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Participants at the Annual Meeting 2017 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 17, 2017
Copyright by World Economic Forum / Sikarin Thanachaiary
JURY DISTINCTION FOR CATEGORY 1. OBJECT OF STUDY
Copyright CC-BY-NC-ND: Lisa Thönen
Maize root extracts were placed on plates filled with agar, a growth medium, to cultivate bacteria colonising the root. The agar also contains benzoxazinoids, a substance produced by maize plants with antibiotic properties. Some bacterial colonies appear red because they metabolise the benzoxazinoids into a red degradation product called AMPO.
This image visualises the maize root microbiome – the ensemble of microorganisms living in or on the root – and how they process secondary metabolites of the plant. This research investigates how bacterial communities living on maize roots cope with the benzoxazinoids, and which mechanisms are important for the adaptation of bacterial communities to such secondary metabolites. A better understanding of how plants select their microbiomes is an important key to improving maize cultivation for more sustainable agriculture.
Comment of the jury │ The intriguing photograph acts as a poetic window into a new world awaiting discovery: the microbe communities living under our feet. We might not exactly know what we are looking at, but we still feel attracted to its material presence and enigmatic beauty. While the picture reminds us of both the micro- and macrocosmos, the container puts them on a human scale.
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Des extraits de racines de maïs ont été déposés sur des plaques remplies d’agar-agar – un milieu de croissance – afin de cultiver les bactéries qui les colonisent. La gélose contient également des benzoxazinoïdes, une substance aux propriétés antibiotiques et produite par les plantes de maïs. Certaines colonies bactériennes métabolisent ce composé en un produit de dégradation rouge appelé AMPO et sont ainsi bien visibles sur l’image.
L’image visualise le microbiome de la racine du maïs, c’est-à-dire l’ensemble des micro-organismes vivant dans ou sur la racine. Ma recherche étudie comment les communautés bactériennes vivant sur les racines de maïs font face et s’adaptent aux métabolites secondaires de la plante, notamment aux benzoxazinoïdes. Mieux comprendre comment les plantes sélectionnent leurs microbiomes est un aspect important pour l’amélioration de la culture du maïs dans l’objectif d’une agriculture plus durable.
Commentaire du jury │ Cette intrigante photographie ouvre une fenêtre poétique sur un nouveau monde à découvrir: les communautés de microbes vivant sous nos pieds. Si nous ne savons pas exactement ce qui se présente à notre regard, nous nous trouvons attirés par cette présence matérielle d’une beauté énigmatique. Alors que l’image rappelle à la fois le microcosme et le macrocosme, le récipient rattache son sujet à l’échelle humaine.
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Extrakte aus Maiswurzeln wurden auf Agar-Platten platziert. Dieses Wachstumsmedium bietet einen guten Nährboden zum Kultivieren der Bakterien, welche die Maiswurzel besiedeln. Das Agar-Nährmedium enthält auch Benzoxazinoide, von Maispflanzen produzierte Stoffe mit antibiotischen Eigenschaften. Gewisse Bakterienkolonien metabolisieren diese Stoffe zu einem roten Abbauprodukt, dem AMPO. Auf dem Bild sind diese Kolonien gut zu erkennen.
Das Bild vermittelt einen Eindruck zum Mikrobiom der Maiswurzel, d. h. zur Gesamtheit der Mikroorganismen, die in oder auf der Wurzel leben. Mit dieser Forschungsarbeit wird untersucht, wie die auf den Maiswurzeln lebenden Bakteriengemeinschaften mit sekundären Pflanzenstoffen und namentlich den Benzoxazinoiden zurechtkommen und sich an diese anpassen. Ein besseres Verständnis darüber, wie Pflanzen ihre Mikrobiome selektionieren, ist wichtig für einen nachhaltigeren Maisanbau.
Kommentar der Jury │ Dieses Bild macht neugierig und öffnet ein poetisches Fenster zu einer Welt, die es noch zu entdecken gilt: die Gemeinschaften von Mikroorganismen unter unseren Füssen. Obwohl wir nicht genau wissen, was wir sehen, fasziniert uns die greifbare und doch rätselhafte Schönheit. Das Bild inszeniert gleichzeitig Mikro- und Makrokosmos, während der Behälter einen Bezug zu menschlichen Grössenverhältnissen herstellt.
