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(gentle instrumental music)

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- [John] This is a film about the natural world.

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And a film about a scientist, Lynn Margulis.

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Feisty, rebellious, and brilliant,

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she tirelessly challenged conventional theories

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and ushered in a scientific revolution for the 21st century.

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Turning upside down our ideas about evolution,

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the environment, and life itself.

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Ridiculed at first, Margulis\' radical theories

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are providing the opportunity for a shift

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in global thinking.

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This may prove helpful as we tackle environmental

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and social problems caused by the old way of thinking.

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- What I want to share with you

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is why a biologist interested in genetics and microbiology,

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which is certainly my training, is interested in NASA

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and is interested in the Earth as a planet.

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And I want to give you a sense of a massive revolution

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in our thinking that has come across

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during the last about 20 years.

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- We\'ve got Lynn

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doing scientific work that shakes people up,

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that they resist,

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because it\'s not the way they\'re used to thinking

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- Lynn looks at the natural world

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and sees symbiosis, interdependence.

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What Lynn was saying about the cell

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encourages me in thinking about what we can do

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in human society

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and with our lives on this planet.

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(dramatic instrumental music)

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- You tell me we\'re rolling.
- Look at John.

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- I don\'t want to look at John, you\'re cuter.

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No, I\'m teasing.

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- [John] I met Lynn Margulis in 2005

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when I was making my film

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Evo: Ten Questions Everyone Should Ask About Evolution.

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After Evo was finished I sent her a DVD

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and soon I got an email from Lynn.

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I still carry this email around in my pocket.

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She praised the film

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and then went on to say that Evo adhered far too closely

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to the neo-Darwinian party line

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in its capitalistic zeitgeist

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and that unless I made a sequel it would be recognized

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as quaint American-Empire political propaganda

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in a few years.

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She was accusing me of being a puppet

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for the neo-Darwinian capitalistic zeitgeist.

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- You know, she never pulled punches.

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She was always, you know,

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This is the way I think about things

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- [John] I plead guilty as charged.

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I didn\'t even know the difference

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between Darwinism and neo-Darwinism.

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So Lynn Margulis and I

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started to talk about making a documentary

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that would explore the idea that symbiosis,

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when organisms of different species live together,

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is the fundamental driver of evolutionary change.

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And then, quite unexpectedly, she died of a stroke.

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(somber instrumental music)

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- I would rather not be here today

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honoring the memory of Lynn.

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It\'s very sad for me to speak in the past tense

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of Lynn Margulis, my friend and my mentor in many ways.

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- Lynn was no trendy postmodernist.

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She was a big thinker.

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And the academics and funding bureaucrats

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didn\'t like her for it.

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She never received the major NSF funding,

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a MacArthur, or the Nobel Prize that she deserved.

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Lynn\'s narrative was no longer simply a footnote to Darwin,

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but a new grand narrative.

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- I consider her, I hesitate to say it,

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as a herald of a new world view.

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Shall we call it the symbiotic world view?

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- [John] When I decided to make a film about Lynn Margulis

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and her grand narrative,

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I realized that I had to change my world view,

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but how do I do that?

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(gentle instrumental music)

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So I turned to Lynn for help.

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I immersed myself in her books,

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articles, and scientific papers.

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Lynn was incredibly prolific.

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She wrote complex science books about evolution

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as well as popular books for laymen, even a coloring book.

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She wanted to communicate with everybody.

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- If you do it too fast, if you change anything--

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(speaking in foreign language)

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Oh, you pick a card, any card.

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- [John] She was a beloved and dedicated teacher.

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I watched many of her teaching videos.

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It was as if I was taking

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her famous environmental evolution course.

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I hosted a picnic

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with some of Lynn\'s former graduate students

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at her favorite Amherst swimming hole, Puffer\'s Pond.

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I learned that while the old guard scientists

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continue to dismiss Lynn Margulis\'s theories

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about symbiosis driving evolution and the Gaia theory,

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that life on Earth regulates its own environment,

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which she developed with Jim Lovelock,

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many of her colleagues share her vision

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and are today advancing ideas

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that will re-shape our understanding of life.

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So I set out on a journey

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to visit these forward thinking scientists and scholars

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around the world.

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What advice do you think Lynn would give me

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about making this film trying to explain her ideas?

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- Yeah.

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- There\'s a number of us working at the frontier,

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if you like,

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knowing that the main structure of the certainties

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of the 20th century,

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I call them certainties,

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they were never certainties, of course,

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but the certainties so-called of the 20th century

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are now crumbling.

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(gentle instrumental music)

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- [John] So if I am to change my world view,

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I\'m going to have to give up many of the ideas

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I once thought were true forever.

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Only then can I build a new way of looking at life.

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As it turns out, the first truth I must give up is that,

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in science, we can ever really know the truth,

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because our knowledge is always biased and incomplete.

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- As scientists we don\'t deal with truth.

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We deal with approximations, with approximate theories.

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- This has not really percolated into general knowledge

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because people in government,

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in law courts for instance,

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bring in scientists as experts

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and they believe scientists prove things,

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but proof belongs to the realm of logic and mathematics,

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not to science.

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- [Lynn] Tell all the truth but tell it slant,

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success in circuit lies

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too bright for our infirm delight,

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the truth\'s superb surprise

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as lightning to the children eased

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by explanation kind,

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the truth must dazzle gradually

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or every man be blind.

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(gentle instrumental music)

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(gentle instrumental music)

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The belief that the world is made for man

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and that nature is out there to be exploited

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and that man is somehow,

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evolution has stopped because we have gotten here,

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a lot of people believe that.

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That there\'s no evolution after man

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because we are already here,

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and we are the pinnacle, we are the top, we are the summit.

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This kind of notion, which is prevailing in fact even,

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I am sad to say, amongst biological colleagues,

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is obviously got to be debunked.

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- We are very anthropocentric

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and so we have a tendency to think of man

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at the pinnacle and so on.

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The biosphere is entirely dominated by the microbial world

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and animals and plants find themselves embedded

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in that world and dramatically affected by that world

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and Lynn began to teach us that.

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And she knew and could help you see

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that to understand life,

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you have to see it embedded.

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Nature is life.

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We\'re embedded in it.

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Just as the environment modulates beings,

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beings modulate the environment.

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- [Lynn] There\'s that great bacterial scum.

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I\'m anxious to look at it.

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Now it may be diatom scum too

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because diatoms produce.

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Yeah, we\'ll have to see what\'s in there

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- So Lynn loved to go down to the Marine Biological Lab

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in Woods Hole.

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She took a lot of students there.

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She would come in the summer

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and participate in teacher workshops that we had there

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and she had a lot of friends that she liked to stay with.

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She would always bring the students to the library.

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There\'s a sign in the library

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that says study nature, not books.

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And so she would always point that out.

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I think that was, for her, a very important idea

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and she exemplified that in her teaching.

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- And here, too, with the vegetation.

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Yeah, come and look at the convoluta with the diatoms in it.

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Have you seen them?

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Here, here, here.

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See, that\'s why next time we have a screen...

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- I think the Study nature, not books is Louis Agassiz.

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I think her motto would have been study nature and books.

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When it\'s too dark, then study books.

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Her friend Lois told me she once said to Lynn,

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you know what sleeping is don\'t you?

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It\'s lying in bed, not reading.

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- And she often as part of her own learning

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would come across these books

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that she felt were really important.

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And so she would have to pass them on to everybody.

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And I just came across one on my bookshelf the other day,

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the Ludwik Fleck,

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Genesis and Development of Scientific Fact.

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- [John] Lynn also spoke to me about this book.

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Fleck explores the idea that scientific facts

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are the product of thought collectives

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and can change as the culture changes.

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- She was fascinated with the notion

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of the thought collective and it was basically

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that you can get stuck in a current thought collective

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and not be able to escape it.

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I think it was Whitehead

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who called them trained incapacities,

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that you don\'t see things

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because you\'re taught not to see them.

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- And this was on her refrigerator.

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If everybody is thinking alike,

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then somebody isn\'t thinking.

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That\'s part of her algorithm.

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If everybody is agreeing

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then it\'s time to go and look somewhere else.

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- So she was always open in that way.

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I think the Fleck thing was,

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don\'t let them put blinders on you.

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(gentle instrumental music)

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- We are at war with nature.

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We don\'t really intend to be at war,

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but that\'s the emergent property of our culture.

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- Now, our view of man apart from nature,

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man exploiting nature,

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man taking a forest for cash value of crops,

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has got to change because that is, of course,

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the basis of the environmental crisis.

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- That\'s the old mechanistic understanding

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of our relationship to the Earth.

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The Earth is this dead object, we\'re on it, we dominate it,

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we can control it using mechanistic science,

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we extract minerals, convert them into materials,

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stick all the waste into landfill.

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That\'s the mainstream suicidal growth model.

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- [John] This mechanistic view

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that separates man from nature

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and allows us to exploit the environment

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is the thought collective which Lynn Margulis fought against

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and which dominates science today.

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I asked Stephan Harding how this view came about.

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- The current mode of science

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developed during the Scientific Revolution

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in the 16th and 17th centuries

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when great geniuses like Galileo and Descartes and others

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discovered that one could study the world mathematically,

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that you could look for mathematical regularities

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in the world that would allow you

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to predict what would happen in nature

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and therefore to control it.

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But unfortunately, those scientists

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also developed the notion that firstly the whole universe

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is nothing more than a machine.

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And when the followers of Descartes cut open live dogs

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and the dogs screamed in pain,

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the followers of Descartes were supposed to think

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that the screams were nothing more

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than the creakings of machines.

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When you\'re trained to be a scientist,

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you\'re told that you

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have to develop some kind of detached objectivity.

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You mustn\'t allow your emotions to get involved,

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your feelings to get involved.

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They\'re not part of science.

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What happened with science at the beginning

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was that it distanced us from the world.

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Of course, the machine idea was very powerful

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at the time of Descartes

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because clockworks had become very sophisticated.

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Everyone was in love with clockworks.

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They were like the computers of that time.

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They were amazing.

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What they could do was fantastic.

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It\'s natural that people thought the universe

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is a clockwork.

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We tend to think of nature

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in terms of our most advanced technology.

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One can understand why the machine metaphor was so powerful.

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The problem was that people didn\'t realize

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that it was only a metaphor.

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It was taken as a reality.

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Also, if you wanted

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to understand how a complex system works,

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let\'s say an organism, what you have to do is break it down

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into its component parts.

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This is reductionism.

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By understanding the parts in isolation

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you\'ll understand how the whole works.

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So gradually, this new mathematical, reductionist,

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mechanistic science took hold.

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But unfortunately, it\'s limited.

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It\'s a powerful way of knowing

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but ignores other ways of knowing.

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For example, we know very well now in science

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that when different actors in a system

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start interacting together,

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and they could be species in an ecosystem

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or they could be consumers in the marketplace.

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It doesn\'t matter what the actors are,

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but when they start interacting together

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we often get emergent properties

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coming out of those interactions

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that you couldn\'t have predicted

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from a knowledge of the parts in isolation.

315
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And the emergent properties

316
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are now recognized quite well in science.

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So this brings us into a more holistic style of science

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where we focus on the properties of whole systems

319
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rather than exclusively on the parts.

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- The major problems of our time are all interconnected.

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Whether you talk about energy, climate change, poverty,

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technology, economics, management, in all these areas

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and all the problems in them

324
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are interdependent and interconnected.

325
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None of them can be understood in an isolated way.

