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TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-08-25
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIjFtTQzrrE
WNED as a boy I never had a doubt as to who I wanted to be %HESITATION well look at the stuff I wanted to be an astronomer of course I wanted to study star send space in between them except it was not going to be my destiny because you see I happen to have been born in Russia and I happen to have been born Jewish and
that at the time was not a good combination yeah I do the infinite wisdom of the Soviets established three quarters on everything Jewish in just about every field and then my relatives and my friends whose opinion I highly respected %HESITATION they kept telling me that I shouldn't even think about going to a physics department of local state university for the simple reason I would never make
it my brain was telling me they were high but the two major inside me was fighting that so it was a dilemma and I said to myself agog %HESITATION even in the shooting at you to be wise and gold %HESITATION granted me wisdom and I switched the fields the biology with the Qantas was much better because it was much more relaxed in jail time I had
a young family my wife and my eh keep Stolar feel at the time let me do analysis we left Russia for good we went to the US and settle down in Boston for good and for the following %HESITATION several decades I was studying these and these are not a large images of stars if you can hear them through a telescope I instead there these are our
largest images of tia as you can see them through a microscope so we switched though from the largest to the smallest and two things happened at first I nobody predicted to speech and the second I never forgotten weddings in realization came that it really doesn't matter what you study but what matters it used to have a big challenge in front of you and intellectual one diesel
and enough passion to do so in your lifetime there are many challenges in the physics and astronomy there are many challenges in biology and microbiology but there is one at least one that curiously enough has if anything as nameless dark matter that young boy from the eighteen sixties went from stars microbes but in hope that one day maybe just maybe that one day he will be
back so now but let me switch to switch gears and go to like about here's a people use with open medium our and we put all of my crops though from Seoul on it and somewhere had been %HESITATION would you she's small discs because he's a polling is because it was heavy fills forms would you do not see you there are many many many many self
that for some reason a little there so what is a number that what is the difference between the number of organisms that form colonies and the number of organisms that blocked the difference is very large indeed but here is a box Erik usually boom box ease the number of but microburst species on the planet then the red speck in the middle this one is a number
of species microbiologists have been able to isolate instead it and utilize over Bob come they come to fifty years so how much everyone from that tax back %HESITATION will be actually doing a bit of a great deal so will the original ideas of how microorganisms sorry lechwe Charlie and Paul self they came from that I think that that's all day long a hero books on microbiology
it's a general microbiology medical microbiology micro belittled you name it and most of this knowledge came from there expect but more importantly addictive drugs or more specifically antibiotics overwhelming majority of them came from that I've spent so what is it that the rest of my crumbled companies how we can access it how we can grow with and how we can utilize that that is the question
so let me go back to the to the to the PC dish and the basic idea in microbiology four hundred years was that %HESITATION we can guess would like organisms need we're gonna figure it out but within the no species needs and provide it with in the form of right temperature right to chance imputed use and the idea works up to a point and that point
was that print written all I guess work Breen skimpy mental that success but only if it can be in small steps is it possible to eliminate guesswork from the work of microbiologists is it possible to cultivate microorganisms by design well let's go to leisure how do we don't laugh why well with Roseanne means soil why because school of course contains everything as at the plants need
but that doesn't this seem logical plectrum microbes doesn't that doesn't sit well accurate seats field with micro organisms %HESITATION they're older looking thing he'd all the growth factors a few tomatoes a whatever you need if there the that makes me very complex how can he gets its composition why do we have to get the good because all you know where that makes a piece that's in
the Mitchell environment holes in micro organisms we get with one goal so thinking this way would be to the device it's very simple really and that will take you with background in steps this source is the single %HESITATION example full in big self out of and then we suspend them again the beaker %HESITATION benzinga put to him C. plastic plate with small holes into that Phil
suspect and of course each school will capture small volume of that first you don't always dilute that's a special such that each hole will capture bullish one fill there are some will contain two others will contain %HESITATION nothing but most will contain one the next step nosey as it pleased her which were loaded with filthy and he's in the middle %HESITATION that the next step is
to put membranes next to him at all to the plate that ingrained will help holes they're small enough to contain that GT inside the can across it by the large enough to allow chemical diffusion per core in the future then the press that that device a tightly together and then we put it back in into the soil I think my fiction has a laugh at now
chemical diffusion will being from soil everything like UPS needles inductance growth factor pheromones and holds the filth inside will never know when we can we can we please use them they will be even able to grow in nature they should be able to go inside the device and live the girl that will form a calling but still that's it and you time will it means that
a movie he lives the the family and here it is with us calling itself on the micro organisms we grow we do not knowing why but who knows recall that device in isolation sheep or a cheap for short and here it is simple piece of plastic exhibit a low tech if someone has said accompaniment I think Eitzel just low tech aggressively low tech but that wasn't
feeling that was just made you but inferior it will no though there is no difference between practice and theory but in practice it ease up so we'll force needed to conduct some experiments and actually show that we can grow microorganisms in the device in very different from what what do you can cultivate in the lab still up here a bullet whizzing that they cheapened to soil
