Juan Enriquez :基因组学与人类未来

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http://dotsub.com/view/57936129-7432-4a0a-80fb-07ab3ed06944
Juan Enriquez :基因组学与人类未来
我要开始危言耸听了 然后你们应该会感到担心 但不是因为你们认为的原因而担心 你们所担心的是—— 如果你关注的是幻灯片上这东西，那没问题，但如果你关注的不是这个，那么你将会错过一些真正值得关注的事物 比如说你们这周都在关注伊拉克 布什或者股市 那么就会错过有史以来最棒的体验 关于这东西的体验 即DNA晶体 这个星球上形成的每个生命，包括昆虫，细菌，植物 动物，人类，政治家——(笑) 都是由DNA编码的 这是单个DNA晶体 而我们目前对它的研究才刚起步 这项研究将给我们带来前所未有的振奋 将是目前为止我们所参与的最伟大的项目 如果你认为绘制美国地图 登陆月球或类似项目影响深远 那么你错了，实际上我们每一个人以及每种植物 昆虫，细菌的基因图谱才是最具意义的 它能告诉我们进化史 (笑)
这就是 正如Richard Dawkins著作《伊甸园之河》 是条伊甸园之河 你的细胞中有320亿对碱基 见证你在过去10几亿年的历史 我们开始从事各方面研究 我们开始改变药物，开始考古 你会发现在大约700年前 欧洲白人与非洲黑人有显著差异 欧洲白人受鼠疫侵袭 大部分人因此死去 但仍有一小部分人存活下来，因为这些人CCR5受体上有一个基因发生突变 突变基因传给了他们的后代 只有他们存活下来，繁衍出后代 所以说当时鼠疫造成了很大的人口选择压力，只有拥有突变基因的人才能存活 在非洲，因为没有这群人 就不存在造成人口选择压力的CCR5突变基因 这大概是700年前的事 CCR5突变基因也是艾滋病非洲大陆迅速蔓延 而在欧洲却没有那么快的原因之一 我们现在刚刚开始研究这个突变基因对疟疾 镰刀状细胞以及癌症的作用 因此我们开始测绘人类基因图谱 这绝对是一个前无古人的伟大项目 这周五，我要你们拿出上好的葡萄酒 向两个伟人敬酒 50年前的这个周五，正是沃森和克里克发现了DNA结构 这跟 我们2月12日那天开始的基因测绘一样重要 不过不管怎么说，我们最终都能发展到这一步
现在还是来讨论目前最新的物种世界吧 你们都听说过DNA及其作用 我们发现一样有趣的东西 地球上这个物种最丰富 你也许认为你最强大或者蟑螂最强大 实际上肋球藻属才是最强大的，地球上有十万亿兆多个 而我们却不知道有这么多肋球藻属 这是为什么物种的基因测绘项目如此重要 的一部分原因 我们才刚刚知道 我们来自哪，我们是什么 我们发现了变形虫，这是放射变形虫 放射变形虫之间并不相像 而你们每一个人都有32亿字母(A,T,C,Gs) 这些字母组成了你 这是就你细胞里的遗传密码而言 微小的变形虫 生活在水中，可能有数百只，数百万只或者数十亿只 变形虫细胞里有6200亿碱基对组成的遗传密码 也就说它的基因组数量 是你的200倍 如果你正关注有效的信息储存机制 芯片可能还达不到你的要求 但变形虫可以
我们正对生命进行研究，研究其运作机制 看看这个，人们以前并不认为 从核反应堆中提取样品能有所发现 因为这是很危险的，而且其中肯定没有生命存在 后来终于有人用显微镜 观察了核反应堆核心边上的水源 发现 耐辐射球菌，不停地捍卫自己的生命 它们的染色体每天都被强行分开 6至7次，然后再自行聚合 它们生活环境中的辐射是能够杀死你的辐射的200倍 现在你们应该能够意识到 研究基因是多么多样化，多么重要，多么有趣 以及到底有多少种生命形式 而这么多的生命又怎么能够在 不同环境中甚至地球以外的星球上生存 如果你能在类似的高辐射环境中生存下来 这就产生了一系列有意思的疑问
