To solve old problems, study new species | Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2017

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nature is wonderfully abundant, diverse and mysterious -- but biological research today tends to focus on only seven species, including rats, chickens, fruit flies and us. We're studying an astonishingly narrow sliver of life, says biologist Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, and hoping it'll be enough to solve the oldest, most challenging problems in science, like cancer. In this visually captivating talk, Alvarado calls on us to interrogate the unknown and shows us the remarkable discoveries that surface when we do.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This TED Talk features developmental and regeneration biologist Alejandro Sanchez Alvarado, recorded live at TEDx KC, 2016.
0:26.6	For the past few years, I've been spending my summers in the marine biological laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
0:29.6	And there, what I've been doing is essentially renting a boat.
0:33.6	And what I would like to do is to ask you to come on a boat ride with me tonight.
0:40.3	So we ride off from Eel Pond into the Vineyard Sound, right off the coast of Martha's Vineyard,
0:47.3	equipped with a drone to identify potential spots from which to peer into the Atlantic.
0:53.3	Now earlier I was going to say into the depths of the Atlantic,
0:57.0	but we don't have to go too deep to reach the unknown.
1:01.0	Here, barely two miles away from what is arguably the greatest marine biology lab in the world,
1:08.0	we lower a simple plankton net into the water and bring up to the surface
1:12.9	things that humanity rarely pays any attention to and oftentimes has never seen before.
1:20.0	So here's one of the organisms that we caught in our net. This is a jellyfish. But look closely.
1:26.1	And living inside of this animal is another organism that is
1:29.3	very likely entirely new to science, a complete new species. Or how about this other transparent
1:35.7	beauty with a beating heart, a sexually growing on top of his head progeny that will move on to
1:43.3	reproduce sexually.
1:45.4	Now, let me say that again.
1:46.9	This animal is growing asexually on top of his head,
1:50.7	progeny that is going to reproduce sexually in the next generation.
1:55.8	A weird jellyfish?
1:57.6	Not quite.
1:58.8	This is an acidian.
	...

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