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This is why we need to think in terms of patterns,

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in terms of relationships

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and that\'s what systems thinking is.

329
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- Most of us are brought up to think linearly,

330
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cause effect logic.

331
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Systems thinking is all about feedback loops

332
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where the chain of causality swallows its own tail.

333
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The dynamics become much more interesting

334
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and hard to rationalize in a pure linear cause effect sense.

335
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- We also shift the emphasis from isolated objects

336
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interacting with each other

337
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to the relationships between the objects.

338
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- So that life is a connected phenomenon through space.

339
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There is no such thing as a fully independent organism

340
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because every organism requires food to be delivered

341
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and waste to be removed

342
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so that it\'s a system on the surface of the Earth.

343
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(gentle instrumental music)

344
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- [Fritjof] I do believe there is a revolution happening

345
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in the life sciences from a mechanistic view of life

346
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to a systemic view of life.

347
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And that\'s really a profound change.

348
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From a systems point of view

349
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there can only be interdependence,

350
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every part is dependent on other parts.

351
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That\'s the core of systems thinking.

352
00:20:57.884 --> 00:21:01.551
(gentle instrumental music)

353
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- Neo-Darwinism is very bad.

354
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It is very limited, it\'s reductive,

355
00:21:20.040 --> 00:21:23.290
and you cannot even study life.

356
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The way to say it is,

357
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neo-Darwinism took the life out of biology.

358
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Somebody translate that please.

359
00:21:31.660 --> 00:21:33.490 line:15%
Please translate that.

360
00:21:33.490 --> 00:21:35.160 line:15%
I want to say that in public.

361
00:21:35.160 --> 00:21:36.610 line:15%
- She liked to start trouble.

362
00:21:40.872 --> 00:21:43.692
But it wasn\'t trouble without a purpose.

363
00:21:43.750 --> 00:21:46.100
- Darwin was completely right

364
00:21:46.100 --> 00:21:49.920
that all life on Earth has common ancestry.

365
00:21:49.920 --> 00:21:51.140 line:15%
- She was a Darwinian

366
00:21:51.140 --> 00:21:53.647 line:15%
and she totally believed in natural selection.

367
00:21:53.980 --> 00:21:58.560
- All organisms, populations of organisms grow at rates

368
00:21:58.560 --> 00:22:00.730
that cannot be sustained by their environment.

369
00:22:00.730 --> 00:22:03.190
There are more born, there are more hatched,

370
00:22:03.190 --> 00:22:05.430
there are more seeds that sprout,

371
00:22:05.430 --> 00:22:08.290
there are more spores in the air.

372
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- [John] These young swallows, most of them born this year,

373
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are gathering here in preparation for their migration south.

374
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- [Lynn] Now since there are more than can ever survive,

375
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and only a few survive, that\'s what natural selection is.

376
00:22:23.560 --> 00:22:25.950
It\'s an elimination process.

377
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- [John] Each bird is slightly different from its neighbor.

378
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The ones that survive long enough to reproduce

379
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pass on their characteristics to the next generation.

380
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Darwin took this metaphor of natural selection further.

381
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He said that each slight variation, if useful, is preserved.

382
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And gradually this results in evolutionary change.

383
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That\'s Darwinism, so what is neo-Darwinism?

384
00:22:58.820 --> 00:23:02.610 line:15%
In the 1930s and 1940s, a group of scientists

385
00:23:02.610 --> 00:23:06.200 line:15%
combined Darwin\'s theory of evolution by natural selection

386
00:23:07.700 --> 00:23:11.300 line:15%
with Gregor Mendel\'s laws of inheritance,

387
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which has become genetics.

388
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And the resulting theory

389
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became known as the modern synthesis or neo-Darwinism.

390
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The essence of neo-Darwinism

391
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is that the variations from one individual to another

392
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that lead to evolutionary change

393
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are caused by differences in their genes,

394
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and that these differences are the result of mistakes

395
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that happen when the genes are copied during reproduction,

396
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these are called: random genetic mutations.

397
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During the 20 century,

398
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powerful neo-Darwinists dominated academia,

399
00:23:53.660 --> 00:23:58.430
controlling scientific research, funding and publishing.

400
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- They have control of the dialogue,

401
00:24:01.720 --> 00:24:03.320
they have control of the texts,

402
00:24:03.320 --> 00:24:04.890
they have control of the money,

403
00:24:04.890 --> 00:24:06.910
but that doesn\'t make them correct.

404
00:24:06.910 --> 00:24:11.120
- [John] By the time I studied biology in the 1970s,

405
00:24:11.120 --> 00:24:13.700
there was one theory of evolution

406
00:24:13.700 --> 00:24:18.700
which we thought was Darwinism, but it was neo-Darwinism.

407
00:24:19.630 --> 00:24:23.920
The neo-Darwinists simplified Darwin and squashed,

408
00:24:23.920 --> 00:24:28.230
even ridiculed, ideas that didn\'t fit their theory.

409
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We were taught to laugh at the idea of Darwin\'s forerunner,

410
00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.280 line:15%
the equally brilliant evolutionist, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck,

411
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that characteristics which an organism developed or acquired

412
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during its lifetime could be passed down

413
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to the next generation.

414
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- The idea that Darwin was not a Lamarckian

415
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and didn\'t believe in the inheritance

416
00:24:51.630 --> 00:24:52.580 line:15%
of acquired characteristics,

417
00:24:52.580 --> 00:24:55.630 line:15%
extraordinary myth made up by the neo-Darwinians

418
00:24:55.630 --> 00:24:56.680
who wanted to clean Darwin up

419
00:24:56.680 --> 00:24:58.850
and to make him appear this way.

420
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- [John] All this got me thinking

421
00:25:00.370 --> 00:25:05.370
about how science and politics are inextricably intertwined.

422
00:25:06.150 --> 00:25:07.100
- If you believed in the inheritance

423
00:25:07.100 --> 00:25:10.030
of acquired characteristics in the Cold War,

424
00:25:10.030 --> 00:25:11.540
oh, you\'re supporting the Soviet Union,

425
00:25:11.540 --> 00:25:13.850
because the United States and capitalism

426
00:25:13.850 --> 00:25:16.360
was based on gene theory and natural selection

427
00:25:16.360 --> 00:25:18.040
and inheritance of acquired characteristics,

428
00:25:18.040 --> 00:25:20.270
that\'s associated with frauds or Communists.

429
00:25:20.270 --> 00:25:21.309
Which one are you?

430
00:25:21.910 --> 00:25:24.390
- [John] Lynn differed from the neo-Darwinists

431
00:25:24.390 --> 00:25:27.520
on almost every point of their theory.

432
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- The idea that the accumulation of random mutations

433
00:25:32.220 --> 00:25:36.580
is the way species change, one species to another,

434
00:25:36.580 --> 00:25:38.380
there\'s very little evidence for it.

435
00:25:39.410 --> 00:25:42.750
- [John] Lynn championed the symbiotic view of evolution.

436
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For her, new species come primarily

437
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from organisms joining with one another.

438
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And evolution can happen in big leaps.

439
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Her ideas were scorned by the neo-Darwinists.

440
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And because she didn\'t agree with them,

441
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they accused her of siding with Creationists.

442
00:26:06.680 --> 00:26:09.890
- What that does to evolution is very, very dangerous

443
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because if you think outside the box

444
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and you start thinking of symbiosis

445
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and lateral gene transfer.

446
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You\'re feeding the Creationists.

447
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You\'re feeding the Creationists.

448
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So you\'re caught in this weird dialectic.

449
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- [John] But Lynn fought back,

450
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she called neo-Darwinism a minor 20th century religious sect

451
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because in their efforts to fight Creationism

452
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they promoted their own dogmatic belief system.

453
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- Nowadays, when symbiosis is accepted, they all said,

454
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oh, that\'s part of Darwinism, too.

455
00:26:45.167 --> 00:26:46.000
No, it isn\'t.

456
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You can\'t have it both ways.

457
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Just get rid of the word.

458
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You can talk about relativity theory

459
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without calling it Einsteinian relativity theory.

460
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Why are we tattooing the word Darwinism

461
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to the word evolution.

462
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Let\'s just call it evolution and let\'s get on with it.

463
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It\'s common to equate the neo-Darwinist view of evolution

464
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with the word competition

465
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and the symbiotic view with cooperation

466
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but these words are so anthropocentric

467
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that Lynn advised not to use them at all

468
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when describing nature.

469
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- [Lynn] Can\'t talk about cost benefit

470
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or cooperation or competition,

471
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because those words are proper for the banks

472
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and the basketball courts,

473
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but they are not proper for the scientific explanation.

474
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- [John] Lynn also cautioned us

475
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about the use of metaphors in science.

476
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Somewhere along the line,

477
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I learned that the most aggressive baby bird,

478
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the one that sticks its neck out furthest

479
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and opens its mouth widest

480
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will get more food than its siblings

481
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and win in the competitive struggle for existence.

482
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I have filmed robins at their nests for almost 40 years.

483
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It appears to me that the parents

484
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try to feed each baby equally.

485
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So this made me wonder.

486
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Where did the idea that organisms compete for survival,

487
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and the metaphor survival of the fittest come from?

488
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- Darwin got his emphasis

489
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on competition from what he was reading

490
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about social life in that Victorian era of early capitalism,

491
00:28:34.110 --> 00:28:38.390
early industrialization, which was so exploitative

492
00:28:40.320 --> 00:28:42.930
- So Darwin was a great,

493
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one of the greatest scientists ever.

494
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There\'s no doubt about that.

495
00:28:47.675 --> 00:28:50.820 line:15%
But his social context was Victorian capitalism

496
00:28:51.970 --> 00:28:53.270 line:15%
and he was a very wealthy man.

497
00:28:53.270 --> 00:28:55.540 line:15%
He was connected with the Wedgwood family.

498
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They were very wealthy.

499
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He was absorbing these competitive ideas

500
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from the society around him at the time.

501
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- Darwinian theory of natural selection

502
00:29:07.580 --> 00:29:08.990
based on the struggle for existence

503
00:29:08.990 --> 00:29:13.390
is nothing more than laissez-faire socioeconomic theory

504
00:29:13.390 --> 00:29:15.490
applied to nature.

505
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The reason we see so much struggle and conflict out there

506
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is because it\'s a reflection of our social world.

507
00:29:20.820 --> 00:29:22.170
- You have Hobbes

508
00:29:23.690 --> 00:29:28.690
talking about the natural state of war in nature.

509
00:29:30.360 --> 00:29:32.760
You have Tennyson talking about nature,

510
00:29:32.760 --> 00:29:34.330
red in tooth and claw.

511
00:29:35.470 --> 00:29:40.470
Herbert Spencer originates the phrase,

512
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the survival of the fittest, not Darwin.

513
00:29:45.281 --> 00:29:46.340
- And the survival of the fittest

514
00:29:46.340 --> 00:29:49.510
in the sense of warring people and the best man winning,

515
00:29:49.510 --> 00:29:51.920
or wedges, all of these are metaphors

516
00:29:51.920 --> 00:29:54.710
that I think are beyond even what Darwin meant.

517
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- The thing about a metaphor, you see,

518
00:29:58.729 --> 00:30:03.729
is it\'s based on comparing this to this.

519
00:30:04.190 --> 00:30:06.540
Well, they have to have some similarities

520
00:30:07.860 --> 00:30:09.480
but they\'re not identical.

521
00:30:11.730 --> 00:30:16.280
But the metaphor may make you assume a similarity

522
00:30:16.280 --> 00:30:18.070
that isn\'t there.

