演講MP3+雙語文稿:生活在地球深處的神秘微生物如何幫助人類

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【演講者及介紹】Karen Lloyd

凱倫·勞埃德研究地球深層生物圈的新型微生物，從遙遠的地方收集它們，比如北極峽灣、哥斯達黎加的火山，甚至是馬里亞納海溝附近的泥地深處。

【演講主題】生活在地球深處的神秘微生物以及它們?nèi)绾螏椭祟?/p>

【中英文字幕】

翻譯者 Jingdan Niu 校對者 Cissy Yun

00:13

It may seem like we're all standing onsolid earth right now, but we're not. The rocks and the dirt underneath us arecrisscrossed by tiny little fractures and empty spaces. And these empty spacesare filled with astronomical quantities of microbes, such as these ones. Thedeepest that we found microbes so far into the earth is five kilometers down.So like, if you pointed yourself at the ground and took off running into theground, you could run an entire 5K race and microbes would line your wholepath.

看起來我們現(xiàn)在都站在堅固的地球表面上，然而并不是。在我們腳下的石頭和塵土里交叉分布著細小的斷裂層和空隙。這些空隙中充滿天文數(shù)量級的微生物，比如這些。目前我們可以找到微生物的最大深度是地下5000米。所以，如果你在地面上定一個點位，然后開始向地心跑，沿途5000米的路徑上都能看到微生物。

00:45

So you may not have ever thought aboutthese microbes that are deep inside earth's crust, but you probably thoughtabout the microbes living in our guts. If you add up the gut microbiomes of allthe people and all the animals on the planet, collectively, this weighs about100,000 tons. This is a huge biome that we carry in our bellies every singleday. We should all be proud.

所以你可能從來沒想到這些微生物還存在于地殼的深處，但是你可能會想到生活在我們內(nèi)臟里的微生物。如果你將地球上所有生物的內(nèi)臟微生物全部加在一起，它們的重量約有10萬噸。每一天，這么龐大的生物群就生活在我們的肚子里。我們都應(yīng)該感到非常驕傲。

01:08

(Laughter)

（笑聲）

01:09

But it pales in comparison to the number ofmicrobes that are covering the entire surface of the earth, like in our soils,our rivers and our oceans. Collectively, these weigh about two billion tons.But it turns out that the majority of microbes on earth aren't even in oceansor our guts or sewage treatment plants. Most of them are actually inside theearth's crust. So collectively, these weigh 40 billion tons. This is one of thebiggest biomes on the planet, and we didn't even know it existed until a fewdecades ago. So the possibilities for what life is like down there, or what itmight do for humans, are limitless.

但是相對于可以覆蓋整個地球表面的微生物，比如在土壤里、河里和海里的微生物，內(nèi)臟里的微生物就顯得相形見絀了。它們加起來約有20億噸。但是事實說明大部分地球上的微生物并不是在我們的內(nèi)臟或者污水處理廠里。實際上，它們大多數(shù)都在地殼里。所以這些加起來有400億噸重。這是地球上最大的微生物群之一，而我們在幾十年前才發(fā)現(xiàn)它們的存在。所以地球下的生活是什么樣，或者它們對人類的影響無法估量。

02:15

So people sometimes say to me, "Yeah,there's a lot of microbes in the subsurface, but ... aren't they just kind ofdormant?" This is a good point. Relative to a ficus plant or the measlesor my kid's guinea pigs, these microbes probably aren't doing much of anythingat all. We know that they have to be slow, because there's so many of them. Ifthey all started dividing at the rate of E. coli, then they would double theentire weight of the earth, rocks included, over a single night. In fact, manyof them probably haven't even undergone a single cell division since the timeof ancient Egypt. Which is just crazy. Like, how do you wrap your head aroundthings that are so long-lived?