Black Pool, one of the largest and most consistently beautiful features in West Thumb Geyser Basin, is 35-40 feet deep. The gorgeous blue water was once so dark it looked black, but changes in the inflow of hot water from under ground changed the "microbiome" resulting in wonderful clarity - if you can see past the continuous up-welling of steam.
Yellowstone Lake, still partly covered with ice, is visible beyond the geyser, and on the horizon is the Absaroka Mountain Range.
The silaceous minerals dissolved in the heated water arising from beneath the ground is deposited around the edges of the pool where it forms a necklace of geyserite crust adding to the beauty of the feature.
In a couple of spots in the shallow water at the features rim is cool enough for orange cyanobacteria to proliferate.
Bacterial strains in the guts of humans and chimpanzees diverged and began to evolve separately 5 million years ago and 15 million years ago in humans and gorillas. Humans and apes evolved into a new specie at about the same time. A mutually beneficial relationship between gut bacteria and animal hosts may contribute to the formation of a new species.
Credit: Darryl Leja, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health
I sent my saliva to China,
to the largest sequencing lab in the world,
and they did a whole genome sequence of me,
and most of me is not human.
Here are the bacteria living in my mouth, a pre-launch test from the first commercial service to offer a whole genome sequence of the whole lot:
Genus — Mapped reads
Prevotella — 2,573,674
Neisseria — 2,327,172
Haemophilus — 2,222,674
Streptococcus — 1,556,743
Rothia — 1,232,209
Veillonella — 945,180
Fusobacterium — 560,693
Campylobacter — 234,182
Atopobium — 231,213
Aggregatibacter — 202,541
Capnocytophaga — 116,289
Leptotrichia — 85,449
Bacteroides — 67,333
Clostridium — 41,490
Porphyromonas — 36,489
Paracoccus — 36,061
Actinobacillus — 26,650
Malassezia — 26,553
Selenomonas — 23,646
Pseudomonas — 14,293
N.gonorrhoeae — 10,950
Burkholderia — 10,630
Ruminococcus — 10,403
Staphylococcus — 9,584
Mannheimia — 8,730
Pasteurella — 8,134
Riemerella — 6,762
Megasphaera — 6,576
Streptomyces — 5,041
Laribacter — 4,230
Acinetobacter — 2,752
Other bacterium — 174,580
I saw a few things in there that struck me as quite peculiar... things that one might expect, ummm, elsewhere on the body... and so I shared the results with some microbiome experts who have a keen interest in this. Here’s what U.C. Davis Professor Jonathan Eisen had to say:
“The first thing I usually do for samples is look at % by phylum. See pie chart for yours below.
The #s for each microbial group (i.e., Staphylococcus, Neisseria, etc.) do not seem out of the ordinary too much. Though I note - some studies have found high levels of Haemophilus in oral samples, and others seem to have not found them. Not sure why at this point but looking into it. The high levels of Neisseria (the genus that N. Gonorrhoaeae is in) is a common one, so nothing to worry about there. Prior studies have sometimes found high #s of Corynebacteia. These are not there on your list.
Also - the Malassezia is interesting. It is a fungus genus. Commonly found on the skin of various mammals including humans. Some types are found to be infectious, but I think most are just hanging out doing nothing. I have never seen it in mouth-microbe data, but if it was there, it would probably be missed by most studies since they focused on bacteria.”
Eisen also pointed me to the studies below. The microbiome was one of the major topics of interest at scifoo this year, where they claimed “20% of what’s in your blood is from the bacteria in your gut.” (I found earlier studies supporting 10%).
Looking at the bigger picture, New Scientist summarized some of the recent findings:
“One aspect of your uniqueness isn’t, strictly speaking, part of you at all. It comes from the 100 trillion bacteria that live both on and in you. They outnumber the body’s cells 10 to 1 and in genetic terms they are even more dominant… You’re 0.7% human
A recent study found that a unique bacterial fingerprint is transferred from our fingers to the things we touch, such as a computer keyboard or mouse, and will hang around for up to two weeks [think of the forensic applications! ]
Bacteria also contribute to uniqueness by modifying our metabolism. All humans share a basic biochemistry, but layered on top of this is a microbial biochemistry that is much more diverse. The metabolites that microbes produce affect a range of things, including cholesterol and steroid metabolism.