这小东西：我们不知道它的存在 但我们本应该要知道 因为它是唯一露眼能见的细菌 直径0.75毫米 生活在离纳米比亚海岸不远的深海沟里 这种纳米比亚戈登氏菌是我们见过的 最大的细菌 大概有一个句子里的句号那么大 再一次强调，三年前我们还不知道它的存在 现在才刚刚开始对物种世界的探索之旅
这个菌比较奇特，是铁原体菌 因为它以铁为能源 生活在等同于于酸电池的环境中 会分泌出硫酸 你开始关注这个奇特的生命形式 它是靠什么维持生命的 你会发现这种生命形式非常高效 它是一种古细菌，古细菌顾名思义远古时期就有的 细菌 这么说是因为 古细菌在地球还处在类似于 酸电池的环境中时就出现了 当地球还是一个熔浆核心的部分时它就开始消耗铁了 它不是猫狗也不是鲸鱼海豚 这是探索过程中你们应该很清楚并且感兴趣的
你们所担心的应该是 你们关注的是非永恒的东西 我的意思是，乔治布什总有一天会死去，但这种生命不会 不论人类是否生存 古细菌之类的都始终存在于地球或其他星球上 DNA现在对于遗传密码的研究才刚起步 这将是迄今为止 最为激动人心的脑力体验
你可以使用各种奇招怪法对它们进行实验。这是雀鳝属鱼的幼鱼 保护组织成员集合在一起 试着找出繁殖濒临灭绝的动物的方法 自然繁殖是行不通的，于是它们 用勺子从成年雀鳝属鱼嘴里取出一些细胞，得出其密码 将上述细胞注入一头受精牛的卵细胞中 通过整合不同的遗传密码重新编程 然后牛就会产下雀鳝属鱼 我们现在对非洲产大羚羊，熊猫， 以及苏门答腊虎做这种实验 澳大利亚人——保佑他们吧 对这个动物进行这方面研究
最后一个源自这种研究的动物死于1936年9月 这些是苏门答腊虎，我们所知道的最后一只死于霍巴特动物园 但结果证明我们对遗传密码的研究越深入 对重新编程物种越了解 那么我们就能够修复损坏DNA上的基因间隔 如果能消除基因间隔 就能将一连串的DNA连在一起 通过这么做，并将其导入狼的受精卵中 就能产出 自1936年来地球上从未出现过的动物 然后开始思考更早以前的东西 开始关注渡渡鸟 以及其他物种 在其他地方，如马里兰，科学家们想找出 到底咱们的原始祖先是什么 Because each of us contains our entire gene code 过去的十几亿年我们又在哪 因为我们是从某样东西进化而来的 这个可以通过先全貌后细节的方式来考虑 通过对生命重新编程 我们也许能造出 与我们的原始祖先十分相近的东西 就是靠这些设备帮助我们找到答案
这些公司5年前还未出现 庞大的基因测序设施足可媲美足球场 一些为公有，一些为私有 第一次个人基因测序需要50亿美元 第二次要300万美元 在未来5年至8年内，我们将拥有价值1000美元的基因组 这意味着你们每一个人都能得到一个含有自身整套遗传密码的CD 但是这东西很枯燥，就是这个样子 (笑) 这东西最大的价值在于组成了生命 劳里待会儿会说点这方面的东西 如果你在自己的身体里发现这个 那你的麻烦就大了，因为那是埃博拉病毒的源码 埃博拉病毒能造成人类所知最致命疾病的一种:埃博拉出血热 植物、昆虫 还有这个苹果都是由这些东西组成他们的生命 苹果跟软盘是一样的 软盘由1和0编码 而苹果由腺嘌呤、胸腺嘧啶、鸟嘌呤、胞嘧啶编码，它长在树上 吸收树提供的营养，某一天 它成熟了，就掉下来了，对吧？ (笑) 当苹果掉下来时，启动了一个exe程序 这程序执行了上面第一行代码 AATCAGGGACCC，编码根 下一行编码茎 下一行TACGGGG编码 开在春天，有这种味道的花 只要你有遗传密码 并将其破解 顺便提一下，两年前第一个植物 第一个人类 以及第一个昆虫的遗传密码被破解出
