbes
that really, any
color you want to find
you can find in
a microbial cell.
Some of the microbes from
the environment we've
taken in and started to
use them to make foods.
This is a type of fungus
called koji that's
responsible for making
sake and miso and soy sauce
here growing on a kernel
of rice in the lab,
originally very closely related
to another fungal species found
in the environment.
And if we zoom in on just one
of these little stalks that
are called conidiophores and
look at what's happening,
this is the top of
one of these stalks.
And what they're doing
is releasing spores
out into the environment
that drift off in the air
and can then eventually
give rise to new colonies.
Some of these colonies
have remarkable what
we call architecture, or
really intricate complexity
to their structure.
This is a species of bacteria
called Pseudomonas aeruginosa
that's also found just about
everywhere in the environment.
We can zoom in even
closer on the colony
to really get a sense
of this structure.
And these are really
like cities of microbes.
This is a type of
colony called a biofilm.
And here we are looking at
millions of different cells
now that are making
up this colony.
If we go into a tiny patch
of one of these structures
and look at what
the cells look like,
this is what they look like,
packed tightly together
and joined together,
attached to each
other by these
sticky extracellular
matrix components.
And we can watch how these
biofilms develop as well,
instead of just looking
at the snapshots.
And we see now the formation
of these ridges over time.
And this is actually
a way for the bacteria
to gain greater access to oxygen
in the context of this colony.
So you can imagine that by
having all of this structure,
you have much more surface area
and many more bacteria that
have access to oxygen.
Now we're going back to
the leaf, where we started.
And we're going to focus in
on this one little microbe
right here.
And that microbe is the spore of
this organism, called Physarum,
which is a slime mold.
This is what Physarum does
in the laboratory when you
let it crawl across a plate.
It's searching for food, and you
can see this pulsing behavior.
When we look now inside
of what's happening here,
growing now inside of
the slime mold network,
we're seeing this
pulsing, which is
called cytoplasmic streaming.
And so this is what's
responsible for moving
the slime mold around.
Every little vein
of the slime mold
is expanding and contracting
and expanding and contracting.
And this is how the
slime mold communicates.
It's actually a
semi-intelligent organism
that's capable of making
decisions, solving mazes,
and all sorts of challenges that
you throw at the slime mold.
And people are never
surprised by what they can do.
So you can see this
back and forth rhythmic
cytoplasmic streaming
inside the slime mold.
This is what one
of these networks
looks like when it's finished.
And what's remarkable when we
look at this image from above
is that this all arose through
a self-organized process.
So this slime mold has found
all of the food sources now.
It actually likes
to eat oat flakes,
so there's probably
a big oat over here,
oat flake here and here.
And it found all of
the food sources,
and it did all of this.
It created this
entire network through
a self-organized process.
There was no higher-order
organization driving this.
And it looks a lot like the
city of Boston from above.
And indeed the very principles,
the very core fundamentals
behind these emergent
properties, are the same.
So just the same,
the city of Boston
emerged over the past
few hundred years
through this same
self-organized process.
It's an emergent property of our
human society here in Boston.
And so really when we're
looking at biology,
we have to look at not only
the microscopic, but also
the macroscopic view in order
to understand the phenomenon
that we're seeing.
And while we're thinking
about the very big
and the very small,
I'll bring us back
to Roberto's first slide
here showing the deep field
from the Hubble telescope
to make the point
that looking here at
these 6,500 galaxies,
there's so many galaxies, each
one containing so many stars,
so many planets, that
really there must be life
somewhere else in the universe.
It's very mathematically likely.
It's an immense, immense
size that we're looking at.
OK.
Immense is an understatement.
This, as I told you before,
is a very small segment
of the known universe.
And what Scott was
mentioning, this connectivity
that we see already
in the slime mold,
this connectivity that we
see in the city of Boston,
this connectivity is also
seen in the universe.
When people begin
to look and model
what is happening in our
universe in a big scale,
how are these galaxies forming?
How are they interacting
with each other?
They begin to make these
remarkable simulations
in which we see streams
of galaxies behaving
a lot like the slime mold.
And this is what the
simulation is showing.
It's remarkable.
This is now a
slightly bigger part.
It's still not the
whole universe,
which we said was at least
13 billion light years away
from here in all directions.
But now it's a
section that's been
simulated to contain
billions of galaxies
across maybe a few hundred
thousand light years.
This simulation took some 1.4
million hours of computer time.
You know how quickly when
you do a Google search
it's 0.1 second, right?
Right This is 1.4 million hours
across many, many thousands
of processors working day
and night for a long time.
And what is amazing
to me about this
is this fibrous
interconnectivity
of our universe.
And so what I'd like to
do to end the lecture
is to talk a little bit
about this interconnectivity
as you watch the video
of this simulation.
So reading, actually I
tell you, I did a trick.
I brought the book
so that you know
that I'm reading from the book.
But because the print
is small and I am old,
I printed it on
a piece of paper.
So from the book, "We
are making beautiful maps
of the largest and the smallest
structures in the universe.
We are learning how
galaxies themselves interact
to form galaxy clusters and
how galaxy clusters interact
to develop into a lattice
of threadlike filaments made
of dark matter.
It's called the cosmic web.
Galaxies form among
filaments and cluster
at the nodes in the web
where filaments join.
Just as we could
never see a virus
by looking at individual
atoms, just as we could not
see a biofilm by looking at
individual bacterial cells,
we could never
see the cosmic web
by looking at individual
stars or galaxies.
Simultaneously, we
are exposing how
analogous networks of
neurons develop in the brain.
And we have found at the apex
of many scientific disciplines
that on Earth, everything
depends on everything else.
How could we ever
take a picture of
that complete interdependency?
What would the image
look like if we captured
in one large-scale view,
like the cosmic web,
is for the universe the sum
of all biological activity
across the web of life?
All of the connections between
organisms and ecosystems,
humanity, the forest, the
living ocean of microbes,
the living soil,
and the other ways
that those ecosystems
impact global patterns?
How would that look?
Well, we already
have that picture.
It's Earth."
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
So if I could keep the
lights down for just a little
bit longer, just a
little bit, because we've
come up with this wonderful,
if you say Scott--
I said, Scott, what do
we do about credits?
So here they are.
How do we do this
blackboard stage?
Important-- Gleb, Nick,
Lori, Jorge, Einat.
This is the Kolter Lab
members that inspired us
throughout this whole project.
Hera, I don't know
if Hera is here.
Jordi, I invited him.
He's in Zurich, so
he couldn't come.
And now gratitude to the Center
for Nanoscale, the Micropia
Museum, National
Park Service, NASA.
Of course all of those
images from space,
Scott didn't travel
there himself.
It had to be NASA.
So once again, wonderful
that you all came.
We are happy to
answer questions.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
