Will our kids be a different species Juan Enriquez

you

all right so like all good stories this

starts a long long time ago when there

was basically nothing so here is a

complete picture of the universe about

40 not billion years ago all energy is

concentrated into a single point of

energy for some reason it explodes and

you begin to get these things so you’re

now about 14 billion years under this

and these things expand and expand and

expand into these giant galaxies and you

get trillions of them and within these

galaxies you get these enormous dust

clouds and I want you to pay particular

attention to the three little prongs in

the center of this picture if you take a

close-up of those they look like this

and what you’re looking at is columns of

dust where there’s so much dust by the

way the scale of this is a trillion

vertical miles and what’s happening is

there’s so much dust it comes together

and it fuses and ignites a thermonuclear

reaction and so what you’re watching is

the birth of stars these are stars being

born out of here when enough stars come

out they create a galaxy this one

happens to be a particularly important

galaxy because you are here and as you

take a close-up of this galaxy you find

a relatively normal not particularly

interesting start by the way you’re now

about two-thirds of the way into this

story so this star doesn’t even appear

until about two thirds away in this

story and then what happens is there’s

enough dust left over that it doesn’t

ignite into a star it becomes a planet

and this is about a little over four

billion years ago and soon thereafter

there’s enough material left over that

you get a primordial soup and that

creates life and life starts to expand

and expand and expand until it goes

couplet now the really strange thing is

life goes kaput not once not twice but

five times so almost all life on Earth

is wiped out about five times and as

you’re thinking about that what happens

is you get more and more complexity more

and more stuff to build new things with

and we don’t appear until about

ninety-nine point nine six percent of

the time into this story just to put

ourselves and our ancestors in

perspective so within that context

there’s two theories of the case as to

why we’re all here the first theory of

the case is that’s all she wrote right

under that theory we are the be-all and

end-all of all creation and the reason

for trillions of galaxies sixth ilion’s

of planets is to create something that

looks like that and something that looks

like that and that’s the purpose of the

universe and then it flatlines it

doesn’t get any better

the only question you might want to ask

yourself is could that be just mildly

arrogant and if it is and particularly

given the fact that we came very close

to extinction there were only about

2,000 of our species left a few more

weeks without rain we would have never

seen any of these

so maybe you have to think about a

second theory if the first one isn’t

good enough second theory is could we

upgrade well why wouldn’t one ask a

question like that because there have

been at least 29 upgrades so far of

humanoids so it turns out that we have

upgraded we’ve upgraded time and again

and again and it turns out that we keep

discovering upgrades we found this one

last year we found another one last

month and as you’re thinking about this

you might also ask the question so why a

single human species wouldn’t it be

really odd if you went to Africa and

Asia and Antarctica and found exactly

the same bird particularly given that we

coexisted at the same time with at least

eight other versions of humanoid at the

same time on this planet so the normal

state of affairs is not to have just a

homo sapiens the normal state of affairs

is to have various versions of humans

walking around and if that is the normal

state of affairs then you might ask

yourself all right so if we wanted to

create something else how big does the

mutation have to be well

Svante Paabo has the answer the

difference between humans and

Neanderthals is point zero zero four

percent of gene code that’s how big the

differences one species to another

this explains most contemporary

political debates

but as you’re thinking about this one of

the interesting things is how small

these mutations are and where they take

place difference human Neanderthal is

sperm and testes smell and skin and

those are the specific genes that differ

from one to the other so very small

changes can have a big impact and as

you’re thinking about this we’re

continuing to mutate so about 10,000

years ago by the Black Sea

we had one mutation in one gene which

led to blue eyes and this is continuing

and continuing and continuing and as it

continues one of the things that’s going

to happen this year is we’re going to

discover the first 10,000 human genomes

because it’s gotten cheap enough to do

the gene sequencing and when we find

these we may find differences and by the

way this is not a debate that we’re

ready for because we have really misused

the science in this in the 1920s we

thought there were major differences

between people that was partly based on

Francis Galton’s work

he was Darwin’s cousin what the US the

Carnegie Institute Stanford alone or

American neurological Association took

this really far that got exported and

was really misused in fact it lets some

absolute horrendous treatment of human

beings so since the 1940s we’ve been

saying there are no differences we are

all identical we’re gonna know what your

end of that is true and as we think

about that we’re actually beginning to

find things like do you have an ace gene

why would that matter because nobody’s

ever climbed an 8,000 meter peak without

oxygen that doesn’t have an ace gene and

if you want to get more specific about a

577 our genotype well it turns out that

every male Olympic power athlete ever

tested carries at least one of these

variants if that is true it leads to

some very complicated questions for the

London Olympics three options do you

want the Olympics to be a showcase for

really hard working mutants

option number two why don’t we play it

like golf or sailing because you have

one and you don’t have one I’ll give you

a tenth of a second Head Start version

number three because this is a naturally

occurring gene and you’ve got it and you

didn’t pick the right parents you get

the right to upgrade three different

options if these differences are the

difference between Olympic medal and a

non Olympic medal and it turns out that

as we discover these things we human

beings really like to change how we look

how we act what our bodies do and we had