523
00:30:18.070 --> 00:30:20.550
- [John] In the hands of the neo-Darwinists,

524
00:30:20.550 --> 00:30:23.610
fitness became a quantifiable attribute

525
00:30:23.610 --> 00:30:28.250
based on how many offspring an organism has.

526
00:30:28.250 --> 00:30:31.360
- Your maiden aunt is not fit no matter what,

527
00:30:31.360 --> 00:30:32.440
no matter how much money

528
00:30:32.440 --> 00:30:35.200
she gives to the New York public library.

529
00:30:35.200 --> 00:30:36.720 line:15%
Yet the slob down the street

530
00:30:36.720 --> 00:30:40.270 line:15%
who has 10 kids is more fit by definition.

531
00:30:40.270 --> 00:30:42.190
And we\'ve moved,

532
00:30:42.190 --> 00:30:44.290
that is, the popular vernacular culture

533
00:30:44.290 --> 00:30:46.430
has picked up survival of the fittest

534
00:30:46.430 --> 00:30:48.940
as a term with political implications

535
00:30:48.940 --> 00:30:51.970
that has moved away from its original biological meaning.

536
00:30:51.970 --> 00:30:55.220
- So what we have to say about Darwin

537
00:30:57.720 --> 00:31:02.340
is that in accounting for the phenomena that he observed,

538
00:31:04.410 --> 00:31:08.340
he used a metaphor that he had been exposed to

539
00:31:08.340 --> 00:31:10.360
in other contexts.

540
00:31:10.360 --> 00:31:12.540
That doesn\'t make it right or wrong.

541
00:31:14.910 --> 00:31:16.200
But it does mean

542
00:31:17.900 --> 00:31:19.310
that you have to check

543
00:31:20.620 --> 00:31:24.350
where that metaphor is taking you next.

544
00:31:24.350 --> 00:31:27.520
- [John] The full title of Darwin\'s famous book is:

545
00:31:27.520 --> 00:31:31.900
On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection,

546
00:31:31.900 --> 00:31:35.190
or the Preservation of Favored Races

547
00:31:35.190 --> 00:31:37.020
in the Struggle for Life.

548
00:31:42.070 --> 00:31:45.980
Since its publication, the theory it proposed

549
00:31:45.980 --> 00:31:50.420
has been turned into an inescapable law of nature

550
00:31:51.330 --> 00:31:53.870
and used to justify everything

551
00:31:53.870 --> 00:31:58.870
from brutal competition in schools and business

552
00:32:00.520 --> 00:32:04.140 line:15%
to global economic exploitation of people

553
00:32:04.173 --> 00:32:05.243
and the environment,

554
00:32:07.790 --> 00:32:08.623
racism...

555
00:32:14.030 --> 00:32:15.576
and genocide.

556
00:32:15.576 --> 00:32:19.430
(gentle instrumental music)

557
00:32:19.430 --> 00:32:22.460
- Look, you have got to drop this incessant innocence.

558
00:32:22.460 --> 00:32:25.690
Life is harsh and ugly and only the strong survive,

559
00:32:26.580 --> 00:32:28.590
or didn\'t they teach you that at Harvard?

560
00:32:29.950 --> 00:32:34.760
- [John] Another dangerous metaphor is the selfish gene

561
00:32:34.760 --> 00:32:37.370
which was coined by Richard Dawkins,

562
00:32:37.370 --> 00:32:40.410
an outspoken neo-Darwinist.

563
00:32:40.410 --> 00:32:45.100
In this book he writes that we are survival machines,

564
00:32:45.100 --> 00:32:48.280
robot vehicles blindly programmed

565
00:32:48.280 --> 00:32:53.280
to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes

566
00:32:53.770 --> 00:32:58.049 line:15%
- What I think we misunderstood in science

567
00:32:58.049 --> 00:33:01.710 line:15%
is the idea that, first of all,

568
00:33:01.710 --> 00:33:06.640
many of our theories were metaphorical, using metaphors.

569
00:33:06.640 --> 00:33:09.330
Second, in doing that,

570
00:33:09.330 --> 00:33:12.733
we are distancing ourselves from the facts

571
00:33:12.733 --> 00:33:16.410
to the extent that if we take them too seriously,

572
00:33:16.410 --> 00:33:18.650
we actually distort the facts.

573
00:33:18.650 --> 00:33:22.360
Or we actually forget what the original observations were.

574
00:33:22.360 --> 00:33:25.200
To my mind, to come back to the selfish gene,

575
00:33:25.200 --> 00:33:28.770
there is no way in which a strip of DNA can be selfish.

576
00:33:29.760 --> 00:33:31.640
- But of course it\'s just a metaphor,

577
00:33:31.640 --> 00:33:35.820
because a gene doesn\'t have a self, a gene is not a self.

578
00:33:35.820 --> 00:33:38.170
How can something be selfish if it has no self?

579
00:33:39.230 --> 00:33:42.480
- [John] I see now that Richard Dawkins\' metaphor

580
00:33:42.480 --> 00:33:46.700
of the selfish gene came out of his western culture

581
00:33:46.700 --> 00:33:49.510
that promoted the power of the individual

582
00:33:49.510 --> 00:33:51.030
over the community,

583
00:33:51.030 --> 00:33:55.240
one that was opposed to socialism and communism.

584
00:33:55.240 --> 00:33:58.170
Because it is presented as science,

585
00:33:58.170 --> 00:34:00.120
people take it as a truth.

586
00:34:01.020 --> 00:34:03.790
So it further contributes to a culture

587
00:34:03.790 --> 00:34:06.170
of greed and selfishness.

588
00:34:09.260 --> 00:34:13.710
So these two metaphors, survival of the fittest,

589
00:34:13.710 --> 00:34:15.640
and the selfish gene,

590
00:34:15.640 --> 00:34:20.640
are the basis of the neo-Darwinian capitalistic zeitgeist,

591
00:34:20.740 --> 00:34:23.190
which is the pervasive belief

592
00:34:23.190 --> 00:34:26.470
that humans are genetically selfish

593
00:34:26.470 --> 00:34:29.390
and that success comes only by winning

594
00:34:29.390 --> 00:34:31.580
in competitive struggles.

595
00:34:31.580 --> 00:34:34.490
All else is childish sentimentality.

596
00:34:35.730 --> 00:34:38.880
- You\'ve got to help people when they need help.

597
00:34:38.880 --> 00:34:39.713
- Why?

598
00:34:40.600 --> 00:34:41.800
- Don\'t you?

599
00:34:41.800 --> 00:34:43.420
- I take care of me.

600
00:34:43.420 --> 00:34:45.680
When you\'re older you\'ll find that\'s the only way.

601
00:34:47.340 --> 00:34:48.173
Bye.

602
00:34:52.250 --> 00:34:54.850
- [John] The neo-Darwinists see in nature

603
00:34:54.850 --> 00:34:58.910 line:15%
independent selfish individuals struggling for existence.

604
00:34:59.860 --> 00:35:01.940 line:15%
While Lynn and other scientists

605
00:35:01.940 --> 00:35:05.260 line:15%
see in nature interdependent communities of organisms.

606
00:35:07.190 --> 00:35:10.570 line:15%
- Once you realize that you have a choice,

607
00:35:10.570 --> 00:35:15.330 line:15%
you still have to say how will adopting the new paradigm

608
00:35:17.220 --> 00:35:20.650
change the way I behave, we behave.

609
00:35:22.760 --> 00:35:25.760
- [John] I was curious about how Lynn\'s ideas

610
00:35:25.760 --> 00:35:28.570
could change the way we behave

611
00:35:28.570 --> 00:35:30.340
and impact the political realm,

612
00:35:31.300 --> 00:35:36.230
so I traveled to Madrid to talk to Federico Mayor Zaragoza,

613
00:35:36.230 --> 00:35:38.500
a scientist and politician,

614
00:35:38.500 --> 00:35:41.080
former director general of UNESCO,

615
00:35:41.080 --> 00:35:44.250
who has chosen to base his life\'s work

616
00:35:44.250 --> 00:35:46.283
on a symbiotic world view

617
00:35:46.283 --> 00:35:49.200
that Lynn, his colleague, inspired.

618
00:36:17.660 --> 00:36:22.660
- I hope there\'s a scientific revolution going on

619
00:36:25.960 --> 00:36:27.080
because...

620
00:36:31.210 --> 00:36:34.690
I suspect that the competition model

621
00:36:36.880 --> 00:36:40.363
is eventually going to be lethal.

622
00:37:04.658 --> 00:37:06.142
- So at a certain point,

623
00:37:06.142 --> 00:37:09.164
it\'s a matter of choosing your metaphor.

624
00:37:28.792 --> 00:37:32.459
(gentle instrumental music)

625
00:37:51.140 --> 00:37:54.670
- [John] Lynn started college at the University of Chicago

626
00:37:54.670 --> 00:37:59.010
when she was 16 and soon met Carl Sagan,

627
00:37:59.010 --> 00:38:01.210
who would become a well-known astronomer.

628
00:38:02.100 --> 00:38:06.590
They married when Lynn was 19 and had their first son,

629
00:38:06.590 --> 00:38:09.280
Dorion Sagan, when she was 21.

630
00:38:10.270 --> 00:38:12.710
- [Lynn] So I owe my education to two things,

631
00:38:12.710 --> 00:38:13.700
the University of Chicago

632
00:38:13.700 --> 00:38:14.920
and the fact that I met Sagan

633
00:38:14.920 --> 00:38:16.720
on the steps of the math department.

634
00:38:17.820 --> 00:38:21.400 line:15%
- She turned to science, and my father was a part of that,

635
00:38:23.070 --> 00:38:28.070 line:15%
in order to escape the sort of clamor of suburbia.

636
00:38:30.790 --> 00:38:34.650
And then of course, my father was the typical \'50s,

637
00:38:35.518 --> 00:38:36.351
I won\'t say typical,

638
00:38:36.351 --> 00:38:41.351
but in the sense that his husband-type behavior was typical

639
00:38:41.820 --> 00:38:45.050
for \'50s generation males

640
00:38:45.050 --> 00:38:48.100
and expected her to do the cooking and the cleaning

641
00:38:48.100 --> 00:38:49.170
and take care of the kids

642
00:38:49.170 --> 00:38:51.450
and he needed a lot of attention,

643
00:38:51.450 --> 00:38:55.060
but she had huge ambitions of her own.

644
00:38:55.060 --> 00:38:58.727
(gentle instrumental music)

645
00:39:09.162 --> 00:39:12.829
(gentle instrumental music)

646
00:39:22.110 --> 00:39:23.930
- [John] Science is always changing

647
00:39:24.940 --> 00:39:27.180
and often Lynn Margulis led the way.

648
00:39:28.150 --> 00:39:30.030 line:15%
- When I went to school,

649
00:39:30.030 --> 00:39:33.830 line:15%
and probably even for my daughter in school today,

650
00:39:33.830 --> 00:39:37.040 line:15%
all of life is divided into two great kingdoms:

651
00:39:37.040 --> 00:39:38.450
animals and plants.

652
00:39:38.450 --> 00:39:41.770
- So in the very beginning, Karlene Swartz and I realized

653
00:39:41.770 --> 00:39:44.500
we needed a book that had all the organisms in it,

654
00:39:44.500 --> 00:39:45.480
all the higher taxa,

655
00:39:45.480 --> 00:39:48.030
which means all the larger groups of organisms,

656
00:39:48.030 --> 00:39:51.720
- [John] Their book divides life into five kingdoms.