有時候有人跟我說，“沒錯，地表下有很多微生物，但是……它們不是在冬眠嗎？”這是非常好的一個問題。當比無花果屬植物或者麻疹，或者是我小孩養(yǎng)的那些豚鼠，這些微生物大概真的是什么事情都不做。我們知道因為它們數(shù)量過于龐大，它們不得不成長得很緩慢。如果它們按照大腸桿菌的速度開始分裂，僅僅一夜之間，它們就讓整個地球，包括石頭的重量翻倍。實際上，從古埃及時代以后，很多微生物大概甚至沒有完成過一次細胞分裂。這真是太神奇了。我們到底該如何去看待這樣長壽的東西？

03:00

But I thought of an analogy that I reallylove, but it's weird and it's complicated. So I hope that you can all go therewith me. Alright, let's try it. It's like trying to figure out the life cycleof a tree ... if you only lived for a day. So like if human life span was onlya day, and we lived in winter, then you would go your entire life without everseeing a tree with a leaf on it. And there would be so many human generationsthat would pass by within a single winter that you may not even have access toa history book that says anything other than the fact that trees are always lifelesssticks that don't do anything. Of course, this is ridiculous. We know thattrees are just waiting for summer so they can reactivate. But if the human lifespan were significantly shorter than that of trees, we might be completelyoblivious to this totally mundane fact.

但是我想到了一個我非常喜歡的類比，雖然它聽起來會有些奇怪和復(fù)雜。我希望你們可以聽聽看。好的，讓我們試試。這個類比就像是試圖理解一棵樹的生命周期……如果你只能活一天。所以假如人類的生命只有一天，并且是在冬天，那么你的整個人生，都不會在樹上看到任何一片葉子。在僅僅一個冬天里，人類就會擁有非常多的后代子孫，以致于歷史書上只會記載樹木 是一個沒有生命的棍子，沒啥用處。當然，這種結(jié)論很荒唐。我們知道樹木只是在等待夏天的到來，這樣它們就可以恢復(fù)活力。但是假如人類的壽命明顯比樹木的壽命短，我們可能就完全不會察覺到這個非常平凡的事實。

03:49

So when we say that these deep subsurfacemicrobes are just dormant, are we like people who die after a day, trying tofigure out how trees work? What if these deep subsurface organisms are just waitingfor their version of summer, but our lives are too short for us to see it? Ifyou take E. coli and seal it up in a test tube, with no food or nutrients, andleave it there for months to years, most of the cells die off, of course,because they're starving. But a few of the cells survive. If you take these oldsurviving cells and compete them, also under starvation conditions, against anew, fast-growing culture of E. coli, the grizzled old tough guys beat out thesqueaky clean upstarts every single time. So this is evidence there's actuallyan evolutionary payoff to being extraordinarily slow. So it's possible thatmaybe we should not equate being slow with being unimportant. Maybe theseout-of-sight, out-of-mind microbes could actually be helpful to humanity.

所以當我們說這些深埋于地下的微生物只是在沉睡，我們是不是就像那些壽命只有一天卻試圖理解樹木如何生存的人們？這些地表下的微生物會不會只是在等待它們的“夏天”，而我們只是因為生命太短暫而無法看到？如果你將大腸桿菌封閉在一個試管里，沒有食物或者營養(yǎng)劑給它，然后將它成年累月的放在那里不管，當然，大部分細胞都會餓死。但是很小一部分細胞會生存下來。如果你取下這些年老的存活下來的細胞，讓它們在饑餓的條件下，和一些新的、快速成長的大腸桿菌競爭，這些頭發(fā)花白、吃苦耐勞的老年人每一次都打敗了吱吱作響的干凈的新貴。所以，這證明了進化的格外緩慢 其實有好處。所以有可能，我們也許不應(yīng)該將慢等同于不重要。也許這些看不見的，我們不放在心上的微生物實際上對人類是有幫助的。

04:56

OK, so as far as we know, there are twoways to do subsurface living. The first is to wait for food to trickle downfrom the surface world, like trying to eat the leftovers of a picnic thathappened 1,000 years ago. Which is a crazy way to live, but shockingly seems towork out for a lot of microbes in earth. The other possibility is for a microbeto just say, "Nah, I don't need the surface world. I'm good downhere." For microbes that go this route, they have to get everything thatthey need in order to survive from inside the earth. Some things are actuallyeasier for them to get. They're more abundant inside the earth, like water ornutrients, like nitrogen and iron and phosphorus, or places to live. These arethings that we literally kill each other to get ahold of up at the surfaceworld.