我们第一次破解出遗传密码是在1995年 那是一种叫做流感嗜血杆菌的细菌 只要你有源密码 你可以改变源密码，重新编程生命形式 这东西就会变成疫苗 或者说它开始产生生物材料 这也是为什么杜邦开始投产聚酯的原因 是类似于玉米须的生物材料 这项技术能带来翻天覆地的变化，我们能够对生命进行重新编程 这是你的基因图谱的样子，这是你的一条染色体 你现在可以 买下你的基因图谱 这里是那条染色体上的基因 这列是基因所编码的东西，这列是基因能编码的特定模型 你可以将这些与文献联系起来 然后回家 上网，找到 世界上最大的公共图书馆，也是生命图书馆 在那你可以做点稀奇的事 因为你可以用类似的方法对苹果基因重新编程 如果你去哈佛医学院的Cliff Tabin实验室 他正在重新编程鸡胚，期望能生出多腿的小鸡 为什么Cliff要这么做呢，他又不是开餐馆的 (笑)
他从事这项研究 是因为当我们小时候玩蟋蟀 有时候抓住蟋蟀时它的尾巴会掉，但还能再长出来 但是人类就不一样 你切断的手臂或者腿却不会再长出来 但因为你们每个人的细胞中都含有自身的一整套遗传密码 每个细胞都能够被重新编程，如果我们不放弃干细胞研究 以及基因组研究 来实现不同的身体功能 通过实验，我们得知小鸡是如何长出翅膀的 以及是什么机制使得细胞分化而具有不同功能 我们要做的其中一件事 是阻止非分化细胞，即癌细胞 我们要学会做的一件事 是如何模拟干细胞重新编程细胞 模拟干细胞可以分化出骨头，胃，皮肤，胰腺 你或者你的孩子可以想象 通过科学家在世界上某个地方的努力钻研 使得人体器官重新长出也指日可待了
干细胞如何运作的？你和你旁边那个人 有千分之一不同的可能，但这仅由3%的基因决定， 也就是概率是3%的一千倍 即使是表达和标点的微小区别 也能造成整句话意思大相径庭，以这句为例 (笑) 是吧？ 这非常清楚吧，如果让男人来念 他们会这么念 对吧？ 而女人看到这个句子，呃，不对 她们会这么念 (笑) 这种区别都是由基因决定的 这也是为什么你跟那边那个人有千分之一不同的可能 他长得不错，不过…… 我还是不说这个了 还有即使不通过改变标点也能实现前后意思的巨大差别 看看这个，美国税务局 从另一个角度看 就变成他们的 (笑) 这解释了同样的遗传密码会有不同的表达——你有3万个基因 mice have 30,000 genes, husbands have 30,000 genes. 两者都有3万个基因，但妻子知道 遗传密码上一点细微的改变 就能产生非常巨大的变化 即使是一连串相同字母组成的句子也会因为微小的变化而产生大相径庭的意思 你的基因每天就是在干这个活 这也是为什么有时候人的基因 不需要很大改变就会得上癌症
这个芯片，大概是信用卡大小 能够对你们任何一个人进行6万种基因疾病的测试 虽然这又带来了隐私和保险 等等问题，但却能让我们追踪疾病 如果让一个白血病人参加测试 结果发现3种 临床症状非常相似的疾病 会出现不同的测试结果 因为在急性淋巴细胞性白血病中，上面那套基因会过表达 混合型白血病中，中间那部分基因会过表达 而急性髓细胞白血病中，则是下面的那部分基因过表达 如果上述一种情况发生在你身上 那你可以服用格里维克，就能痊愈 如果这些基因没有过表达 你没有患上其中任意一种疾病 就不需要服用格里维克 它不会起到任何作用 如果你得了乳腺癌，那就服用Receptin 如果没有HER-2受体，就不需要服用该药 从本质上改变药物 改变药物作用的方式和作用位点
我们上大学学过最宝贵的知识 是这个，但现在 已经不在重要了 美国国会图书馆的纸质版数据量 还没有一个好的基因公司 每个月提供的数据多，前提是复合数据 我想再强调一次，单就一个基因公司 以复合数据为前提，一个月产生的数据量 比国会图书馆收藏的纸质版数据量还大 这是美国经济强大的支柱，是摩尔定律 即计算机的价格每18个月会减半 同时性能加倍 但有个例外，就是 基因数据库中存放基因的增加速度 蓝线显示的是摩尔定律 这个是对数标尺，表示指数增长 这推动计算机行业的以前所未有的速度增长 因为到目前为止 还没有一项应用要求 超过摩尔定律所指的更新速度，但基因的增长例外
