听力课堂TED音频栏目主要包括TED演讲的音频MP3及中英双语文稿，供各位英语爱好者学习使用。本文主要内容为演讲MP3+双语文稿:基因奇迹的时代，希望你会喜欢！

【演讲者及介绍】Juan Enriquez

胡安·恩里克兹，作者、学术、未来主义者，他思考并写下了基因组学和大脑研究将给商业、技术、政治和社会带来的深刻变化。

【演讲主题】基因奇迹的时代

【中英文字幕】

翻译者 psjmz mz 校对者Xuying Wu

00:13

So let me with start with Roy Amara. Roy'sargument is that most new technologies tend to be overestimated in their impactto begin with, and then they get underestimated in the long term because we getused to them.

让我从罗伊·阿马拉开始。罗伊的观点是，大多数新技术刚出现时，影响力往往被高估了，而在长时期内，它们的影响又被低估，因为我们变得习惯了。

00:27

These really are days of miracle andwonder. You remember that wonderful song by Paul Simon? There were two lines init. So what was it that was considered miraculous back then? Slowing downthings -- slow motion -- and the long-distance call. Because, of course, youused to get interrupted by operators who'd tell you, "Long distancecalling. Do you want to hang up?" And now we think nothing of calling allover the world. Well, something similar may be happening with reading andprogramming life.

这真是充满奇迹和想象的日子。你还记得保罗·西蒙的那首美妙的歌吗？里面有两行歌词。当时人们认为什么是奇迹呢？放慢速度——慢动作——还有打长途电话。因为，你显然曾被接线员打断过，她会告诉你，“长途电话喔，你想要挂断吗？”而今天我们习惯了在全球范围都可以随时连线。类似的事情也发生在生命信息阅读和编程领域。

00:59

But before I unpack that, let's just talkabout telescopes. Telescopes were overestimated originally in their impact.This is one of Galileo's early models. People thought it was just going to ruinall religion.

但在我展开前，让我们来聊聊望远镜。望远镜起初的影响被高估了。这是伽利略早期的模型之一。人们认为这会毁了所有的宗教。

01:16

(Laughter)

（笑声）

01:19

So we're not paying that much attention totelescopes. But, of course, telescopes launched 10 years ago, as you justheard, could take this Volkswagen, fly it to the moon, and you could see thelights on that Volkswagen light up on the moon. And that's the kind ofresolution power that allowed you to see little specks of dust floating arounddistant suns. Imagine for a second that this was a sun a billion light yearsaway, and you had a little speck of dust that came in front of it. That's whatdetecting an exoplanet is like. And the cool thing is, the telescopes that arenow being launched would allow you to see a single candle lit on the moon. Andif you separated it by one plate, you could see two candles separately at thatdistance.

所以人们并没有花什么心思研究望远镜。不过，你当然也听说了，10多年前发射的望远镜，可以带着这台大众轿车飞到月球上，你可以看到这辆大众汽车的灯在月球上亮了起来。这种程度的分辨率可以让你看到漂浮在遥远太阳周围的小尘埃。想象一下，这是10亿光年之外的太阳，在它前面有一小点灰尘。这就是探测系外行星的感觉。很酷的事情在于，如今发射的望远镜可以让你看到月球上点亮的一根蜡烛。如果你用盘子把它分开，你可以在那个距离看到两根单独的蜡烛。

02:11

And that's the kind of resolution that youneed to begin to image that little speck of dust as it comes around the sun andsee if it has a blue-green signature. And if it does have a blue-greensignature, it means that life is common in the universe. The first time youever see a blue-green signature on a distant planet, it means there'sphotosynthesis there, there's water there, and the chances that you saw theonly other planet with photosynthesis are about zero. And that's acalendar-changing event. There's a before and after we were alone in the universe:forget about the discovery of whatever continent. So as you're thinking aboutthis, we're now beginning to be able to image most of the universe. And that isa time of miracle and wonder. And we kind of take that for granted.