目前我們所知道的是，有兩種方法讓它們在地表下的生活。第一種是等待食物從地表向下滴流，這就好像嘗試吃從一千年前的野餐上剩下來的食物。真是個瘋狂的生活方式。令人吃驚的是，對于很多地球上的微生物來說，這個方法是可行的。另外一種方式是，微生物會覺得，“我不需要地表世界，我在這下面挺好的?！睂τ谶x擇這條路的微生物來說，它們?yōu)榱松?，不得不從地球?nèi)部來獲取它們所需求的一切。實際上，有些東西對它們來說比較容易獲得。這些東西在地球里面更加充足，比如水源或者營養(yǎng)，比如氮、鐵和磷，或者可以居住的地方。這些是我們在地表世界上需要靠互相廝殺 來得到的東西。

05:44

But in the subsurface, the problem isfinding enough energy. Up at the surface, plants can chemically knit togethercarbon dioxide molecules into yummy sugars as fast as the sun's photons hittheir leaves. But in the subsurface, of course, there's no sunlight, so thisecosystem has to solve the problem of who is going to make the food foreverybody else. The subsurface needs something that's like a plant but itbreathes rocks. Luckily, such a thing exists, and it's called achemolithoautotroph.

但是在地表下，它們只需要擔心是否有足夠的能量。在地表上，當太陽光子照到植物的葉子上時，它們可以盡快地將二氧化碳分子轉(zhuǎn)化成美味的糖分。但是在地表下，當然了，那里沒有陽光，所以這個生態(tài)系統(tǒng)不得不解決這個問題：誰來給其它的微生物制造食物。地表下需要像植物那樣的東西，但是呼吸的是石頭。幸運的是，存在這么一個東西，叫做化能無機自養(yǎng)生物。

06:17

(Laughter)

（笑聲）

06:18

Which is a microbe that uses chemicals --"chemo," from rocks -- "litho," to make food --"autotroph." And they can do this with a ton of different elements.They can do this with sulphur, iron, manganese, nitrogen, carbon, some of themcan use pure electrons, straight up. Like, if you cut the end off of an electricalcord, they could breathe it like a snorkel.

這個單詞是由一個微生物利用化學(xué)物質(zhì)——“chemo”從石頭里——"litho"，生產(chǎn)食物——"autotroph"。它們可以用大量不同的元素。它們可以用硫磺、鐵、鎂、氮、碳，其中有些可以直接用純電子。就像是，如果你切掉一個電線的尾部，它們可以用它呼吸，就像潛水通氣管那樣。

06:42

(Laughter)

（笑聲）

06:43

These chemolithoautotrophs take the energythat they get from these processes and use it to make food, like plants do. Butwe know that plants do more than just make food. They also make a wasteproduct, oxygen, which we are 100 percent dependent upon. But the waste productthat these chemolithoautotrophs make is often in the form of minerals, likerust or pyrite, like fool's gold, or carminites, like limestone. So what wehave are microbes that are really, really slow, like rocks, that get theirenergy from rocks, that make as their waste product other rocks. So am Italking about biology, or am I talking about geology? This stuff really blursthe lines.

這些化能無機自養(yǎng)生物將這個過程中得到的能量用來制造食物，就像植物那樣。但是我們知道植物并不僅僅只是制造食物。它們也可以制造一種多余的產(chǎn)物，氧氣，這是我們百分之百賴以生存的東西。但是這些化能無機自養(yǎng)生物制造的多余的產(chǎn)物則是礦物，比如銹或者黃鐵礦，包括愚人金，或者碳酸鹽，包括石灰?guī)r。我們的微生物，就像石頭那樣，變化非常非常慢，它們從石頭里獲取能量，來制造的多余的產(chǎn)物，還是石頭。所以我是在討論生物，還是在討論地理？這個東西真的很難定義。

07:32

(Laughter)

（笑聲）

07:33

So if I'm going to do this thing, and I'mgoing to be a biologist who studies microbes that kind of act like rocks, thenI should probably start studying geology. And what's the coolest part ofgeology? Volcanoes.