657
00:39:51.720 --> 00:39:55.560
It was instrumental in getting this new way to classify life

658
00:39:55.560 --> 00:39:57.350
into schools around the world.

659
00:39:59.080 --> 00:40:04.080
The five kingdoms are bacteria, protoctists,

660
00:40:04.180 --> 00:40:07.890
fungi, animals, and plants.

661
00:40:09.210 --> 00:40:12.410
So that I could actually see the microorganisms

662
00:40:12.410 --> 00:40:16.260
in the first two kingdoms, I was donated a microscope

663
00:40:16.260 --> 00:40:18.300
by Swift Optical Instruments.

664
00:40:19.360 --> 00:40:23.230
The tiny dark oval moving around there is a bacterium.

665
00:40:24.410 --> 00:40:26.940
There are many bacteria in this drop of water,

666
00:40:27.840 --> 00:40:31.860
but they are hard to see because they are so small,

667
00:40:31.860 --> 00:40:33.950
about 1/1000th of a millimeter.

668
00:40:36.180 --> 00:40:40.100
The much bigger dark creature is a protoctist.

669
00:40:40.100 --> 00:40:44.820
Here\'s a better view of it.

670
00:40:44.820 --> 00:40:48.690
Lynn co-authored a handbook of protoctists.

671
00:40:48.690 --> 00:40:51.030
Called protists, when they are single celled,

672
00:40:51.030 --> 00:40:52.480
the protoctist kingdom

673
00:40:52.480 --> 00:40:55.820
includes an incredible variety of microorganisms

674
00:40:58.540 --> 00:41:00.930
like amoeba and paramecium

675
00:41:01.870 --> 00:41:04.620
as well as larger organisms like kelp.

676
00:41:07.880 --> 00:41:11.800 line:15%
Here I need to add a footnote about viruses.

677
00:41:11.800 --> 00:41:14.370 line:15%
Much smaller than even bacteria,

678
00:41:14.370 --> 00:41:19.370 line:15%
viruses are contagious particles which contain DNA or RNA,

679
00:41:20.620 --> 00:41:24.230
but which cannot reproduce by themselves,

680
00:41:24.230 --> 00:41:26.660
so they are not usually considered to be alive.

681
00:41:27.540 --> 00:41:31.080
- There\'s nothing food or energy that you can give a virus

682
00:41:31.080 --> 00:41:33.160
to make it show the minimal properties of life.

683
00:41:33.160 --> 00:41:36.390 line:15%
- Viruses that maybe we should view as not living

684
00:41:36.390 --> 00:41:38.120 line:15%
but conditionally living.

685
00:41:38.120 --> 00:41:40.720 line:15%
They live conditionally within the host,

686
00:41:40.720 --> 00:41:42.150
but not just as parasites,

687
00:41:42.150 --> 00:41:46.950
but also as forces which are shaping content, mechanism

688
00:41:46.950 --> 00:41:49.040
and overall complexity of genomes.

689
00:41:53.160 --> 00:41:55.680
- [John] The genome is the complete collection

690
00:41:55.680 --> 00:41:59.410
of DNA molecules within a cell.

691
00:41:59.410 --> 00:42:03.900
DNA is a long double-helix shaped molecule

692
00:42:03.900 --> 00:42:05.140
made up of sequences

693
00:42:05.140 --> 00:42:10.080
of four different smaller molecules called nucleotides.

694
00:42:10.080 --> 00:42:13.120
How these nucleotides are arranged

695
00:42:13.120 --> 00:42:16.690
along the two twisted strands of the DNA

696
00:42:16.690 --> 00:42:20.850
is a vital information storage system of the cell.

697
00:42:23.830 --> 00:42:26.720
- The unit of life on Earth is the cell

698
00:42:27.570 --> 00:42:29.280
and there are two kinds of cells,

699
00:42:29.280 --> 00:42:32.440 line:15%
prokaryotic and eukaryotic, but just think this way:

700
00:42:32.524 --> 00:42:34.265
bacteria like cells

701
00:42:34.282 --> 00:42:36.865
and animal, plant, fungal

702
00:42:36.890 --> 00:42:38.700
and so called nucleated cells,

703
00:42:38.700 --> 00:42:41.190
those are the two kinds of life.

704
00:42:41.190 --> 00:42:43.820
- [John] All organisms have DNA.

705
00:42:44.860 --> 00:42:49.860
Bacteria have DNA, but they do not have a nucleus.

706
00:42:49.980 --> 00:42:52.920
All other organisms have a nucleus,

707
00:42:52.920 --> 00:42:57.710
which contains DNA arranged into chromosomes.

708
00:42:57.710 --> 00:43:00.030 line:15%
The chromosomes can be seen here

709
00:43:00.030 --> 00:43:05.000 line:15%
during the process of mitosis as a cell divides.

710
00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.100
Lynn studied mitosis in great detail

711
00:43:09.100 --> 00:43:12.800
because she was interested in how it evolved.

712
00:43:17.260 --> 00:43:19.800
- One sees that the origin of life

713
00:43:19.800 --> 00:43:22.950
occurs over three billion years ago,

714
00:43:22.950 --> 00:43:24.460
and you don\'t get a nucleated cell

715
00:43:24.460 --> 00:43:26.510
until something like two billion years ago.

716
00:43:26.510 --> 00:43:29.080
We have a billion and a half years.

717
00:43:29.080 --> 00:43:31.538
Some people, even Steve Gould say,

718
00:43:31.538 --> 00:43:34.650
well, it took so long for anything to happen.

719
00:43:34.650 --> 00:43:38.220
But what he means is that it took so long for my relatives

720
00:43:38.220 --> 00:43:41.260
to show up on the scene, because in fact

721
00:43:41.260 --> 00:43:43.870
in that 1.5 billion years everything happened.

722
00:43:43.870 --> 00:43:45.100
What do I mean?

723
00:43:45.100 --> 00:43:47.900
Photosynthesis evolved, movement evolved,

724
00:43:47.900 --> 00:43:50.960
nitrogen fixation evolved, methanogenesis evolved,

725
00:43:51.800 --> 00:43:53.530
carbon dioxide fixation evolved,

726
00:43:53.530 --> 00:43:56.960
in fact five different kinds of carbon dioxide fixation,

727
00:43:56.960 --> 00:44:01.110
everything evolved, but on a very small scale

728
00:44:01.110 --> 00:44:02.258
and in the water.

729
00:44:02.258 --> 00:44:05.925
(gentle instrumental music)

730
00:44:12.630 --> 00:44:14.030 line:15%
- [John] That\'s the question

731
00:44:14.030 --> 00:44:16.660 line:15%
that propelled Lynn\'s entire career.

732
00:44:17.910 --> 00:44:21.450
How did bacteria, which do not have a nucleus,

733
00:44:21.450 --> 00:44:26.030
evolve into nucleated cells, like the ones in our bodies?

734
00:44:30.890 --> 00:44:33.810
Her quest began in 1959,

735
00:44:34.770 --> 00:44:37.990
when Lynn, then married to Carl Sagan,

736
00:44:37.990 --> 00:44:42.200
was a student of Hans Ris at the University of Wisconsin

737
00:44:42.200 --> 00:44:47.060
getting her masters degree in zoology and genetics.

738
00:44:47.060 --> 00:44:50.200
Ris used to read aloud to his graduate students

739
00:44:50.200 --> 00:44:52.300
from Edmund Wilson\'s book,

740
00:44:52.300 --> 00:44:55.030
The Cell in Development and Heredity.

741
00:44:55.900 --> 00:44:59.000
Lynn writes that when Ris read to us that

742
00:44:59.000 --> 00:45:04.000
more recently Wallin has maintained that mitochondria

743
00:45:04.010 --> 00:45:07.530
may be regarded as symbiotic bacteria,

744
00:45:08.970 --> 00:45:13.345
the course of my professional life was set forever.

745
00:45:13.345 --> 00:45:17.095
(gentle instrumental music)

746
00:45:23.850 --> 00:45:28.150 line:15%
Mitochondria are organelles in eukaryotic cells

747
00:45:28.150 --> 00:45:29.600
that have their own DNA.

748
00:45:31.660 --> 00:45:34.999
Eight years after hearing of Wallin\'s speculation

749
00:45:34.999 --> 00:45:39.050
about mitochondria being symbiotic bacteria,

750
00:45:39.050 --> 00:45:42.390
after getting her masters degree in zoology and genetics

751
00:45:42.390 --> 00:45:45.890
from the University of Wisconsin in 1960,

752
00:45:45.890 --> 00:45:47.730
her PhD in genetics

753
00:45:47.730 --> 00:45:51.700
from the University of California, Berkeley in 1965,

754
00:45:52.860 --> 00:45:56.280
starting her teaching career at Boston University

755
00:45:56.280 --> 00:46:00.370 line:15%
raising two boys, Dorion Sagan and Jeremy Sagan,

756
00:46:01.850 --> 00:46:04.350 line:15%
and divorcing Carl Sagan,

757
00:46:04.350 --> 00:46:09.350 line:15%
Lynn in 1967 published her landmark paper,

758
00:46:09.900 --> 00:46:13.210
On the Origin of Mitosing Cells.

759
00:46:13.210 --> 00:46:17.180
This paper proposed that the nucleated cell

760
00:46:17.180 --> 00:46:21.950
originated through a series of symbiotic mergers

761
00:46:21.950 --> 00:46:24.640
between already existing bacteria.

762
00:46:25.970 --> 00:46:27.984
This was the first statement

763
00:46:27.984 --> 00:46:32.680
of Margulis\' serial endosymbiotic theory

764
00:46:32.680 --> 00:46:35.310
that she worked on for the rest of her life.

765
00:46:36.970 --> 00:46:41.970
I asked historian Jan Saap what makes this paper so special

766
00:46:42.370 --> 00:46:44.720
considering that other scientists

767
00:46:44.720 --> 00:46:47.620
had already proposed similar ideas.

768
00:46:49.120 --> 00:46:52.320
- If you look at Lynn\'s 1967 paper,

769
00:46:52.320 --> 00:46:56.080 line:15%
what was important about that was not the idea

770
00:46:56.080 --> 00:46:57.750 line:15%
that these things might be symbionts,

771
00:46:57.750 --> 00:47:00.130 line:15%
the chloroplasts and mitochondrial symbionts,

772
00:47:00.130 --> 00:47:02.920
but it\'s the putting of it in a geochemical context

773
00:47:05.470 --> 00:47:07.320
- [Narrator] Professor Lynn Margulis.

774
00:47:09.998 --> 00:47:12.070
- The blue-green algae are still here.

775
00:47:12.070 --> 00:47:13.620
Even though now they are relegated

776
00:47:13.620 --> 00:47:16.230
to a position of relative inconspicuousness,

777
00:47:16.230 --> 00:47:17.260
in fact you can just see them

778
00:47:17.260 --> 00:47:19.530
as a kind of scum on the rocks there,

779
00:47:19.530 --> 00:47:21.060
they are still around.

780
00:47:21.060 --> 00:47:22.290
If you look carefully down there,

781
00:47:22.290 --> 00:47:24.760
you can see that there are bubbles coming up

782
00:47:24.760 --> 00:47:25.930
out of the water.

783
00:47:25.930 --> 00:47:27.760
Well the bubbles are just the oxygen.