这就是你开始对太阳周围的那一点小尘埃进行成像，去看看它是不是蓝绿色所需要的特征。如果它确实有蓝绿信号，这就意味着生命在宇宙中普遍存在。你第一次在遥远的星球上看到蓝绿色的标志，这意味着那里有光合作用，那里有水，你看到唯一一个除地球外有光合作用的行星的几率几乎是零。这是一个划时代的事件。这是我们在宇宙中是否孤独的分界线：别去想什么发现新大陆了。思考一下这个问题，我们现在开始能够描绘大部分的宇宙。这真是充满奇迹和想象的时代。我们却有点视为理所当然。

03:00

Something similar is happening in life. Sowe're hearing about life in these little bits and pieces. We hear about CRISPR,and we hear about this technology, and we hear about this technology. But thebottom line on life is that life turns out to be code. And life as code is a reallyimportant concept because it means, just in the same way as you can write asentence in English or in French or Chinese, just in the same way as you cancopy a sentence, just in the same way as you can edit a sentence, just in thesame way as you can print a sentence, you're beginning to be able to do thatwith life. It means that we're beginning to learn how to read this language.And this, of course, is the language that is used by this orange.

类似的事情正发生在生命领域。我们不断听到关于生命的碎片信息。我们听说过CRISPR，听说过这项技术，听说过那项技术。但生命的本质是编码。生命就是编码是个非常重要的概念，因为这意味着，就像你写一个句子一样，可以用英文或法语或中文，就像你可以复制一个句子一样，就像你可以修改一个句子一样，就像你可以打印一个句子一样，你可以对生命也这样做。这意味着我们正在开始学习如何阅读这门语言。当然，也是这个橙子使用的语言。

03:45

So how does this orange execute code? Itdoesn't do it in ones and zeroes like a computer does. It sits on a tree, andone day it does: plop! And that means: execute. AATCAAG: make me a little root.TCGACC: make me a little stem. GAC: make me some leaves. AGC: make me someflowers. And then GCAA: make me some more oranges.

那这个橙子如何执行编码？它不像计算机那样用1，0来表示。它呆在树上，有一天它会：扑通！ 这意味着：执行。AATCAAG: 生根。TCGACC: 开枝。GAC: 生叶。AGC: 开花。然后GCAA：结更多的橙子。

04:09

If I edit a sentence in English on a wordprocessor, then what happens is you can go from this word to that word. If Iedit something in this orange and put in GCAAC, using CRISPR or something elsethat you've heard of, then this orange becomes a lemon, or it becomes agrapefruit, or it becomes a tangerine. And if I edit one in a thousand letters,you become the person sitting next to you today. Be more careful where you sit.

如果我在文字处理软件上用英文编写句子，紧接着你就可以从这个词到那个词。如果我在这个橙子中编辑东西，放入GCAAC，使用CRISPR 或其他你听过的技术，然后这个橙子变成了柠檬，或者变成一个葡萄柚，或者变成橘子。如果我编辑千分之一的代码，你就会变成今天坐在你旁边的人。多用心看看你要坐在哪里。

04:43

(Laughter)

（笑声）

04:45

What's happening on this stuff is it wasreally expensive to begin with. It was like long-distance calls. But the costof this is dropping 50 percent faster than Moore's law. The first $200 fullgenome was announced yesterday by Veritas. And so as you're looking at thesesystems, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, and then itdoes.