这里有幅地图 是在哈佛商学院完成的 一个有意思的问题出现了，如果所有的数据都是免费的 谁在使用？这是世界上最棒的公共图书馆 大约27兆比特数据 在美国内部流动 4.6兆比特流向欧洲国家 大约5.5兆比特流向日本，但日本 几乎与其他国家间没有这方面交流，而且剩下的人都不懂这个 资源是免费的，却没人关注，都把注意力集中到战争上 和布什上，对生命兴致缺缺 这张是新的世界地图 现在全世界都对遗传基因有所耳闻，但 实际上不是所有人都知道遗传基因之类的 这是无州界的 州的兴亡取决于 他们对于生命研究的重视程度 你会看到纽约的坠落 新泽西的坠落 以及一个崭新的智能帝国的崛起 你可以通过观察各个县得出结论 如果还需要更具体的资料来区分各个地方 那就是邮政编码 (笑)
你想知道生命研究的起始点吗？ 在南加州是在邮编为92121的地方开始的 位于sulk,斯克里普斯以及加州大学圣迭戈分校三角之间 叫做多利松路 这说明并不一定要成为一个大国才能获得成功 不一定要一大群人合力才能获得成功 你只要用3到4架精心挑选的波音747飞机 就能搬走一个国家的财富
同理马萨诸塞也一样，看起来似乎很大 顺道提下，同样颜色的地方是相邻的 那么这个的净效应又是什么 在农业社会中，富人和穷人 的区别在于 前者的产能是后者的5倍，为什么呢 因为农业社会中，如果你有10个孩子 你会比他人早起，比他人努力工作 平均而言，你创造出的财富就是 你邻里的五倍多 在知识社会中，这个比例达到427：1 有文化有知识是很重要的，但不仅仅体现在能读会写 通晓英语法语德语 更重要的是会操作微软、Linux以及苹果操作系统 在不久的将来，知道有关生命密码的知识也会变得非常重要 因此，你应该担心的是 你关注的方向不对 把注意力转向研究生命是非常重要的 这是国家兴盛或衰落的原因
如果时光倒退到1870年间 人均产能最高的国家是澳大利亚 后来是新西兰，1950年左右是美国 1973年则是瑞士，然后美国再次崛起 击败瑞士 大家都知道当今产能最高的国家 是卢森堡，人均年产量比美国 多1/3 而它是个小内陆国家，没有石油、钻石、天然资源 仅仅靠聪明的国民一点点积累发展成现在的样子。这是个例
这里显示的是不同国家的生产率差别 这里显示的是获得一个美国专利需要多少人 美国需要3000个人，韩国需要6000个人，英国需要14000个人， 阿根廷需要790000个人，你们知道阿根廷为什么崩溃么？ 不是因为通货膨胀 不是因为私有化 你可以让一个受过哈佛教育的毕业自常春藤联合会的经济学家 来掌管阿根廷，它照样会崩溃 因为经济学家不知道其中规则是如何改变的 对了，发明一个美国专利，需要560万印度人 让我们看看印度又是怎么回事 印度和中国队世界经济的贡献曾达到40% 不过只是在工业革命期间，现在只占到4.8% 两国合起来有20亿人口，占世界人口的1/3，产生的财富仅占世界的5% 因为他们没有顺势而变 因为统治者把他们的国民看做是农奴 而不是具有共同利益的投资人 统治者不懂得留住受过教育的人才 不刺激商业发展，不做上市 但硅谷懂得这么做，这是为什么 硅谷因为懂得网罗人才而取得不断的发展 而不是像印度或中国那样单单去发展集成电路 (笑)
世界都发生了什么 如果你1950年去联合国 即联合国成立的时间，世界上有50个国家 而现在有192个国家 这些国家一个接着一个分裂，分离，兴盛，衰落 变得支离破碎，但同样的故事仍然在上演 这些主权国家 在1990年之前并不存在 这并不包括国家之间的融合，或者是国家改名，或者是国旗的更改 每年有3.12个国家产生 人民掌管着各自的国家 有时候朝着更好的方向发展，有时候则陷入糟糕的境地 非常有意思的一点 你和你的子孙有能力建立大帝国 不需要多费劲就能搞定 (音乐) 音乐播完了，现在我要谈谈 如何通过研究生命赚钱 以及遗传密码是如何运作的 (计时人：超时两分钟) (笑) 现在我不说了，明年再继续 因为我不想占用劳比的时间
谢谢大家