784
00:47:27.760 --> 00:47:30.930
And that\'s just the oxygen that was responsible,

785
00:47:30.930 --> 00:47:32.680
that is oxygen given off by blue-green algae

786
00:47:32.680 --> 00:47:34.220
was the oxygen that was responsible

787
00:47:34.220 --> 00:47:37.430
for the transition of the entire atmosphere.

788
00:47:37.430 --> 00:47:40.170
The atmosphere went from something very anaerobic,

789
00:47:40.170 --> 00:47:44.890
no oxygen at all, to the present level about 20% oxygen

790
00:47:44.890 --> 00:47:48.020
something like 2,000 million years ago,

791
00:47:48.020 --> 00:47:50.200
plus or minus a hundred million years.

792
00:47:50.200 --> 00:47:51.970
And it\'s just those blue-green algae,

793
00:47:51.970 --> 00:47:53.960
that is, their ancestors of course,

794
00:47:53.960 --> 00:47:55.790
that led to that transition.

795
00:47:58.910 --> 00:48:02.300
So one can imagine that early scene

796
00:48:02.300 --> 00:48:03.880
where blue-green algae

797
00:48:03.880 --> 00:48:07.180
were giving off this enormous pollutant, that is oxygen,

798
00:48:07.180 --> 00:48:08.440
into the atmosphere

799
00:48:08.440 --> 00:48:10.840
and poisoning just about everything around them.

800
00:48:12.420 --> 00:48:14.090
One of the ways of coping

801
00:48:14.090 --> 00:48:16.750
with the increased oxygen back then,

802
00:48:16.750 --> 00:48:18.470
and a way I think that was very important

803
00:48:18.470 --> 00:48:22.810
in the origin of the complex cells was by symbiosis.

804
00:48:22.810 --> 00:48:23.938
Now what do we mean?

805
00:48:23.938 --> 00:48:26.730
Two bacteria, very different kinds of bacteria

806
00:48:26.730 --> 00:48:30.400
probably got together and ended up using the oxygen.

807
00:48:30.400 --> 00:48:33.470
The first of these bacteria simply broke down sugars

808
00:48:33.470 --> 00:48:35.790
and in fact couldn\'t use the oxygen at all,

809
00:48:35.790 --> 00:48:38.090
the second took the breakdown products

810
00:48:38.090 --> 00:48:41.520
and with oxygen burnt them essentially

811
00:48:41.520 --> 00:48:43.440
and derived a lot of energy from that

812
00:48:43.440 --> 00:48:45.950
and the two together made a complex.

813
00:48:45.950 --> 00:48:48.130
And this complex after a long period of time

814
00:48:48.130 --> 00:48:49.710
and many, many changes

815
00:48:49.710 --> 00:48:51.840
became a very successful kind of organism.

816
00:48:51.840 --> 00:48:54.170
And in fact it\'s that kind of organism

817
00:48:54.170 --> 00:48:57.280
that is the ancestor to all the higher cells.

818
00:48:57.280 --> 00:48:59.060
- Wow, we now have a story.

819
00:48:59.060 --> 00:49:03.190
We try to tell a narrative about what happened here, right?

820
00:49:03.190 --> 00:49:05.550
And that was completely novel.

821
00:49:05.550 --> 00:49:07.590
And Lynn was completely synthetic.

822
00:49:07.590 --> 00:49:10.950
And her 1970s book called The Origin of Eukaryotic Cells,

823
00:49:10.950 --> 00:49:12.120
it\'s a masterpiece.

824
00:49:12.120 --> 00:49:16.250
Her book Symbiosis in Cell Evolution of 1981,

825
00:49:16.250 --> 00:49:19.340
these things, she was drawing on cytology,

826
00:49:19.340 --> 00:49:22.550
and on molecular biology, and on geo-chemistry,

827
00:49:23.680 --> 00:49:26.860
putting things in context and telling a story.

828
00:49:26.860 --> 00:49:28.960
- The things that were once bacteria

829
00:49:28.960 --> 00:49:31.620
after time became the mitochondria

830
00:49:31.620 --> 00:49:34.470
that we find in all of our cells, all the plant cells,

831
00:49:34.470 --> 00:49:37.130
all the animal cells, and even all the fungal cells.

832
00:49:38.210 --> 00:49:41.260 line:15%
- In other words, we are made up

833
00:49:41.260 --> 00:49:44.970 line:15%
out of deeply collaborative bacteria.

834
00:49:46.950 --> 00:49:49.210
She was absolutely spot on

835
00:49:49.210 --> 00:49:52.600
at least about mitochondria and chloroplasts

836
00:49:52.600 --> 00:49:55.160
and that made her a huge name in science.

837
00:49:55.160 --> 00:49:58.620
That hit the bull\'s eye, and she had to have tenacity

838
00:49:58.620 --> 00:50:01.290
and daring to push that idea through

839
00:50:01.290 --> 00:50:03.270
because it was ridiculed to begin with.

840
00:50:03.270 --> 00:50:08.270 line:15%
- It got the regular academic scientists rather upset.

841
00:50:09.710 --> 00:50:10.543
They didn\'t like it.

842
00:50:10.543 --> 00:50:12.930
It changed the rules of the game

843
00:50:12.930 --> 00:50:14.550
and this is not popular ever.

844
00:50:15.390 --> 00:50:19.080 line:15%
- At that time, I was lecturing to first year students

845
00:50:19.080 --> 00:50:21.070
in Oxford University,

846
00:50:21.070 --> 00:50:24.270
and I spent about half a lecture on Lynn\'s ideas,

847
00:50:25.700 --> 00:50:30.700
and a few weeks later, a senior colleague of mine said,

848
00:50:30.860 --> 00:50:34.740
my students tell me you\'ve been teaching them this.

849
00:50:34.740 --> 00:50:39.740
Oh, that\'s rubbish, he said, you can\'t do that.

850
00:50:40.110 --> 00:50:42.710
I persisted, and what is remarkable,

851
00:50:42.710 --> 00:50:45.788
is how 10 or 15 years later,

852
00:50:45.788 --> 00:50:48.200
it would be automatic to lecture about this.

853
00:50:48.200 --> 00:50:49.680
- But eventually the evidence came in

854
00:50:49.680 --> 00:50:50.920
and she was vindicated.

855
00:50:50.920 --> 00:50:54.490 line:15%
- Using genetic analyses, the plastids,

856
00:50:54.490 --> 00:50:59.040 line:15%
the green parts of plants, were definitively traced

857
00:50:59.040 --> 00:51:03.190 line:15%
to bacterial ancestors and also of course the mitochondria,

858
00:51:03.190 --> 00:51:06.070 line:15%
the oxygen using organelles in our cells

859
00:51:06.070 --> 00:51:09.328 line:15%
and the cells of plants and fungi and protists

860
00:51:09.328 --> 00:51:11.940 line:15%
also have been traced to bacteria.

861
00:51:11.940 --> 00:51:15.670
- That really closes that particular controversy in a sense.

862
00:51:15.670 --> 00:51:19.700
Now we have definitive evidence and we can investigate this.

863
00:51:23.931 --> 00:51:27.598
(gentle instrumental music)

864
00:51:36.660 --> 00:51:38.830 line:15%
Lynn Margulis discovered symbiosis.

865
00:51:38.830 --> 00:51:39.890
No, she didn\'t.

866
00:51:39.890 --> 00:51:41.940
Lynn Margulis discovered that chloroplasts are symbionts.

867
00:51:41.940 --> 00:51:42.773
No, she didn\'t.

868
00:51:42.773 --> 00:51:43.890
Didn\'t discover anything.

869
00:51:43.890 --> 00:51:45.060
Nothing like that happened.

870
00:51:45.060 --> 00:51:45.893
- And the reason you say that she did--

871
00:51:45.893 --> 00:51:47.000
- [John] Then what did she do?

872
00:51:50.820 --> 00:51:53.930
- She promoted and championed symbiosis

873
00:51:53.930 --> 00:51:56.320
as a source of evolutionary innovation,

874
00:51:56.320 --> 00:51:59.160
put the idea that we can study cells

875
00:51:59.160 --> 00:52:01.310 line:15%
in an evolutionary context,

876
00:52:01.310 --> 00:52:04.620 line:15%
in a paleo-ecological context.

877
00:52:04.620 --> 00:52:07.439
Understood that symbiosis is a primary driver

878
00:52:07.439 --> 00:52:11.840
of early evolution, was extremely important.

879
00:52:11.840 --> 00:52:15.370
Putting microbes back into biology as life giving forces,

880
00:52:15.370 --> 00:52:18.720
look at the diversity of microbes, especially protists.

881
00:52:18.720 --> 00:52:19.553
She did a lot.

882
00:52:19.553 --> 00:52:20.386
She did a lot.

883
00:52:21.360 --> 00:52:22.193
- [John] And Gaia.

884
00:52:22.326 --> 00:52:23.159
- And Gaia.

885
00:52:23.510 --> 00:52:26.110
The reason why people make up these myths

886
00:52:26.110 --> 00:52:30.020
is because the myths are embedded in a bad narrative

887
00:52:30.020 --> 00:52:33.290
that begins with bad assumptions about what discovery is.

888
00:52:33.290 --> 00:52:34.380
Discovery is not a thing.

889
00:52:34.380 --> 00:52:35.520
It\'s not an event.

890
00:52:35.520 --> 00:52:37.410
And they\'re not associated with individuals.

891
00:52:37.410 --> 00:52:38.460
Stop being heroic.

892
00:52:38.460 --> 00:52:39.960
It\'s part of the all American myth again.

893
00:52:39.960 --> 00:52:41.230
You\'re back to individualism.

894
00:52:41.230 --> 00:52:42.940
You think individuals make discoveries.

895
00:52:42.940 --> 00:52:45.690
Discoveries are processes but what individuals can do

896
00:52:46.670 --> 00:52:48.420
is promote different ways of seeing

897
00:52:49.890 --> 00:52:51.850
and different ways of doing.

898
00:52:51.850 --> 00:52:53.820
That\'s phenomenal.

899
00:52:53.820 --> 00:52:58.820
Once in a while, you get these extraordinary individuals

900
00:53:00.150 --> 00:53:01.450
and Lynn was one of those.

901
00:53:03.300 --> 00:53:07.030 line:15%
- So these are my illustrious predecessors in this argument,

902
00:53:07.030 --> 00:53:09.360 line:15%
the three Russians with the symbiogenesis

903
00:53:09.360 --> 00:53:11.620 line:15%
and Wallin with symbioticism.

904
00:53:11.620 --> 00:53:13.930 line:15%
Here\'s Faminitzyn, here\'s Kozo-Polyanski,

905
00:53:13.930 --> 00:53:15.940
and here\'s Mereschkhovski,

906
00:53:15.940 --> 00:53:17.750
and these are the symbiogeneticists.

907
00:53:17.750 --> 00:53:19.960
Here is Ivan Wallin.

908
00:53:19.960 --> 00:53:24.250
Ivan Wallin is one of the unsung heroes of American biology.

909
00:53:24.250 --> 00:53:27.510
He completely independently got the idea of symbiosis

910
00:53:27.510 --> 00:53:29.440
being involved in cell evolution.

911
00:53:29.440 --> 00:53:32.010
And he was laughed out of New York

912
00:53:32.010 --> 00:53:34.210
and that\'s enough to be laughed anywhere else.

913
00:53:34.660 --> 00:53:39.090
Wallin wrote in book Symbioticism and the Origin of Species.