这项技术在初始阶段成本非常高。有点像长途电话诞生的初期。但成本下降的速度比摩尔定律快50%。Veritas 昨天宣布了首个 200美元全基因组计划。当你看这些系统的时候，它无关紧要，它无关紧要，它无关紧要，然后它变得紧要了。

05:07

So let me just give you the map view ofthis stuff. This is a big discovery. There's 23 chromosomes. Cool. Let's nowstart using a telescope version, but instead of using a telescope, let's use amicroscope to zoom in on the inferior of those chromosomes, which is the Ychromosome. It's a third the size of the X. It's recessive and mutant. But hey,just a male. And as you're looking at this stuff, here's kind of a country viewat a 400 base pair resolution level, and then you zoom in to 550, and then youzoom in to 850, and you can begin to identify more and more genes as you zoomin. Then you zoom in to the state level, and you can begin to tell who's gotleukemia, how did they get leukemia, what kind of leukemia do they have, whatshifted from what place to what place. And then you zoom in to the Googlestreet view level. So this is what happens if you have colorectal cancer for avery specific patient on the letter-by-letter resolution.

我想给你看看这玩意儿的地图预览模式。这是一个大发现。有23条染色体。真酷。现在让我们启动望远镜视角，不过用的不是望远镜，而是通过显微镜放大看看这些染色体中较低级别的 Y染色体。它的大小是X染色体的1/3，是隐性和突变的。但是呢，只是个男性罢了。继续来看，这有点像一个国家视图，以400个碱基对的分辨率来看，然后你放大到500对，再到850对，随着放大，你开始能识别出越来越多的基因。然后你放大到州级分辨率，你开始能说出谁得了白血病，他们是怎么得的白血病，得了哪种白血病，从何处被移动到何处。然后你放大到谷歌街景的级别。这就是你从某个结肠直肠癌病人身上以字母分辨率级别，看到的情况。

06:18

So what we're doing in this stuff is we'regathering information and just generating enormous amounts of information. Thisis one of the largest databases on the planet and it's growing faster than wecan build computers to store it. You can create some incredible maps with thisstuff. You want to understand the plague and why one plague is bubonic and theother one is a different kind of plague and the other one is a different kindof plague? Well, here's a map of the plague. Some are absolutely deadly tohumans, some are not. And note, by the way, as you go to the bottom of this,how does it compare to tuberculosis? So this is the difference betweentuberculosis and various kinds of plagues, and you can play detective with thisstuff, because you can take a very specific kind of cholera that affectedHaiti, and you can look at which country it came from, which region it camefrom, and probably which soldier took that from that African country to Haiti.

所以我们正在收集信息和生成大量的信息。这是地球上最大的数据库之一，它的增长速度比我们制造电脑存储它的速度还快。你可以用这些东西构建一些不可思议的地图。你想了解鼠疫和为什么这种鼠疫是淋巴腺鼠疫，另一种是不同类型的鼠疫，还有一种不同类型的鼠疫吗？这就是鼠疫的地图。有些对人类绝对致命的，有些则不会。顺便说一下，当你看到底部的时候，注意把它与结核病对比观察。这就是肺结核和各种瘟疫的区别，你可以用它来做侦探游戏，因为你可以选择一种影响了海地的特殊霍乱，你可以追踪看它来自哪个国家，哪个地区，以及可能是哪个士兵把它从哪个非洲国家带到海地。

07:17

Zoom out. It's not just zooming in. This isone of the coolest maps ever done by human beings. What they've done is takenall the genetic information they have about all the species, and they've put atree of life on a single page that you can zoom in and out of. So this is whatcame first, how did it diversify, how did it branch, how large is that genome,on a single page. It's kind of the universe of life on Earth, and it's beingconstantly updated and completed.

缩小。不仅仅只是放大。这是人类绘制的最酷的地图之一。我们把获得的所有物种的基因信息 放在一棵生命树上，只用一页，你可以放大和缩小。这就是第一眼看到的，它是如何多样，如何多分支，如此庞大的一个基因组，全都展现在一个页面上。它相当于地球上生命的宇宙，而且还在不断更新和完善。

07:47

And so as you're looking at this stuff, thereally important change is the old biology used to be reactive. You used tohave a lot of biologists that had microscopes, and they had magnifying glassesand they were out observing animals. The new biology is proactive. You don'tjust observe stuff, you make stuff. And that's a really big change because itallows us to do things like this. And I know you're really excited by thispicture.