如果我要研究微生物，并且我將要作為一名生物學(xué)家來研究這種行為像石頭一樣的微生物，那么，我大概應(yīng)該開始學(xué)習(xí)地理了。那么，地理最酷的部分是什么呢？火山。

07:49

(Laughter)

（笑聲）

07:50

Many volcanoes on earth arise because anoceanic tectonic plate crashes into a continental plate. As this oceanic platesubducts or gets moved underneath this continental plate, things like water andcarbon dioxide and other materials get squeezed out of it, like ringing a wetwashcloth. So in this way, subduction zones are like portals into the deepearth, where materials are exchanged between the surface and the subsurfaceworld.

地球上許多火山是由于海洋地殼構(gòu)造板塊撞上大陸板塊而出現(xiàn)的。當海洋板塊下沉或移動到大陸板塊下面時，像水和二氧化碳以及其它的物質(zhì)就被擠壓脫離了大陸板塊，就像箍住了一塊濕毛巾。這樣一來，俯沖帶就成了通往地殼的傳送帶，在這里，地表和地表下的物質(zhì)得以相互交換。

08:18

So I was recently invited by some of mycolleagues in Costa Rica to come and work with them on some of the volcanoes.And of course I said yes, because, I mean, Costa Rica is beautiful, but alsobecause it sits on top of one of these subduction zones. We wanted to ask thevery specific question: Why is it that the carbon dioxide that comes out ofthis deeply buried oceanic tectonic plate is only coming out of the volcanoes?Why don't we see it distributed throughout the entire subduction zone? Do themicrobes have something to do with that?

最近我收受到一些在哥斯達黎加的同事邀請，和他們一起對一些火山進行研究。當然，我同意了，因為我覺得哥斯達黎加很漂亮，但是也是因為哥斯達黎加位于這其中一個俯沖帶的上方。我們想問一個非常具體的問題：為什么從這個深埋的海洋板塊中釋放出來的二氧化碳只能來自火山呢？為什么它沒有分部在整個俯沖帶？這和微生物會不會有什么聯(lián)系？

08:49

So this is a picture of me inside PoásVolcano, along with my colleague Donato Giovannelli. That lake that we'restanding next to is made of pure battery acid. I know this because we weremeasuring the pH when this picture was taken. And at some point while we wereworking inside the crater, I turned to my Costa Rican colleague Carlos Ramírezand I said, "Alright, if this thing starts erupting right now, what's ourexit strategy?" And he said, "Oh, yeah, great question, it's totallyeasy. Just turn around and enjoy the view."

這是我和我的同事多納托·吉歐瓦內(nèi)利在珀阿斯火山里的一張照片。在我們旁邊的是一個由純蓄電池酸液構(gòu)成的湖泊，拍這張照片的時候我們正在測試pH值。在某個時刻，我轉(zhuǎn)過身去對我哥斯達黎加的同事卡洛斯·拉米雷斯說，“如果這個東西現(xiàn)在開始噴發(fā)，我們有什么逃生策略嗎？”然后他說，“哦，當然了，好問題，這非常簡單，轉(zhuǎn)過身欣賞一下這個景象?！?/p>

09:22

(Laughter)

（笑聲）

09:23

"Because it will be your last."

“因為這將是你最后看到的風(fēng)景。”

09:25

(Laughter)

（笑聲）

09:26

And it may sound like he was being overlydramatic, but 54 days after I was standing next to that lake, this happened.

這可能聽起來是過于夸張了，但是在54天之后，這一幕發(fā)生了。

09:36

Audience: Oh!

觀眾：啊！

09:37

Freaking terrifying, right?