914
00:53:39.090 --> 00:53:41.950
It\'s a rather startling proposal that bacteria,

915
00:53:41.950 --> 00:53:45.690
the organisms which are popularly associated with disease,

916
00:53:45.690 --> 00:53:48.230
may represent the fundamental causative factor

917
00:53:48.230 --> 00:53:49.640
in the origin of species.

918
00:53:49.640 --> 00:53:51.160
And he was completely right.

919
00:53:51.160 --> 00:53:53.140
Bacteria and the acquisition

920
00:53:53.140 --> 00:53:56.085
and integration of bacteria into other organisms

921
00:53:56.085 --> 00:53:57.970
is a form of symbiogenesis

922
00:53:57.970 --> 00:54:01.310
and it\'s the form that I think is the most important way

923
00:54:01.310 --> 00:54:04.720
novelty is generated in the evolutionary process.

924
00:54:05.630 --> 00:54:08.220
- [John] Working with her colleague Victor Fet,

925
00:54:08.220 --> 00:54:10.330
Lynn helped edit and arrange

926
00:54:10.330 --> 00:54:13.280
for the first English language publication

927
00:54:13.280 --> 00:54:17.830
of the Russian scientist Kozo-Polyansky\'s book of 1924,

928
00:54:19.050 --> 00:54:22.390
Symbiogenesis, a New Principle of Evolution.

929
00:54:24.030 --> 00:54:25.870 line:15%
- She loved to develop exchanges

930
00:54:25.870 --> 00:54:29.390 line:15%
with people around the world and in societies,

931
00:54:29.390 --> 00:54:33.450
and in places which otherwise often seemed closed to us.

932
00:54:33.450 --> 00:54:35.690
She would open and break down those barriers

933
00:54:35.690 --> 00:54:38.290
and start to get that information flowing.

934
00:54:38.290 --> 00:54:41.520
And I sometimes refer to Lynn\'s contribution

935
00:54:42.913 --> 00:54:46.550
as evolution\'s most beautiful idea,

936
00:54:46.550 --> 00:54:49.080
in the sense that philosophically

937
00:54:49.080 --> 00:54:52.870
we tend to elevate cooperation and working together

938
00:54:52.870 --> 00:54:57.550
above simply working individually and selfishly.

939
00:54:57.550 --> 00:54:59.760
We\'re utterly dependent as a society

940
00:55:00.780 --> 00:55:04.970
with engaging with this deep thought

941
00:55:04.970 --> 00:55:07.860
that arises out of the way that Lynn\'s helped us

942
00:55:07.860 --> 00:55:10.310
to see the whole story of life itself.

943
00:55:11.890 --> 00:55:14.020
- [John] Here\'s a graphic and an animation

944
00:55:14.020 --> 00:55:17.880
Lynn Margulis often used to illustrate her story

945
00:55:17.880 --> 00:55:20.620
of the early evolution of life.

946
00:55:20.620 --> 00:55:23.510
Through three symbiotic fusions,

947
00:55:23.510 --> 00:55:27.690
four different types of bacteria joined forces,

948
00:55:27.690 --> 00:55:31.120
to create all the other organisms.

949
00:55:31.120 --> 00:55:35.060
First, a fermenting archaebacterium

950
00:55:35.060 --> 00:55:38.930
joined with swimming bacterium, a spirochete,

951
00:55:39.810 --> 00:55:43.250
to form an anaerobic protoctist,

952
00:55:43.250 --> 00:55:45.080
which is a microorganism

953
00:55:45.080 --> 00:55:48.890
that does not require or even want oxygen.

954
00:55:48.890 --> 00:55:52.730
This fusion, the most contentious part of her theory,

955
00:55:52.730 --> 00:55:57.630
formed the tail-like undulipoda, the nucleus,

956
00:55:57.630 --> 00:56:01.270
and the internal structures necessary for mitosis.

957
00:56:03.420 --> 00:56:06.640
Next an oxygen breathing bacterium

958
00:56:06.640 --> 00:56:09.720
joined with this anaerobic protoctist

959
00:56:09.720 --> 00:56:12.410
to form an oxygen breathing protoctist.

960
00:56:15.210 --> 00:56:18.780
The oxygen breathing bacterium became the mitochondria.

961
00:56:22.430 --> 00:56:25.770
This evolved into all animals and fungi.

962
00:56:28.030 --> 00:56:31.970
Next, a photosynthetic cyanobacterium

963
00:56:31.970 --> 00:56:35.220
joined with the oxygen breathing protoctist

964
00:56:35.220 --> 00:56:39.412
to create a photosynthesizing and oxygen breathing cell

965
00:56:39.412 --> 00:56:43.430
that evolved into algae and then all the plants.

966
00:56:47.630 --> 00:56:50.860
The cyanobacteria became the chloroplasts.

967
00:56:53.980 --> 00:56:57.180
Although the mergers that formed the chloroplasts

968
00:56:57.180 --> 00:57:00.060
and the mitochondria were well-established

969
00:57:00.060 --> 00:57:02.050
by molecular analysis

970
00:57:02.050 --> 00:57:04.260
and made it into the textbooks,

971
00:57:04.260 --> 00:57:06.370
it was that first fusion

972
00:57:06.370 --> 00:57:09.620
that became Lynn Margulis\' greatest challenge.

973
00:57:11.380 --> 00:57:16.380
- I remember saying to her around 1989 when I first met her,

974
00:57:16.760 --> 00:57:18.310
I said, you know, you\'ll only be remembered

975
00:57:18.310 --> 00:57:19.143
for your mistakes.

976
00:57:19.143 --> 00:57:20.200
Why don\'t you give that one up

977
00:57:20.200 --> 00:57:21.650
because you got the other two in the bag.

978
00:57:21.650 --> 00:57:23.230
Let\'s move on that one, but she wasn\'t like that.

979
00:57:23.230 --> 00:57:24.890
- What did she say?
- Always wanted to push.

980
00:57:24.890 --> 00:57:26.590
No, she says, I\'m right.

981
00:57:26.590 --> 00:57:29.540
- [John] In order to get even close to understanding

982
00:57:29.540 --> 00:57:32.750
that first merger, the controversial one

983
00:57:32.750 --> 00:57:36.400
between an archaebacterium and a spirochete,

984
00:57:36.400 --> 00:57:40.850
I realized that I had to learn more about spirochetes,

985
00:57:40.850 --> 00:57:43.060
so I traveled to Oslo, Norway

986
00:57:43.060 --> 00:57:46.732
to visit Lynn\'s colleague of many years, Morten Laane.

987
00:57:51.233 --> 00:57:54.580
It looks like it\'s moving like waves,

988
00:57:54.580 --> 00:57:56.950 line:15%
but it\'s actually spinning.

989
00:58:00.501 --> 00:58:01.960
- [John] We looked at the blood of a person

990
00:58:01.960 --> 00:58:06.250
infected with the spirochete that causes Lyme disease,

991
00:58:06.250 --> 00:58:10.020
And he explained how, when exposed to antibiotics,

992
00:58:10.020 --> 00:58:13.360
the spirochetes form round bodies

993
00:58:13.360 --> 00:58:16.110
and hide in the red blood cells

994
00:58:16.110 --> 00:58:19.910
only to come out months or years later, as we saw here.

995
00:58:21.020 --> 00:58:23.140
This is persistent Lyme disease.

996
00:58:24.170 --> 00:58:27.470
In Lynn\'s hypothesis, the spirochetes

997
00:58:27.470 --> 00:58:31.400
became the cell\'s cilia and flagella,

998
00:58:31.400 --> 00:58:33.680
which are now called undulipodia.

999
00:58:33.680 --> 00:58:36.420
- Cilia and flagella are these little hairs

1000
00:58:36.420 --> 00:58:39.432
that stick out of almost all the complex cells.

1001
00:58:39.432 --> 00:58:42.920
Now I think that we have a modern counterpart

1002
00:58:42.920 --> 00:58:46.090
for what was once a free living cilia and flagellum.

1003
00:58:46.090 --> 00:58:49.530
That is, we have certain modern bacteria called spirochetes

1004
00:58:49.530 --> 00:58:51.410
that are really very similar.

1005
00:58:51.410 --> 00:58:55.110
- [John] Her hypothesis also proposes that the spirochetes

1006
00:58:55.110 --> 00:58:58.530
were involved in the origin of mitosis,

1007
00:58:58.530 --> 00:58:59.930
the division of the DNA.

1008
00:59:02.210 --> 00:59:05.440
Most scientists believe that this part

1009
00:59:05.440 --> 00:59:09.740
of Lynn\'s endosymbiotic theory is not well supported

1010
00:59:09.740 --> 00:59:12.420
by molecular evidence and is wrong.

1011
00:59:13.690 --> 00:59:15.970
But as Morten Laane pointed out to me...

1012
00:59:24.528 --> 00:59:28.528
- [Lynn] These are the spirochetes on Mixotrica,

1013
00:59:29.662 --> 00:59:31.579
and both the Treponemes

1014
00:59:32.984 --> 00:59:36.317
and the large spirochete is still alive.

1015
00:59:39.063 --> 00:59:42.730
(gentle instrumental music)

1016
00:59:45.712 --> 00:59:47.890
- [John] As I look at this picture I wonder,

1017
00:59:47.890 --> 00:59:50.840
how did she manage to do so much?

1018
00:59:51.770 --> 00:59:54.820 line:15%
Here she is with her sons Dorion and Jeremy,

1019
00:59:56.080 --> 00:59:58.600 line:15%
her second husband, Thomas Margulis,

1020
00:59:58.600 --> 01:00:03.020 line:15%
a crystallographer, her third son Zachary Margulis,

1021
01:00:03.020 --> 01:00:05.520 line:15%
and her daughter, Jennifer Margulis.

1022
01:00:06.980 --> 01:00:08.580 line:15%
- She often had young women come to her

1023
01:00:08.580 --> 01:00:11.190 line:15%
and say how can you balance this, that, and the other

1024
01:00:11.190 --> 01:00:12.390 line:15%
and she\'d say you can\'t.

1025
01:00:13.780 --> 01:00:15.600
You\'ll work it out the way you work it out.

1026
01:00:15.600 --> 01:00:18.370
- [John] Lynn Margulis\' theory of endosymbiosis

1027
01:00:18.370 --> 01:00:19.500
made her famous.

1028
01:00:21.570 --> 01:00:24.340
She won numerous awards and honorary degrees,

1029
01:00:26.150 --> 01:00:29.560
including admission to the National Academy of Sciences

1030
01:00:29.560 --> 01:00:31.700
and the National Medal of Science.

1031
01:00:34.020 --> 01:00:38.450
Margulis was a visiting professor at many universities,

1032
01:00:38.450 --> 01:00:42.770
including Oxford and the University of Barcelona.

1033
01:00:42.770 --> 01:00:47.770 line:15%
- Lynn lived for many years in Barcelona,

1034
01:00:53.465 --> 01:00:57.780
- [John] In 1988, Lynn was lured away from Boston University

1035
01:00:57.780 --> 01:01:00.890
to become a distinguished university professor

1036
01:01:00.890 --> 01:01:03.920 line:15%
at the University of Massachusetts Amherst,

1037
01:01:03.920 --> 01:01:06.040 line:15%
where she spent the rest of her career.

1038
01:01:07.500 --> 01:01:10.060
While she did receive funding from NASA,

1039
01:01:10.060 --> 01:01:13.430
Lynn never received major government funding

1040
01:01:13.430 --> 01:01:16.350
from the National Science Foundation or NIH.

1041
01:01:17.480 --> 01:01:21.310
- Because you have frankly a bunch of white guys in a row

1042
01:01:22.400 --> 01:01:25.370
who are getting all their grant money for saying X.