当你看到这些信息的时候，真正重要的变化是过去的生物学是被动的。过去很多生物学家都有显微镜，他们带着放大镜在外面观察动物。新的生物学是主动的。你不仅只是观察事物，你还创造事物。这是个重大的变化，因为它让我们可以像这样做事情。我知道你们对这张照片很兴奋。

08:13

(Laughter)

（笑声）

08:14

It only took us four years and 40 milliondollars to be able to take this picture.

它只花了我们4年时间和4千万美元来拍下这张照片。

08:18

(Laughter)

（笑声）

08:20

And what we did is we took the full genecode out of a cell -- not a gene, not two genes, the full gene code out of acell -- built a completely new gene code, inserted it into the cell, figuredout a way to have the cell execute that code and built a completely newspecies. So this is the world's first synthetic life form.

我们把完整的基因编码从细胞中提取出来——不是一个基因，不是两个基因，是把整个基因编码从细胞中提取出来，构建一个全新的基因编码，再注入到细胞中，找到方法让细胞执行编码去创造一个全新的物种。所以这是世界上第一个合成生命形式。

08:46

And so what do you do with this stuff?Well, this stuff is going to change the world. Let me give you three short-termtrends in terms of how it's going to change the world.

那么有了这个技术后我们要做什么？它会改变世界。让我给你们三个短期的趋势，来理解它将如何改变世界。

08:57

The first is we're going to see a newindustrial revolution. And I actually mean that literally. So in the same wayas Switzerland and Germany and Britain changed the world with machines like theone you see in this lobby, created power -- in the same way CERN is changingthe world, using new instruments and our concept of the universe --programmable life forms are also going to change the world because once you canprogram cells in the same way as you program your computer chip, then you canmake almost anything.

首先，我们将看到一场新的工业革命。我是认真的，毫不夸张。就像瑞士，德国和英国用你们在这次会议的大厅里看到的机器改变了世界一样，创造了力量——也如同欧洲核子研究中心（CERN）正在使用新的仪器和我们对宇宙的概念改变世界一样——可编码的生命形态也将改变世界，因为一旦你可以对细胞编码，就像你对电脑芯片编程一样，然后你几乎可以做任何事情。

09:33

So your computer chip can producephotographs, can produce music, can produce film, can produce love letters, canproduce spreadsheets. It's just ones and zeroes flying through there. If youcan flow ATCGs through cells, then this software makes its own hardware, whichmeans it scales very quickly. No matter what happens, if you leave your cellphone by your bedside, you will not have a billion cell phones in the morning.But if you do that with living organisms, you can make this stuff at a verylarge scale. One of the things you can do is you can start producing close tocarbon-neutral fuels on a commercial scale by 2025, which we're doing withExxon. But you can also substitute for agricultural lands. Instead of having100 hectares to make oils or to make proteins, you can make it in these vats at10 or 100 times the productivity per hectare. Or you can store information, oryou can make all the world's vaccines in those three vats. Or you can storemost of the information that's held at CERN in those three vats. DNA is areally powerful information storage device.

你的电脑芯片可以制作图像，音乐，电影，可以写情书，制作电子表格。这只是许多 1 和 0 在那里飞来飞去。如果你能让 ATCG 在细胞中穿行，软件就会创造自己的硬件，这意味着它扩展的速度非常快。不管发生什么，如果你把手机放在床边，你早上醒来不会有数十亿部手机。但如果你对活的生物体这样做，你可以大规模复制这些生命。到2025年，你其实可以开始以商业规模 生产接近碳中性的燃料，我们正在与埃克森公司 就这个问题展开合作。你也可以用它来取代农田。不再需要100公顷的土地来生产油或蛋白质，相反，你可以在这些大桶里以每公顷10到100倍的产量生产。你也可以在这三个桶里储存信息，或者制造世界上所有的疫苗。或者你可以把CERN保存的大部分信息存储在这三个容器中。DNA真是个非常强大的信息存储设备。