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Juan Enriquez on genomics and our future
I'm supposed to scare you, because it's about fear, right? And you should be really afraid, but not for the reasons why you think you should be. You should be really afraid that -- if we stick up the first slide on this thing -- there we go -- that you're missing out. Because if you spend this week thinking about Iraq and thinking about Bush and thinking about the stock market, you're going to miss one of the greatest adventures that we've ever been on. And this is what this adventure's really about. This is crystallized DNA. Every life form on this planet -- every insect, every bacteria, every plant, every animal, every human, every politician -- (Laughter) is coded in that stuff. And if you want to take a single crystal of DNA, it looks like that. And we're just beginning to understand this stuff. And this is the single most exciting adventure that we have ever been on. It's the single greatest mapping project we've ever been on. If you think that the mapping of America's made a difference, or landing on the moon, or this other stuff, it's the map of ourselves and the map of every plant and every insect and every bacteria that really makes a difference. And it's beginning to tell us a lot about evolution. (Laughter)

It turns out that what this stuff is -- and Richard Dawkins has written about this -- is, this is really a river out of Eden. So, the 3.2 billion base pairs inside each of your cells is really a history of where you've been for the past billion years. And we could start dating things, and we could start changing medicine and archeology. It turns out that if you take the human species about 700 years ago, white Europeans diverged from black Africans in a very significant way. White Europeans were subject to the plague. And when they were subject to the plague, most people didn't survive, but those who survived had a mutation on the CCR5 receptor. And that mutation was passed on to their kids because they're the ones that survived, so there was a great deal of population pressure. In Africa, because you didn't have these cities, you didn't have that CCR5 population pressure mutation. We can date it to 700 years ago. That is one of the reasons why AIDS is raging across Africa as fast as it is, and not as fast across Europe. And we're beginning to find these little things for malaria, for sickle cell, for cancers. And in the measure that we map ourselves, this is the single greatest adventure that we'll ever be on. And this Friday, I want you to pull out a really good bottle of wine, and I want you to toast these two people. Because this Friday 50 years ago, Watson and Crick found the structure of DNA, and that is almost as important a date as 12 February when we first mapped ourselves, but anyway, we'll get to that.

I thought we'd talk about the new zoo. So, all you guys have heard about DNA, all the stuff that DNA does, but some of the stuff we're discovering is kind of nifty because this turns out to be the single most abundant species on the planet. If you think you're successful or cockroaches are successful, it turns out that there's ten trillion trillion Pleurococcus sitting out there. And we didn't know that Pleurococcus was out there, which is part of the reason why this whole species mapping project is so important. Because we're just beginning to learn where we came from and what we are. And we're finding amoebas like this. This is Amoeba dubia. And Amoeba dubia doesn't look like much, except that each of you has about 3.2 billion letters, which is what makes you you as far as gene code inside each of your cells, and this little amoeba which, you know, sits in water in hundreds and millions and billions, turns out to have 620 billion base pairs of gene code inside. So, this little thingamajig has a genome that's 200 times the size of yours. And if you're thinking of efficient information storage mechanisms, it may not turn out to be chips. It may turn out to be something that looks a little like that amoeba.

And, again, we're learning from life and how life works. This funky little thing: people didn't used to think that it was worth taking samples out of nuclear reactors because it was dangerous and, of course, nothing lived there. And then finally somebody picked up a microscope and looked at the water that was sitting next to the cores. And sitting next to that water in the cores was little Deinococcus radiodurans, doing a backstroke, having its chromosomes blown apart every day, six, seven times, restitching them, living in about 200 times the radiation that would kill you. And by now you should be getting a hint as to how diverse and how important and how interesting this journey into life is, and how many different life forms there are, and how there can be different life forms living in very different places, maybe even outside of this planet. Because if you can live in radiation that looks like this, that brings up a whole series of interesting questions.