太嚇人了，是吧？

09:39

(Laughs)

（笑聲）

09:41

This was the biggest eruption this volcanohad had in 60-some-odd years, and not long after this video ends, the camerathat was taking the video is obliterated and the entire lake that we had beensampling vaporizes completely. But I also want to be clear that we were prettysure this was not going to happen on the day that we were actually in thevolcano, because Costa Rica monitors its volcanoes very carefully through theOVSICORI Institute, and we had scientists from that institute with us on thatday. But the fact that it erupted illustrates perfectly that if you want tolook for where carbon dioxide gas is coming out of this oceanic plate, then youshould look no further than the volcanoes themselves.

這是這個火山在60多年來發(fā)生的最大的一次噴發(fā)，并且在拍完這段視頻之后，拍攝這個視頻的攝像機就模糊了，并且我們曾經(jīng)取樣的整個湖泊完全蒸發(fā)了。但是我也想申明，在火山現(xiàn)場的那一天，我們是非常確定這種事是不會發(fā)生的，因為哥斯達黎加通過公立大學(xué)地震火山觀測站對火山進行了非常細致的觀測，并且那一天也有研究所的科學(xué)家與我們同行。但是火山噴發(fā)完美的說明了如果你想找二氧化碳是從海洋板塊的哪個位置產(chǎn)生的，沒有比觀察火山本身更好的機會了。

10:20

But if you go to Costa Rica, you may noticethat in addition to these volcanoes there are tons of cozy little hot springsall over the place. Some of the water in these hot springs is actually bubblingup from this deeply buried oceanic plate. And our hypothesis was that thereshould be carbon dioxide bubbling up with it, but something deep undergroundwas filtering it out.

但是如果你去哥斯達黎加，除了火山，你還應(yīng)該注意到這里遍地都是舒適的溫泉。這些溫泉里的一些水源實際上就是深埋于海洋板塊之下的氣泡上升而成的。而我們的假設(shè)就是二氧化碳應(yīng)該會和氣泡一起上升，但是一些地下的東西將它過濾掉了。

10:42

So we spent two weeks driving all aroundCosta Rica, sampling every hot spring we could find -- it was awful, let metell you. And then we spent the next two years measuring and analyzing data.And if you're not a scientist, I'll just let you know that the big discoveriesdon't really happen when you're at a beautiful hot spring or on a public stage;they happen when you're hunched over a messy computer or you're troubleshootinga difficult instrument, or you're Skyping your colleagues because you are completelyconfused about your data. Scientific discoveries, kind of like deep subsurfacemicrobes, can be very, very slow.

所以我們用了兩周的時間，在哥斯達黎加將我們可以找到的所有溫泉都取樣了——大家都疲憊不堪。然后我們花了接下來兩年時間測量和分析數(shù)據(jù)。如果你不是一個科學(xué)家，我現(xiàn)在告訴你科研發(fā)現(xiàn)一般不會在一個漂亮的溫泉里或者公共演講臺上發(fā)生；它們發(fā)生在你弓著腰坐在一個凌亂的電腦前的時候，或者你在排查一個復(fù)雜儀器的故障的時候，或者你在和你的同事視頻的時候，因為你已經(jīng)完全看不懂數(shù)據(jù)了?？蒲邪l(fā)現(xiàn)就像是深層地表下的微生物，這個過程是非常、非常慢的。

11:20

But in our case, this really paid off thisone time. We discovered that literally tons of carbon dioxide were coming outof this deeply buried oceanic plate. And the thing that was keeping themunderground and keeping it from being released out into the atmosphere was thatdeep underground, underneath all the adorable sloths and toucans of Costa Rica,were chemolithoautotrophs. These microbes and the chemical processes that werehappening around them were converting this carbon dioxide into carbonatemineral and locking it up underground.