1043
01:01:25.370 --> 01:01:27.230
And if she said Y,

1044
01:01:27.230 --> 01:01:30.490
it was like, it\'s that Margulis woman again.

1045
01:01:30.490 --> 01:01:31.790
- You always think of scientists

1046
01:01:31.790 --> 01:01:35.720
in some ways like Mr. Spock in Star Trek,

1047
01:01:35.720 --> 01:01:37.600
that you\'re supposed to be disengaged,

1048
01:01:37.600 --> 01:01:39.360
you\'re supposed to be unemotional

1049
01:01:39.360 --> 01:01:41.810
and so on about your science.

1050
01:01:41.810 --> 01:01:43.400
Well, this is exactly the opposite.

1051
01:01:43.400 --> 01:01:46.830
If you\'re making new science and having new ideas,

1052
01:01:46.830 --> 01:01:48.500
you have to be passionate about them.

1053
01:01:48.500 --> 01:01:51.960
You have to grab a hold of this idea and push, push, push.

1054
01:01:51.960 --> 01:01:53.500
She had extraordinary energy.

1055
01:01:53.500 --> 01:01:55.490
She was out there doing presentations

1056
01:01:55.490 --> 01:01:58.120
and she was in the media a lot as well.

1057
01:01:59.070 --> 01:02:00.750
And as a woman in science,

1058
01:02:00.750 --> 01:02:02.910
don\'t forget, she\'s one of very few,

1059
01:02:02.910 --> 01:02:04.660
even though she didn\'t play that card.

1060
01:02:04.660 --> 01:02:06.270 line:15%
- She really liked being Lynn Margulis.

1061
01:02:06.270 --> 01:02:07.970 line:15%
She really liked being flamboyant.

1062
01:02:09.650 --> 01:02:14.530
At the same time, she had I think a very deep humility

1063
01:02:14.530 --> 01:02:19.240
about her own knowledge and what other people knew.

1064
01:02:19.240 --> 01:02:24.240
She really was humble in the face of nature.

1065
01:02:28.600 --> 01:02:33.290
- [Lorraine] This is an amoeba from the Delta del Ebro, 40x.

1066
01:02:39.197 --> 01:02:42.864
(gentle instrumental music)

1067
01:03:43.325 --> 01:03:46.992
(gentle instrumental music)

1068
01:03:55.210 --> 01:03:59.260 line:15%
- [Man] One more question.

1069
01:04:03.235 --> 01:04:04.068
- You ask them.

1070
01:04:06.021 --> 01:04:07.520
Were the bugs our ancestors?

1071
01:04:07.520 --> 01:04:09.640
Absolutely they were our ancestors.

1072
01:04:09.640 --> 01:04:12.950
There\'s certain sets of bacteria were our ancestors,

1073
01:04:12.950 --> 01:04:15.180
they became protists which are our ancestors,

1074
01:04:15.180 --> 01:04:17.670
this protists became animals which are our ancestors

1075
01:04:17.670 --> 01:04:20.560
and the animals, we are totally connected to them.

1076
01:04:20.560 --> 01:04:22.640
That\'s probably why we\'re so mean to them.

1077
01:04:22.640 --> 01:04:25.190 line:15%
You\'re always meanest to your relatives aren\'t you?

1078
01:04:30.040 --> 01:04:32.790 line:15%
- She pointed out basically that microbes run the show.

1079
01:04:33.810 --> 01:04:35.460 line:15%
Microbes rule the world.

1080
01:04:35.460 --> 01:04:36.850 line:15%
They have been doing so

1081
01:04:36.850 --> 01:04:40.030
ever since life began 3.5 billion years ago, or so.

1082
01:04:41.020 --> 01:04:42.350
They\'ve been regulating the atmosphere

1083
01:04:42.350 --> 01:04:44.960
and regulating the climate, cycling nutrients,

1084
01:04:46.390 --> 01:04:50.140
creating complex ecosystems, communicating with each other.

1085
01:04:50.140 --> 01:04:51.910 line:15%
- People used to think it was just a plain rock,

1086
01:04:51.910 --> 01:04:54.920 line:15%
but we now know that it\'s a skyscraper of bacteria.

1087
01:04:56.176 --> 01:04:58.060 line:15%
It was made by living organisms

1088
01:04:58.060 --> 01:05:00.780 line:15%
many hundreds of millions of years ago.

1089
01:05:00.780 --> 01:05:02.400
And it\'s just from those kinds of rocks

1090
01:05:02.400 --> 01:05:05.320
that we reconstruct the early history of life on Earth.

1091
01:05:05.320 --> 01:05:09.880 line:15%
- Most of bacterial metabolism, and it\'s pretty diverse,

1092
01:05:09.880 --> 01:05:12.350
there\'s a lot of different metabolism,

1093
01:05:12.350 --> 01:05:15.380
evolved probably in the first billion years or so.

1094
01:05:16.660 --> 01:05:18.540
- [John] Another quick footnote.

1095
01:05:18.540 --> 01:05:23.080
Metabolism is the flow of energy and matter

1096
01:05:23.080 --> 01:05:26.920
through a network of chemical reactions within an organism

1097
01:05:26.920 --> 01:05:30.770
that allows it to maintain and perpetuate itself.

1098
01:05:31.940 --> 01:05:34.660
- We\'re not all that metabolically complex.

1099
01:05:34.660 --> 01:05:36.370
We humans, animals in general,

1100
01:05:36.370 --> 01:05:38.000
not that metabolically complex.

1101
01:05:38.000 --> 01:05:40.120
We\'re taking in food and some oxygen,

1102
01:05:41.260 --> 01:05:44.100
breaking it down and releasing a waste product.

1103
01:05:44.100 --> 01:05:44.933
That\'s it.

1104
01:05:44.933 --> 01:05:46.230
Bacteria would laugh at that.

1105
01:05:46.230 --> 01:05:47.380
We invented that.

1106
01:05:47.380 --> 01:05:49.100
That was like three billion years.

1107
01:05:49.100 --> 01:05:50.870
We figured that one out.

1108
01:05:50.870 --> 01:05:52.760
A few of us do it,

1109
01:05:52.760 --> 01:05:55.110
and then we\'re doing some other things as well.

1110
01:05:56.660 --> 01:06:01.220
What we are, are multicellular variations on a theme

1111
01:06:01.220 --> 01:06:04.630
that was established billions of years ago by the bacteria.

1112
01:06:05.964 --> 01:06:09.631
(gentle instrumental music)

1113
01:06:11.690 --> 01:06:13.460 line:15%
- You have to imagine the Archaean

1114
01:06:13.460 --> 01:06:16.820 line:15%
as nothing but these anaerobic bacterial ecosystems,

1115
01:06:16.820 --> 01:06:19.120
low lying communities everywhere on Earth.

1116
01:06:21.900 --> 01:06:25.110
We call it the planetary petticoat,

1117
01:06:25.110 --> 01:06:27.750
the undergarment of the Earth.

1118
01:06:27.750 --> 01:06:29.310
This is the tissue of Gaia.

1119
01:06:31.154 --> 01:06:34.190
If you plot on the map of Eastern North America

1120
01:06:34.190 --> 01:06:37.640
from Halifax, Nova Scotia all the way down

1121
01:06:37.640 --> 01:06:40.080
to the southern part of South Carolina,

1122
01:06:40.080 --> 01:06:42.070
it\'s the same active mat.

1123
01:06:42.070 --> 01:06:45.480
Now, people put houses and they destroy pieces of it

1124
01:06:45.480 --> 01:06:46.670
but it grows around.

1125
01:06:46.670 --> 01:06:49.400
You have a complete continuous existence

1126
01:06:49.400 --> 01:06:50.660
of the fabric of life.

1127
01:06:51.540 --> 01:06:55.470 line:15%
- We are on Cape Cod Bay, a particular section of the Bay

1128
01:06:55.470 --> 01:06:58.010 line:15%
that gets extremely low tides.

1129
01:06:58.010 --> 01:07:01.280
And a certain microbial community finds this

1130
01:07:01.280 --> 01:07:05.110
to be an absolutely wonderful place to photosynthesize

1131
01:07:05.110 --> 01:07:08.060
and to do other sorts of metabolisms.

1132
01:07:08.060 --> 01:07:10.120
- [John] While Betsey Dexter Dyer and I

1133
01:07:10.120 --> 01:07:13.860
were exploring the bacterial mats on Cape Cod Bay,

1134
01:07:13.860 --> 01:07:17.390
a woman came up to me and wondered what we were doing.

1135
01:07:17.390 --> 01:07:20.050
I told her that we were investigating bacteria.

1136
01:07:20.050 --> 01:07:23.364
Oh my god, are they dangerous, she asked.

1137
01:07:23.364 --> 01:07:27.197
(dramatic instrumental music)

1138
01:07:39.000 --> 01:07:40.370
- Most people hate bacteria.

1139
01:07:40.370 --> 01:07:42.870
They think it\'s disease and they don\'t understand

1140
01:07:42.870 --> 01:07:45.610
that we are 10% dry weight bacteria

1141
01:07:45.610 --> 01:07:47.110
and that we need the bacteria.

1142
01:07:52.986 --> 01:07:54.360
It looks like sand but it\'s not sand.

1143
01:07:55.483 --> 01:07:57.440
It\'s all like a carpet.

1144
01:08:00.500 --> 01:08:03.140
Can you get that idea that it\'s a carpet?

1145
01:08:03.140 --> 01:08:05.660
See the strings there?
- Yes.

1146
01:08:05.660 --> 01:08:09.967
- [Lynn] Those are cyanobacteria, filamentous cyanobacteria,

1147
01:08:09.967 --> 01:08:13.730
and they are the formers of the mat.

1148
01:08:13.730 --> 01:08:15.230
That\'s what forms them the strings.

1149
01:08:15.230 --> 01:08:16.530
You see the strings going?

1150
01:08:17.430 --> 01:08:18.410
There.

1151
01:08:18.410 --> 01:08:21.040
Now, if you see a string with your eye,

1152
01:08:21.040 --> 01:08:24.080
that means there are hundreds of little microscopic ones.

1153
01:08:25.090 --> 01:08:27.720
- One of the most dominant members of this community

1154
01:08:28.690 --> 01:08:33.030
is the cyanobacteria, also sometimes called the blue-greens.

1155
01:08:33.030 --> 01:08:36.170
They are major photosynthesizers,

1156
01:08:36.170 --> 01:08:37.480
and when I say photosynthesis,

1157
01:08:37.480 --> 01:08:40.730
I mean that they are using their bluish-greenish pigment

1158
01:08:40.730 --> 01:08:43.410
to capture energy from the sun

1159
01:08:43.410 --> 01:08:47.020
and to use that energy to make sugars.

1160
01:08:47.020 --> 01:08:52.020
- [Lynn] Top layer\'s salt, different kinds of salt and sand.

1161
01:08:52.570 --> 01:08:54.010
Second layer, green.

1162
01:08:54.010 --> 01:08:54.843
You see this?

1163
01:08:54.843 --> 01:08:56.110
Can you see this?
- Yes.

1164
01:08:56.110 --> 01:08:59.080
- Second layer, green, cyanobacteria,

1165
01:08:59.080 --> 01:09:01.850
masters of the world, the cyanobacteria.

1166
01:09:01.850 --> 01:09:04.830
It\'s the highest level of evolution.

1167
01:09:04.830 --> 01:09:05.810
Why?