10:49

Second turn: you're beginning to see therise of theoretical biology. So, medical school departments are one of the mostconservative places on earth. The way they teach anatomy is similar to the waythey taught anatomy 100 years ago. "Welcome, student. Here's yourcadaver." One of the things medical schools are not good at is creatingnew departments, which is why this is so unusual. Isaac Kohane has now createda department based on informatics, data, knowledge at Harvard Medical School.And in a sense, what's beginning to happen is biology is beginning to getenough data that it can begin to follow the steps of physics, which used to beobservational physics and experimental physicists, and then started creatingtheoretical biology. Well, that's what you're beginning to see because you haveso many medical records, because you have so much data about people: you've gottheir genomes, you've got their viromes, you've got their microbiomes. And asthis information stacks, you can begin to make predictions.

第二：你开始看到理论生物学的兴起。医学院是世界上最保守的地方之一。他们教解剖学的方法还像100年前一样。“欢迎，学生们，这是你的尸体。”医学院不擅长开设新的院部，这是为什么它很少见的原因。萨克·科哈尼现在在哈佛医学院创建了一个基于信息学、数据和知识的部门。在某种意义上，生物学正在开始获得足够的数据，可以开始追随物理学发展的步伐，物理学曾经只包括观测物理和实验物理，然后才开始创建理论生物学。这就是你们刚开始看到的，因为你有如此之多的医疗记录，因为你有关于人的如此多的数据：有他们的基因组，有他们的病毒体，有他们的微生物群。随着这些信息累加，你可以开始做预测。

11:52

The third thing that's happening is this iscoming to the consumer. So you, too, can get your genes sequenced. And this isbeginning to create companies like 23andMe, and companies like 23andMe aregoing to be giving you more and more and more data, not just about yourrelatives, but about you and your body, and it's going to compare stuff, andit's going to compare stuff across time, and these are going to become verylarge databases.

第三件发生的事情是，这一切正在走向消费者。你也可以测序你的基因。这也导致了像23andMe 这样的公司的诞生，这样的公司会给你越来越多的数据，不仅关于你的亲戚，也关于你和你自己的身体，它还会进行比较，可以跨时间进行比较，将会形成非常大型的数据库。

12:19

But it's also beginning to affect a seriesof other businesses in unexpected ways. Normally, when you advertise something,you really don't want the consumer to take your advertisement into the bathroomto pee on. Unless, of course, if you're IKEA. Because when you rip this out ofa magazine and you pee on it, it'll turn blue if you're pregnant.

但这也将开始以不可预期的方式影响一系列其他商业。通常情况下，当你做广告的时候，你真的不希望消费者在你的广告宣传页上小便。当然，除非你是宜家。因为当你从杂志上撕下这页，尿在上面的时候，如果你怀孕了，它会变成蓝色。

12:43

(Laughter)

（笑声）

12:44

And they'll give you a discount on yourcrib.

他们会给你的婴儿床打折。

12:48

(Laughter)

（笑声）

12:50

Right? So when I say consumer empowerment,and this is spreading beyond biotech, I actually really mean that.

对吧？所以当我说消费者被赋能时，这已经超越了生物技术，我是说真的。

12:59

We're now beginning to produce, atSynthetic Genomics, desktop printers that allow you to design a cell, print acell, execute the program on the cell. We can now print vaccines real time asan airplane takes off before it lands. We're shipping 78 of these machines thisyear. This is not theoretical biology. This is printing biology.