This little thingamajig: we didn't know this thingamajig existed. We should have known that this existed because this is the only bacteria that you can see to the naked eye. So, this thing is 0.75 millimeters. It lives in a deep trench off the coast of Namibia. And what you're looking at with this namibiensis is the biggest bacteria we've ever seen. So, it's about the size of a little period on a sentence. Again, we didn't know this thing was there three years ago. We're just beginning this journey of life in the new zoo.

This is a really odd one. This is Ferroplasma. The reason why Ferroplasma is interesting is because it eats iron, lives inside the equivalent of battery acid, and excretes sulfuric acid. So, when you think of odd life forms, when you think of what it takes to live, it turns out this is a very efficient life form, and they call it an archaea. Archaea means the ancient ones. And the reason why they're ancient is because this thing came up when this planet was covered by things like sulfuric acid in batteries, and it was eating iron when the earth was part of a melted core. So, it's not just dogs and cats and whales and dolphins that you should be aware of and interested in in this little journey.

Your fear should be that you are not, that you're paying attention to stuff which is temporal. I mean, George Bush -- he's going to be gone, all right? Life isn't. Whether the humans survive or don't survive, these things are going to be living on this planet or other planets. And it's just beginning to understand this code of DNA that's really the most exciting intellectual adventure that we've ever been on.

And you can do strange things with this stuff. This is a baby gar. Conservation group gets together, tries to figure out how to breed an animal that's almost extinct. They can't do it naturally, so what they do with this thing is they take a spoon, take some cells out of an adult gar's mouth, code, take the cells from that and insert it into a fertilized cow's egg, reprogram cow's egg -- different gene code. When you do that, the cow gives birth to a gar. We are now experimenting with bongos, pandas, elims*, Sumatran tigers, and the Australians -- bless their hearts -- are playing with these things.

Now, the last of these things died in September, 1936. These are Tasmanian tigers. The last known one died at the Hobart Zoo. But it turns out that as we learn more about gene code and how to reprogram species, we may be able to close the gene gaps in deteriorate DNA. And when we learn how to close the gene gaps, then we can put a full string of DNA together. And if we do that, and insert this into a fertilized wolf's egg, we may give birth to an animal that hasn't walked the earth since 1936. And then you can start going back further, and you can start thinking about dodos, and you can think about other species. And in other places, like Maryland, they're trying to figure out what the primordial ancestor is. Because each of us contains our entire gene code of where we've been for the past billion years, because we've evolved from that stuff, you can take that tree of life and collapse it back, and in the measure that you learn to reprogram, maybe we'll give birth to something that is very close to the first primordial ooze. And it's all coming out of things that look like this.

These are companies that didn't exist five years ago. Huge gene sequencing facilities the size of football fields. Some are public. Some are private. It takes about 5 billion dollars to sequence a human being the first time. Takes about 3 million dollars the second time. We will have a 1,000 dollar genome within the next five to eight years. That means each of you will contain on a CD your entire gene code. And it will be really boring. It will read like this. (Laughter) The really neat thing about this stuff is that's life. And Laurie's going to talk about this one a little bit. Because if you happen to find this one inside your body, you're in big trouble because that's the source code for Ebola. That's one of the deadliest diseases known to humans. But plants work the same way and insects work the same way, and this apple works the same way. This apple is the same thing as this floppy disk. Because this thing codes ones and zeros, and this thing codes A, T, C, Gs, and it sits up there, absorbing energy on a tree, and one fine day it has enough energy to say, execute, and it goes thump. Right? (Laughter) And when it does that, pushes a .EXE, what it does is, it executes the first line of code, which reads just like that, AATCAGGGACCC, and that means: make a root. Next line of code: make a stem. Next line of code, TACGGGG: make a flower that's white, that blooms in the spring, that smells like this. In the measure that you have the code and the measure that you read it -- and, by the way, the first plant was read two years ago; the first human was read two years ago; the first insect was read two years ago.