to incubate and see what we can grow in it and there was we discover it words that the device was teeming with life we please micro belief that the economy number of cells that would form phone if not by five percent relative to conventional technologies but by five percent look like then not by a hundred percent by fifty thousand when you will be getting access to
the microdata matter and we use that technology in the it's leafy cation sit just about everywhere from a stand of soils to arctic lakes to human voice and that was really interesting bravely took a number of interesting books but a little team that that is the device that may have where V. interesting practical application our end as then the clothesline Q. Lewis also from Northeastern University
like myself a a we formed their company at startup that had a mission but to utilize those technologies to grow Noel microorganisms in the search for normal antibiotics I'm switching gears again I'm going to delete something interesting I think I I so this is a timeline well you've got a point you budgets over the years are you promised you the spike nineteen forties nineteen fifties and
nineteen sixties %HESITATION we discover it most of the known classes so for antibiotics the discoveries were coming every day and then it stopped I elite lead stop completely for the past thirty years we have not discovered the single noble classified you back but Michael Bolton thinks the Steve released you develop resistance so there is this if you felt arrives in the pipeline of new antibiotics is
dry that's a problem the problem is that the date in North America were twenty thousand people ed die every year from infections diseases that %HESITATION cannot be seated listening and Cuba to all and that number is about the same in European Union and the globally stupid disown hundred thousand people per year and if the situation doesn't change %HESITATION them the estimate is that by twenty fifteen
of we will have to mean people dying every year because of a lack of antibiotics so why limit just coming into play why would we will do so even forties and fifties and so difficult impossible today but advance was actually seen you remember that terrible that is what the local boys in these available today to discovering the lunch FedEx and will probably just discovered everything that
terrible contains I think but it is a level ninety nine percent or ninety nine point nine percent that's the microfilm and James Liu because they're well we need to calculate but now we know how %HESITATION so does the company of that I mentioned it was working with these technologies trying to discover in the link you back excellent deep %HESITATION thirteen you went at it you know
short temple here's the rate of discovery of mobile chemical compounds with antimicrobial properties at what well utilizing the colors I was talking about hundreds to thousands then hire them pick the the industry standard now %HESITATION a it Molly's thank you budget is one that is particularly interesting that would mean that takes the bottom we reported them all killed in the paper were published a couple of
years ago and here is the guy you know structural formal Okaloosa compound ten the photo of the %HESITATION microorganism from that dark matter that produces it it's a very interesting molecule look because if you've pathogens though we dive I think it's interesting Arab but that didn't how does the antibiotics I keeled Nikolay %HESITATION by targeting the target in the so they still can respond if so
can you take this so the Phil can change the target and then then to Bucknell in the works it happens with low no zero but low probability that's not how it takes about two fix the button works can fill weeks in two weeks so if you've got this so you can pull targets independently so you feel changes affect changes so what targets it's all going to
help to fill if you being called to being cute in the second week like that likewise changing the second a target is not going to add to help because the first target issue makes a film holder so what's good and that's that that that the film do well it still has to mutate but now you have to multiply one little probability by now the little probability
and you get in the field just was small probability or the film being able to go to develop resistance so if it takes a button and it becomes a drug that he's toast which will not coming to keep he left the room to beef to develop better means to combat infectious diseases six o'clock in this it won't even be clinical development that Sir I feel in
a day in phase one and phase two Eric it doesn't really matter too much because I did not discover it takes about them by chance we discovered that by design %HESITATION if my children graphic put it takes about them isn't the best part of its own story that will not of fulfillment that I cheap the to use to discovery they said that takes a book deal
is a fish they are cheap is there ought and having their all gonna cheese that we will get more fish and we desperately need more so that is the source of hope to me so please vote does it work is good if you're sure let me talk about the future but the future it's that's precisely where we're going to spend the rest of our life we
made all kinds of devices we adopted them to different environments fine tune them and they work well however all of them sure one at least one aspect and we suspect is actually laid village same as all the conventional calculation technologies as well and that these all of them require a microbiologist so there's got to be a microbiologist who who takes a sample structure itself loads them
into buy cheap were put on the beach a dish microbiologist is inseparable for that matter microbiologists is using they have to be together therefore we can into microbiology unlocks because it is a little like a well is there it is not going to be there to be one eventually so for several years said nothing he how to separate microbiologist from the tool micromolar sis using so
we can use that to anywhere and when I say anywhere I mean anywhere but never use Guler the new device that does not exist is just a concept but it will in a few short years it will be a device that will we be able to honestly samples environment simple single fell allow them to grow in fight it will have another social built into it that
will measure aspects of were also the same microorganism how would the spires how tea leaves this urge you to up all kinds of futility can be measured and the multi function you to put your iPhone so where is a microbiologist well microbiologist is we the Eiffel and that can be anywhere and got over and the what we want therefore it can go on March what it