但對我們來說，花這些時間是值得的。我們發(fā)現(xiàn)，表面上，大量的二氧化碳是來自于這個深埋的海洋板塊。而讓它們始終存在于地下并且讓它們無法被釋放到空氣中的則是這個深藏于地下的，在哥斯達黎加所有可愛的樹懶和巨嘴鳥下面的，化能無機自養(yǎng)生物。這些微生物和它們周圍的化學(xué)過程將二氧化碳轉(zhuǎn)化成碳酸鹽礦物，并且將它們留在在地表之下。

11:52

Which makes you wonder: If these subsurfaceprocesses are so good at sucking up all the carbon dioxide coming from belowthem, could they also help us with a little carbon problem we've got going on upat the surface? Humans are releasing enough carbon dioxide into our atmospherethat we are decreasing the ability of our planet to support life as we know it.And scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs are working on methods to pullcarbon dioxide out of these point sources, so that they're not released intothe atmosphere. And they need to put it somewhere. So for this reason, we needto keep studying places where this carbon might be stored, possibly in thesubsurface, to know what's going to happen to it when it goes there.

這會讓你們感到奇怪：如果這些地表下的過程如此重要，可以把地面下產(chǎn)生的二氧化碳全部吸收，那它們能不能針對我們地表上的二氧化碳問題幫上一點忙？我們知道，人類往空氣中釋放了太多的二氧化碳，以致于減弱了我們的地球維護生命的能力?？茖W(xué)家、工程師和企業(yè)家們正在致力于研究將二氧化碳趕出這些源頭的方法，這樣二氧化碳就不會被釋放到空氣中。他們還需要將這些二氧化碳安置在別的地方。因為這個原因，我們一直在研究也許能夠儲存這些二氧化碳的地方，或許在地表下，需要了解當二氧化碳在那里時可能會發(fā)生的事情。

12:35

Will these deep subsurface microbes be aproblem because they're too slow to actually keep anything down there? Or willthey be helpful because they'll help convert this stuff to solid carbonateminerals? If we can make such a big breakthrough just from one study that wedid in Costa Rica, then imagine what else is waiting to be discovered downthere.

這些深埋于地表下的微生物是否會成為一個難題，它們行動非常緩慢，是否真的可以保存那下面的任何東西？或者，它們會很有用，因為它們可以把二氧化碳轉(zhuǎn)化成固體的碳酸鹽礦物？如果我們可以在哥斯達黎加的研究上取得重大的科學(xué)突破，想象一下，那下面還會有什么東西等待著我們?nèi)グl(fā)現(xiàn)。

12:54

This new field of geo-bio-chemistry, ordeep subsurface biology, or whatever you want to call it, is going to have hugeimplications, not just for mitigating climate change, but possibly forunderstanding how life and earth have coevolved, or finding new products thatare useful for industrial or medical applications. Maybe even predictingearthquakes or finding life outside our planet. It could even help usunderstand the origin of life itself.

這個地理生物化學(xué)的新領(lǐng)域，或者深層地下生物學(xué)，或者任何你想稱呼的名字，將會產(chǎn)生巨大的影響，并不僅僅是緩解氣候變化，而可能是對生命和地球共同進化的理解，或者是尋找對工業(yè)和醫(yī)學(xué)應(yīng)用有效的新產(chǎn)品。或者甚至是預(yù)測地震或者尋找地球以外的生命。它可能甚至可以幫助我們理解生命的起源。

13:23

Fortunately, I don't have to do this bymyself. I have amazing colleagues all over the world who are cracking into themysteries of this deep subsurface world. And it may seem like life buried deepwithin the earth's crust is so far away from our daily experiences that it'skind of irrelevant. But the truth is that this weird, slow life may actuallyhave the answers to some of the greatest mysteries of life on earth.

幸運的是，在這件事上，我不是一個人。我在全世界都有著了不起的同事，他們闖入了這個深埋于地表下的世界的奧秘?？雌饋砗孟裆盥裼诘貧さ纳x我們的日常生活非常遙遠，以致于和我們毫無關(guān)系。但是真相就是這個怪異而又緩慢的生命體可能實際上有著 我們地球上的生命中蘊含的 一些最大奧秘的答案。

13:52

Thank you.

謝謝大家。

13:54

(Applause)

（掌聲）