What this ultimately means is that without our non-human component, we wouldn’t be ourselves at all.”
And in rat studies, you can turn obesity on and off with a flush and refresh of new gut bacteria. (summary, more).
You are what they eat.
Participants at the Annual Meeting 2017 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 18, 2017
Copyright by World Economic Forum / Sikarin Thanachaiary
Flanked here by the CEO of Forbes and the Head of Editorial for Google Cloud, each of the five VC panelists submit their top two tech trend ideas in advance, and then we debate each other on stage. The ultimate rankings are based on the ~500 people in the live audience. Here is a fun summary of the trends and the panelist reactions, and a summary by EE Times.
I love the ending ;) “There was an overall audience winner: Deep edge narrowly edged out revival of voice — both of them from tech-trends event veteran Jurvetson. So once again, he won in a rout. A couple of years ago, his prize was a wizard’s cape. This time, he got a snazzy-looking wand. Not that he needs it.”
I have a particular challenge, having done this debate for almost 20 years now, to not repeat myself… with prior predictions about EVs in 2012 (debating Thiel), machine learning in 2013, autonomous cars in 2015 and others on space and synthetic biology trends.
Here is the first one that I defended… The Revival of Voice: The multi-touch screen UI finally cracked the code for smartphones. Major breakthroughs in voice will vastly broaden the compute fabric of the world.: video
And the second one…. The Deep Edge: The Embedding of Tiny Brains (Inference Engines / Neural Nets) in Everything: Couple some local intelligence to each sensor and the internet of things becomes the sensory cortex of the planet. video
P.S. The summary in that article is directionally correct, but in some cases, it reduces the arguments a bit much. Such as my retort to the first trend idea on education. Here is what I said: video
At Google this weekend. On display here is one of the early production servers, with four motherboards jammed on each shelf and cork sheets inserted in between. It overheated quite easily, so they built a wall of fans on the backside.
Here is today’s agenda. I have removed all of the names of the cool people leading these talks since there are Chatham House rules in effect.
So many sessions I want to see... I am in this session now: "What if extinction is not forever?"
It is quickly becoming feasible to reconstitute the genomes of vanished species using genetic material from preserved specimens and archaeological artifacts. Three different techniques are being deployed. Revivals already under way include mammoths, aurochs, and passenger pigeons. Candidate species include the dodo, the Carolina parakeet, the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger), and the Xerces blue butterfly. If we can actually revive an extinct species, should we? If so, why bother? Are some species more desirable, valuable, or ethical to bring back than others? Is it ethical to “improve” a revived species—for example to make a formerly extinct bird resistant to avian malaria? Do revived species have a “right” to be returned to the wild? Should revived species be treated as genetically modified organisms? In this session we can discuss the rapidly evolving science making all this possible and the downstream implications and opportunities.
Here is the lineup… So many great ones overlap. Sadly, right now, I’m missing the trillion-fps camera imaging the movement of light. Decisions, decisions…
10:00am
•What happens if we don't do anything about climate change? and what do we do about it if things go horribly awry?
•Robots (nanotechnological, synthetical biological, intelligent, for control) To Solve The Brain (understanding, fixing)
•Experiments in (informal) education: what can one magazine do?
•The coming war on general purpose computing and the civil war that comes after.
•Impostor Syndrome (and the culture of science)
•Spidersilk using silk worms.
•Smartphones to save lives, prevent disaster
•Open access commoditizing science - what next?
•What is Time
11:00am
•Neuroprediction: Does your brain predict if you will do bad things? p.s. all about psychopaths
•Optogenetics & Neural Imaging & Dynamics of the single cell
•Reversing climate change, land, air, ocean.
•What can new imaging hardware and software solve next? Trillion frames per second. Look around corners
•A fundamental problem in digital systems.