在Synthetic Genomics（合成基因公司），我们现在开始生产台式打印机，可以让你设计细胞，打印细胞，执行细胞中的编码。我们现在可以实时打印疫苗，就在飞机起飞时开始，在着陆前完成。我们今年将售出78台这种机器。这不是理论生物学，这是打印生物学。

13:30

Let me talk about two long-term trends thatare coming at you over a longer time period. The first one is, we're startingto redesign species. And you've heard about that, right? We're redesigningtrees. We're redesigning flowers. We're redesigning yogurt, cheese, whateverelse you want. And that, of course, brings up the interesting question: How andwhen should we redesign humans? And a lot of us think, "Oh no, we neverwant to redesign humans." Unless, of course, if your child has aHuntington's gene and is condemned to death. Or, unless if you're passing on acystic fibrosis gene, in which case, you don't just want to redesign yourself,you want to redesign your children and their children. And these arecomplicated debates and they're going to happen in real time.

让我再谈谈两个长期趋势，是将会在更长的时间内发生在你身上的。第一个是，我们开始重新设计物种。你已听说过了，对吧？我们重新设计了树木，我们重新设计了鲜花。我们重新设计了酸奶，奶酪，随便你要什么。当然，这引出了一个有趣的问题：我们要怎样以及何时重新设计人类？我们很多人会想，“哦，不，我们从来不想重新设计人类。”当然，除非你的孩子有亨廷顿氏舞蹈症基因并且被医生判了死刑。或者，除非你遗传了囊性纤维化基因，在这种情况下，你不只是想重新设计自己，你还想重新设计你的孩子和他们的孩子。这些都是复杂的争论，它们当下正在发生着。

14:23

I'll give you one current example. One ofthe debates going on at the National Academies today is you have the power toput a gene drive into mosquitoes so that you will kill all the malaria-carryingmosquitoes. Now, some people say, "That's going to affect the environmentin an extreme way, don't do it." Other people say, "This is one of thethings that's killing millions of people yearly. Who are you to tell me that Ican't save the kids in my country?" And why is this debate so complicated?Because as soon as you let this loose in Brazil or in Southern Florida --mosquitoes don't respect walls. You're making a decision for the world when youput a gene drive into the air.

我给你们一个最近的例子。今天在国家科学院进行的一场辩论是关于 如果你有能力把基因注入蚊子体内，这样你就可以杀死所有 携带疟疾的蚊子。有人会说，“这将会以一种极端的方式 影响环境，不要这样做。” 其他人则说，“这是个每年造成数百万人死亡的事情，你凭什么对我说我不能拯救我们国家的孩子们？”为什么这场争论如此复杂？因为一旦你在巴西，或在佛罗里达州南部放松管制—— 蚊子可不管什么墙。当你把基因驱动放到空中时，你是在为世界做决定。

15:14

This wonderful man won a Nobel Prize, andafter winning the Nobel Prize he's been worrying about how did life get startedon this planet and how likely is it that it's in other places? So what he'sbeen doing is going around to this graduate students and saying to his graduatestudents, "Build me life but don't use any modern chemicals orinstruments. Build me stuff that was here three billion years ago. You can'tuse lasers. You can't use this. You can't use that." He gave me a vial ofwhat he's built about three weeks ago. What has he built? He's built basicallywhat looked like soap bubbles that are made out of lipids. He's built aprecursor of RNA. He's had the precursor of the RNA be absorbed by the cell andthen he's had the cells divide. We may not be that far -- call it a decade,maybe two decades -- from generating life from scratch out ofproto-communities.

这个了不起的人获得了诺贝尔奖，在获得诺贝尔奖后，他一直在操心生命是如何在这个星球上诞生的，在其他地方存在的可能性有多大？所以他一直想招一些研究生，对他们说，“去创造生物，但别使用任何现代化学品或仪器。给我造些三十亿年前出现的东西。你不能用激光，你不能用这个，你不能用那个。”他给了我一小瓶他三周前做的东西。他做的是什么？看起来就像是用脂质做的肥皂泡。他造出了RNA的前体。他让RNA的前体被细胞吸收，然后让细胞分裂。这一天可能不会太远—— 10年后，也许20年后——我们就能从原始群落中造出生命。

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