about ten point two million plastic

surgery the United States except that

with the technologies that are coming

online today today’s Corrections

deletions augmentations and enhancements

are gonna seem like child’s play you

already saw the work by Tony Atala on

Ted but this ability to start filling

things like inkjet cartridges with cells

or allowing us to print skin organs and

a whole series of other body parts and

as these technologies go forward you

know you keep seeing this you keep

seeing this you keep seeing things mm

human genome sequence and it seems like

nothing’s happening until it does and we

may just be in some of these weeks and

as you’re thinking about you know these

two guys sequencing a human genome in

2000 and the public project sequencing

the human genome in 2000 you don’t hear

a lot till you hear about an experiment

last year in China where they take skin

cells from this mouse put four chemicals

on it turn those skin cells into stem

cells what the stem cells grow and

create a full copy of that mouse that’s

a big deal

because in essence what it means is you

can take a cell which is a pluripotent

stem cell which is like a skier at the

top of a mountain and those two skiers

become two pluripotent stem cells for

8:16 and then it gets so crowded after

16 divisions that those cells have to

differentiate so they go down one side

of the mountain they go down another and

as they pick that these become bone and

then they pick another road and these

become platelets and these became

macrophages and these become t-cells but

it’s really hard once you ski down to

get back up

unless of course if you have a ski lift

and what those four chemicals do is they

take any cell and take it way back up

the mountain so it can become any body

part and as you think of that what it

means is potentially you can rebuild a

full copy of any organism out of any one

of its cells that turns out to be a big

deal because now you can take not just

no cells but you can take human skin

cells and turn them into human stem

cells and then what they did in October

is they took skin cells turn them into

stem cells and begin to turn that into

liver cells so in theory you could grow

any organ from any one of your cells

here’s a second experiment if you could

photocopy your body maybe you also want

to take your mind and one of the things

you saw at Ted about a year and a half

ago was this guy and he gave a wonderful

technical talk using professor at MIT

but in essence what he said is you can

take retroviruses which get inside brain

cells of mice you can tag them with

proteins that light up when you light

them and you can map the exact pathways

when a mouse sees feels touches

remembers loves and then you can take a

fiber-optic cable and light up some of

the same things

and by the way as you do this you can

image it in two colors which means you

can download this information as binary

code directly into a computer so what’s

the bottom line on that well it’s not

completely inconceivable but someday

you’ll be able to download your own

memories maybe into a new body and maybe

you can upload other people’s memories

as well and this might have just one or

two small ethical political moral

implications just a thought

here’s the kind of questions that are

becoming interesting questions for

philosophers for governing people for

economists for scientists because these

technologies are moving really quickly

and as you think about it let me close

with an example of the brain the first

place where you would expect to see

enormous evolutionary pressure today

both because of the inputs which are

becoming massive and because of the

plasticity of the organ is the brain do

we have any evidence that that is

happening well let’s take a look at

something like autism incidents per

thousand here’s what it looks like in

2000 here’s what it looks like in 2002

2006 2008 here’s the increase in less

than a decade and we still don’t know

why this is happening what we do know is

potentially the brain is reacting a

hyper reactive hyperplastic way and

creating individuals that are like this

and this is only one of the conditions

in souther you’ve also got people who

are extraordinarily smart people who can

remember everything they’ve seen in

their lives people who gussed anesthesia

people guts gets rafinha got all kinds

of stuff going on out there and we still

don’t understand how and why this is

happening but one question you might

want to ask is are we seeing a rapid

evolution of the brain

and of how we process data because when

you think of how much data is coming

into our brains we’re trying to take in

as much data in a day as people used to

take in in a lifetime and as you’re

thinking about this there’s four

theories as to why this might be going

on plus a whole series of others I don’t

have a good answer there really needs to

be more research on this one option is a

fast-food fetish there is beginning to

be some evidence that obesity and diet

have something to do with gene

modifications which may or may not have

an impact on how the brain of an infant

works a second option is the sexy geek

option these conditions are highly rare

but what’s beginning to happen is

because these geeks are all getting

together because they are highly

qualified for computer programming and

it is highly remunerated as well as

other very detail-oriented tasks that

they are concentrating geographically

and finding like-minded mates so this is

the sort of mating hypothesis of these

genes reinforcing one another in these

structures the third is is too much

information we’re trying to process so

much stuff that some people get

synesthetic and just have huge pipes and

remember everything other people get

hypersensitive the amount of information

other people react with various

psychological conditions or reactions to

this information or maybe it’s chemicals

but when you see an increase of that

order of magnitude in a condition either

you’re not measuring it right or there’s

something going on very quickly and it

may be evolution in real time here’s the

bottom line what I think we are doing is

we’re transitioning as a species and I

didn’t think this when Steve Collins and

I started writing together I think we’re

transitioning into a home level lootus

that for better or worse is not just a

hominid this conscious of his or her

environment

it’s a hominid that’s beginning to

directly and deliberately control the

evolution of its own species of bacteria

of plants of animals and I think that’s

such an order of magnitude change that

your grandkids or your great grandkids

may be a species very different from you

thank you very much