•De-Extinction: Practices and Prospects
•What I learned by doing capitalism and what you need to know
•Future of music
•Funding Science
12:00am
•Will the human race cause its own extinction
•Discovering new materials by computation.
•Data driven societies.
•Grand challenges in neuroscience.
•Long tails and big heads: Big data in science.
•Neurolaw
•Consumer biotechnology ie tissue engineering meat, leather, and other daily needs.
•What can we invent to raise the level of public discourse even slightly? A face to face debate platform on the internet
•Information that lives - digital lives and intelligent agents
•Detecting asteroids before they hit us.
13:00Lunch
14:00
•Starshade show & Tell. Hunting Exo-Earths and aliens
•Can "big data" solve healthcare?
•Art/Science Collaborations. Visualizing biology, conservation, innovative data exploration, and more.
•Internet education for teachers.
•City science.
•Open Science FTW - Oopen access, open data.
•Visual Music Brain Synesthesia;
•Stealth diagnostics Hidden biosignals & communicity health.
•The brain's flaws as a computational device. How they shape our lives.
•Fighting against anti-science and winning - new strategies.
15:00
•Your genome, your health. How long will we just kick the tyres of your car?
•Ocean acidification.
•Do we have free will and why does it matter?
•Big data sets and using them intelligently e.g. climate data,
•Storytelling vs the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Also, comics
•DIY and makers as international policy. Jose Gomez-Marquesz TH Culhane (fuel from garbage electricity , aluminum demo)
•What Microbes are on you your phone.
•a new artificial intelligence Brains Minds Machines
•Revolutionizing Education.
•The reproducibility crisis in biology.
16:30
•Tenure from Tweets? evaluation beyond citations
•African floating communities.
•Large-scale learning on the internet & Talking to the brain in its own language. Making prosthetic devices that work.
•Role of the ocean in carbon and climate.
•Biohacking and citizen synthetic biology How far can we go?
•Visual Tools for Science and Engineering.
•Do or should humans have an off world future?
•Ignorance - can we admit it and keep credibility?
•Demo SharkFinder Citizen Science Kits
17:30
•Emotions in motion. Get acquainted in nonverbal communication
•Post Natural History and the Future of Evolution.
•The technology and politics of spectrum ( the invisible resource you need) Why you need to understand more.
•Science Diplomacy
•Cheap energy, growth, global change.
•Build a puzzle/sculpture. I brought the parts, can you assemble them?
•Nature Porn - pollination, mushrooms etc. How beauty and seduction is nature's tool for survival. Film shorts & brief talks.
•Haploid stem cells and the future of disease genetics
•Smartphone science. Primary v suppport v citizen .
•Grand challenges in biology.
•"Scientific analysis on all the world's satellite images. Earth engine demo.
20:00
•Organizational Manipulation: how to social engineer your company, university, grantor, or colleagues
•fMRI Brain Reaction so what?
•IP & patents in biotech/education/community labs etc. What are the issues? What needs fixing? What's the future?
•Economics Comedy with stand-up economist + open-mic if desired
•Imagining post capitalism: a call for help.
•Of course Mars has life, but does Europa?
•Automating science to Accelerate Discovery with Demo
•The coming age of brain decoding.
•Images & Anecdotes from 17 years of astronomy picture of the day.
•Scaling research up - moving outside the lab with demo of smartphone brain scanner.
•Will the microbiome and inflammation explain all diseases?
October ferments- unripe backyard apples, (not sure what variety, it’s a very old tree with beautiful tart green apples that have just started developing a blush), sprouting rye berries (fuel for fermentation and flavour), local raw honey, Fig leaf, wild rosehips, allspice berries, Rocky Mountain juniper berries smashed up with the back of a spoon. Sweet, fizzy, tart, can’t wait to crack this one open in a few weeks.. October Rocky Mountain terroir in jar #fermentation #fermentedapples #juniper #eatthewoods #wildharvest #wildfoodlove #microbiome #nourishingtraditions #nourish #seasonaleating #rosehip #fermentationstation #sprouting #rye #regionalgrains #eatwild #homesteading #figtree #apples