The first thing that we ever read was in 1995: a little bacteria called Haemophilus influenzae. In the measure that you have the source code, as all of you know, you can change the source code, and you can reprogram life forms so that this little thingy becomes a vaccine, or this little thingy starts producing biomaterials, which is why DuPont is now growing a form of polyester that feels like silk in corn. This changes all rules. This is life, but we're reprogramming it. This is what you look like. This is one of your chromosomes. And what you can do now is, you can outlay exactly what your chromosome is, and what the gene code on that chromosome is right here, and what those genes code for, and what animals they code against, and then you can tie it to the literature. And in the measure that you can do that, you can go home today, and get on the Internet, and access the world's biggest public library, which is a library of life. And you can do some pretty strange things because in the same way as you can reprogram this apple, if you go to Cliff Tabin's lab at the Harvard Medical School, he's reprogramming chicken embryos to grow more wings. Why would Cliff be doing that? He doesn't have a restaurant. (Laughter)

The reason why he's reprogramming that animal to have more wings is because when you used to play with lizards as a little child, and you picked up the lizard, sometimes the tail fell off, but it regrew. Not so in human beings: you cut off an arm, you cut off a leg, it doesn't regrow. But because each of your cells contains your entire gene code, each cell can be reprogrammed, if we don't stop stem cell research and if we don't stop genomic research, to express different body functions. And in the measure that we learn how chickens grow wings, and what the program is for those cells to differentiate, one of the things we're going to be able to do is to stop undifferentiated cells, which you know as cancer, and one of the things we're going to learn how to do is how to reprogram cells like stem cells in such a way that they express bone, stomach, skin, pancreas. And you are likely to be wondering around -- and your children -- on regrown body parts in a reasonable period of time, in some places in the world where they don't stop the research.

How's this stuff work? If each of you differs from the person next to you by one in a thousand, but only 3 percent codes, which means it's only one in a thousand times 3 percent, very small differences in expression and punctuation can make a significant difference. Take a simple declarative sentence. (Laughter) Right? That's perfectly clear. So, men read that sentence, and they look at that sentence, and they read this. Okay? Now, women look at that sentence and they, uh-uh, wrong. This is the way it should be seen. (Laughter) That's what your genes are doing. That's why you differ from this person over here by one in a thousand. Right? But, you know, he's reasonably good looking, but... I won't go there. You can do this stuff even without changing the punctuation. You can look at this, right? And they look at the world a little differently. They look at the same world and they say... (Laughter) That's how the same gene code -- that's why you have 30,000 genes, mice have 30,000 genes, husbands have 30,000 genes. Mice and men are the same. Wives know that, but anyway. You can make very small changes in gene code and get really different outcomes, even with the same string of letters. That's what your genes are doing every day. That's why sometimes a person's genes don't have to change a lot to get cancer.

These little chippies, these things are the size of a credit card. They will test any one of you for 60,000 genetic conditions. That brings up questions of privacy and insurability and all kinds of stuff, but it also allows us to start going after diseases because if you run a person who has leukemia through something like this, it turns out that three diseases with completely similar clinical syndromes are completely different diseases. Because in ALL leukemia, that set of genes over there over-expresses. In MLL, it's the middle set of genes, and in AML, it's the bottom set of genes. And if one of those particular things is expressing in your body, then you take Gleevec and you're cured. If it is not expressing in your body, if you don't have one of those types -- a particular one of those types -- don't take Gleevec. It won't do anything for you. Same thing with Receptin if you've got breast cancer. Don't have an HER-2 receptor, don't take Receptin. Changes the nature of medicine. Changes the predictions of medicine. Changes the way medicine works.

The greatest repository of knowledge when most of us went to college was this thing, and it turns out that this is not so important any more. The U.S. Library of Congress, in terms of its printed volume of data, contains less data than is coming out of a good genomics company every month on a compound basis. Let me say that again: A single genomics company generates more data in a month, on a compound basis, than is in the printed collections of the Library of Congress. This is what's been powering the U.S. economy. It's Moore's Law. So, all of you know that the price of computers halves every 18 months and the power doubles, right? Except that when you lay that side by side with the speed with which gene data's being deposited in GenBank, Moore's Law is right here: it's the blue line. This is on a log scale, and that's what superexponential growth means. This is going to push computers to have to grow faster than they've been growing because so far, there haven't been applications that have been required that need to go faster than Moore's Law. This stuff does.

And here's an interesting map. This is a map which was finished at the Harvard Business School. One of the really interesting questions is, if all this data's free, who's using it? This is the greatest public library in the world. Well, it turns out that there's about 27 trillion bits moving inside from the United States to the United States; about 4.6 trillion is going over to those European countries; about 5.5's going to Japan; there's almost no communication between Japan, and nobody else is literate in this stuff. It's free. No-one's reading it. They're focusing on the war; they're focusing on Bush; they're not interested in life. So, this is what a new map of the world looks like. That is the genomically literate world. And that is a problem. In fact, it's not a genomically literate world. You can break this out by states. And you can watch states rise and fall depending on their ability to speak a language of life, and you can watch New York fall off a cliff, and you can watch New Jersey fall off a cliff, and you can watch the rise of the new empires of intelligence. And you can break it out by counties because it's specific counties. And if you want to get more specific, it's actually specific zip codes. (Laughter)

So, you want to know where life is happening? Well, in Southern California it's happening in 92121. And that's it. And that's the triangle between Salk, Scripps, UCSD, and it's called Torrey Pines Road. That means you don't need to be a big nation to be successful; it means you don't need a lot of people to be successful; and it means you can move most of the wealth of a country in about three or four carefully picked 747s.

Same thing in Massachusetts. Looks more spread out but -- oh, by the way, the ones that are the same color are contiguous. What's the net effect of this? In an agricultural society, the difference between the richest and the poorest, the most productive and the least productive, was five to one. Why? Because in agriculture, if you had 10 kids and you got up a little bit earlier and you work a little bit harder, you could produce about five times more wealth, on average, than your neighbor. In a knowledge society, that number is now 427 to 1. It really matters if you're literate, not just in reading and writing in English and French and German, but in Microsoft and Linux and Apple. And very soon it's going to matter if you're literate in life code. So, if there is something you should fear, it's that you're not keeping your eye on the ball. Because it really matters who speaks life. That's why nations rise and fall.

And it turns out that if you went back to the 1870s, the most productive nation on earth was Australia, per person. And New Zealand was way up there. And then the U.S. came in about 1950, and then Switzerland about 1973, and then the U.S. got back on top -- beat up their chocolates and cuckoo clocks. And today, of course, you all know that the most productive nation on earth is Luxembourg, producing about one third more wealth per person per year than America. Tiny landlocked state. No oil. No diamonds. No natural resources. Just smart people moving bits. Different rules.

Here's differential productivity rates. Here's how many people it takes to produce a single U.S. patent. So, about 3,000 Americans, 6,000 Koreans, 14,000 Brits, 790,000 Argentines. You want to know why Argentina's crashing? It's got nothing to do with inflation. It's got nothing to do with privatization. You can take a Harvard-educated Ivy League economist, stick him in charge of Argentina. He still crashes the country because he doesn't understand how the rules have changed. Oh, yeah, and it takes about 5.6 million Indians. Well, watch what happens to India. India and China used to be 40 percent of the global economy just at the Industrial Revolution, and they are now about 4.8 percent. Two billion people. One third of the global population producing 5 percent of the wealth because they didn't get this change, because they kept treating their people like serfs instead of like shareholders of a common project. They didn't keep the people who were educated. They didn't foment the businesses. They didn't do the IPOs. Silicon Valley did. And that's why they say that Silicon Valley has been powered by ICs. Not integrated circuits: Indians and Chinese. (Laughter)

Here's what's happening in the world. It turns out that if you'd gone to the U.N. in 1950, when it was founded, there were 50 countries in this world. It turns out there's now about 192. Country after country is splitting, seceding, succeeding, failing. And it's all getting very fragmented. And this has not stopped. In the 1990s, these are sovereign states that did not exist before 1990. And this doesn't include fusions or name changes or changes in flags. We're generating about 3.12 states per year. People are taking control of their own states, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. And the really interesting thing is, you and your kids are empowered to build great empires, and you don't need a lot to do it. (Music) And, given that the music is over, I was going to talk about how you can use this to generate a lot of wealth, and how code works. (Moderator: Two minutes.) (Laughter) No, I'm going to stop there and we'll do it next year because I don't want to take any of Laurie's time. But thank you very much.