1168
01:09:05.810 --> 01:09:10.810
Because they live off carbon dioxide, plentiful, available.

1169
01:09:12.410 --> 01:09:15.790
They live off sunlight as the source of energy,

1170
01:09:15.790 --> 01:09:18.580
plentiful, available from the very beginning.

1171
01:09:18.580 --> 01:09:20.480
Water, and that\'s all.

1172
01:09:21.930 --> 01:09:22.880
That\'s all.

1173
01:09:22.880 --> 01:09:26.800
- The other major photosynthesizer we saw today

1174
01:09:26.800 --> 01:09:28.740
are the purple sulfur bacteria.

1175
01:09:29.620 --> 01:09:31.700
- Underneath, the pink.

1176
01:09:31.700 --> 01:09:32.570
Now, this is the very...

1177
01:09:32.570 --> 01:09:34.230
Let me see if I can say this very clearly.

1178
01:09:34.230 --> 01:09:37.650
The pink are also photosynthetic bacteria,

1179
01:09:39.280 --> 01:09:44.280
but they use hydrogen sulfide, H2S, in photosynthesis.

1180
01:09:46.790 --> 01:09:49.950
They take away the hydrogens to make their food.

1181
01:09:49.950 --> 01:09:51.440
They\'re left with sulfur.

1182
01:09:52.670 --> 01:09:54.960
They are the ancestors of the green.

1183
01:09:54.960 --> 01:09:58.260
Why, because the green do something unbelievable.

1184
01:09:58.260 --> 01:10:00.924
They use H2O for photosynthesis.

1185
01:10:00.924 --> 01:10:03.190
They also take the hydrogens away

1186
01:10:03.190 --> 01:10:05.290
and put it to the carbon to make their food.

1187
01:10:05.290 --> 01:10:10.240
If you take hydrogens away from water, what do you get?

1188
01:10:10.240 --> 01:10:11.073
What\'s left?

1189
01:10:11.073 --> 01:10:12.510
You take hydrogens away from water?

1190
01:10:12.510 --> 01:10:13.500
Water is H20.

1191
01:10:13.500 --> 01:10:14.420
You take hydrogens away.

1192
01:10:14.420 --> 01:10:15.350
What do you get?
- Oxygen.

1193
01:10:15.350 --> 01:10:16.950
- You have oxygen left.

1194
01:10:16.950 --> 01:10:19.770
So whereas the pink ones deposit sulfur

1195
01:10:20.660 --> 01:10:23.750
and are stuck completely if there\'s no volcanic H2S.

1196
01:10:23.750 --> 01:10:26.900
If there\'s no H2S, they can\'t do anything.

1197
01:10:26.900 --> 01:10:30.080
The green ones take H2O.

1198
01:10:30.981 --> 01:10:32.850
So, they can move anywhere.

1199
01:10:32.850 --> 01:10:35.460
They can go anywhere because H2O is everywhere.

1200
01:10:35.460 --> 01:10:37.640
Every place they go, they make oxygen bubbles.

1201
01:10:37.640 --> 01:10:38.740
They change the world.

1202
01:10:40.380 --> 01:10:42.910
So they run the planet.

1203
01:10:42.910 --> 01:10:44.330
We think we run the planet

1204
01:10:44.330 --> 01:10:46.890
but we wouldn\'t run it for long without food.

1205
01:10:46.890 --> 01:10:49.000
They are the ultimate food supply.

1206
01:10:49.000 --> 01:10:50.600
When you look at the plants around here,

1207
01:10:50.600 --> 01:10:53.880
all this vegetation, the reason it\'s green

1208
01:10:53.880 --> 01:10:55.460
is because they\'re relatives.

1209
01:10:55.460 --> 01:10:56.790
These green thing,

1210
01:10:56.790 --> 01:10:59.850
their relatives are inside those plant bodies.

1211
01:11:04.380 --> 01:11:06.430
This is a completely different community.

1212
01:11:07.542 --> 01:11:10.920
It looks terrible to you probably, like vomit or something.

1213
01:11:10.920 --> 01:11:15.460
These white bacteria can take the carbon

1214
01:11:15.460 --> 01:11:19.020
and do it in the dark but their source of energy

1215
01:11:19.020 --> 01:11:23.240
is the hydrogen sulfide that oxidizes to sulfate.

1216
01:11:23.240 --> 01:11:27.210
So the point is that the waste of one

1217
01:11:27.210 --> 01:11:28.660
is the food of the other

1218
01:11:28.660 --> 01:11:31.140
and that\'s how the ecosystem goes around.

1219
01:11:31.140 --> 01:11:32.890
If we didn\'t have the waste of one

1220
01:11:32.890 --> 01:11:37.550
being the food of the other, we would be drowning as we are

1221
01:11:37.550 --> 01:11:42.550
in the urine or feces equivalent of the production.

1222
01:11:43.975 --> 01:11:48.000
(gentle instrumental music)

1223
01:11:48.000 --> 01:11:51.660
These communities are recycling everything.

1224
01:11:54.222 --> 01:11:55.350
They\'re recycling everything

1225
01:11:55.350 --> 01:12:00.350
and they\'re also persistent through time.

1226
01:12:01.900 --> 01:12:05.300
If we would listen to them or watch them

1227
01:12:05.300 --> 01:12:07.660
or understand what they were doing,

1228
01:12:07.660 --> 01:12:11.820
we would recognize that you can\'t just throw things out.

1229
01:12:11.820 --> 01:12:13.310
You never throw anything out.

1230
01:12:14.260 --> 01:12:15.320
It goes around.

1231
01:12:15.320 --> 01:12:17.570
Garbage doesn\'t go out, like out.

1232
01:12:17.570 --> 01:12:19.830
It goes around and around.

1233
01:12:19.830 --> 01:12:23.450
The quality of life after the garbage

1234
01:12:23.450 --> 01:12:25.650
is thrown out makes a lot of difference.

1235
01:12:25.650 --> 01:12:27.770
Now, these bacteria have solved that issue.

1236
01:12:27.770 --> 01:12:29.660
People haven\'t solved it at all.

1237
01:12:29.660 --> 01:12:33.020
People are in the growing stage and the ruining stage.

1238
01:12:33.020 --> 01:12:35.710
People are ruining their environment.

1239
01:12:35.710 --> 01:12:39.350
These bacteria are producing an environment that\'s livable.

1240
01:12:39.350 --> 01:12:41.760
I think we have lots to learn from them.

1241
01:12:41.760 --> 01:12:44.617
- The vast majority of everything that you see

1242
01:12:44.617 --> 01:12:47.400
that is operating smoothly in this world,

1243
01:12:47.400 --> 01:12:51.160
including the decomposition cycle is a microbial cycle.

1244
01:12:51.160 --> 01:12:53.920
- So they can run all the cycles, the nitrogen cycle,

1245
01:12:53.920 --> 01:12:55.820
the carbon cycle, the oxygen cycle.

1246
01:12:55.820 --> 01:12:57.280
You say what cannot they do?

1247
01:12:58.660 --> 01:13:00.160
The answer is they can\'t talk.

1248
01:13:01.010 --> 01:13:04.380
They don\'t have bones and most importantly,

1249
01:13:04.380 --> 01:13:05.470
they can\'t make wood.

1250
01:13:06.660 --> 01:13:08.260
That\'s the more important thing.

1251
01:13:08.260 --> 01:13:10.370
The plants did something very important

1252
01:13:10.370 --> 01:13:11.650
400 million years ago.

1253
01:13:11.650 --> 01:13:12.900
They made wood.

1254
01:13:12.900 --> 01:13:15.180
When they made wood, not all the plants of course,

1255
01:13:15.180 --> 01:13:18.170
but the important plants, the forest plants,

1256
01:13:18.170 --> 01:13:21.070
they made the biosphere go this direction

1257
01:13:21.070 --> 01:13:23.270
because before that, the biosphere was flat,

1258
01:13:24.130 --> 01:13:25.750
slimy like this and flat.

1259
01:13:26.710 --> 01:13:28.260
The plants do something very important.

1260
01:13:28.260 --> 01:13:29.170
They make wood.

1261
01:13:29.170 --> 01:13:31.610
That\'s about the only thing.

1262
01:13:31.610 --> 01:13:35.360
Everything else, bacteria do, everything else important.

1263
01:13:35.360 --> 01:13:40.360
They make all the sugars, all the acids, all the proteins,

1264
01:13:42.150 --> 01:13:45.220
all the nucleic acids, the DNA and RNA,

1265
01:13:45.220 --> 01:13:49.860
all the membranous fatty material, all the slime.

1266
01:13:49.860 --> 01:13:54.860
They even precipitate iron and make magnets, magnetite

1267
01:13:55.550 --> 01:13:58.080
and they make rocks, they make those stromatolite rocks,

1268
01:13:58.080 --> 01:14:00.130
they make that calcium carbonate.

1269
01:14:00.130 --> 01:14:02.960
You have iron precipitated in here.

1270
01:14:02.960 --> 01:14:05.170
The significance is that these bacteria,

1271
01:14:05.170 --> 01:14:06.830
not only do they photosynthesize

1272
01:14:06.830 --> 01:14:11.380
but they accumulate large quantities of iron.

1273
01:14:11.380 --> 01:14:13.800
And we know that in the Gunflint regions,

1274
01:14:14.652 --> 01:14:16.810
that is, the northern part of Minnesota,

1275
01:14:16.810 --> 01:14:21.810
and the southern part of Ontario

1276
01:14:21.940 --> 01:14:23.700
that these are the great iron deposits

1277
01:14:23.700 --> 01:14:25.310
two billion years ago.

1278
01:14:25.310 --> 01:14:27.160
Of course that\'s the source of the iron

1279
01:14:27.160 --> 01:14:30.570
that gets taken to Chicago and converted into steel.

1280
01:14:30.570 --> 01:14:35.330
Steel gets taken and moved into Detroit and it becomes cars.

1281
01:14:35.330 --> 01:14:38.010
But if these bacteria didn\'t accumulate the iron

1282
01:14:38.010 --> 01:14:39.180
to begin with,

1283
01:14:39.180 --> 01:14:42.760
the iron would be dispersed the way it is on Mars.

1284
01:14:42.760 --> 01:14:45.230
It would be unmanageable.

1285
01:14:45.230 --> 01:14:46.680
The animals come and go.

1286
01:14:46.680 --> 01:14:50.030
The animals go extinct but these don\'t go extinct.

1287
01:14:50.030 --> 01:14:52.330
They don\'t go extinct because they\'re bacteria.

1288
01:14:52.330 --> 01:14:54.670
In my opinion, bacteria don\'t go extinct.

1289
01:14:54.670 --> 01:14:56.350
They don\'t have species.

1290
01:14:56.350 --> 01:14:57.183
They don\'t have species.

1291
01:14:57.183 --> 01:14:58.180
They don\'t go extinct.

1292
01:14:58.180 --> 01:14:59.840
Why, because they transfer their genes

1293
01:14:59.840 --> 01:15:02.750
back and forth reversibly.

1294
01:15:02.750 --> 01:15:06.430
- Bacteria are extraordinarily promiscuous with their DNA.

1295
01:15:07.710 --> 01:15:09.620
They pick up other organisms\' DNA,

1296
01:15:09.620 --> 01:15:12.280
and other organisms typically for them are bacteria.

1297
01:15:12.280 --> 01:15:14.510
Think of a flow of DNA,

1298
01:15:14.510 --> 01:15:17.130
of genes from bacterium to bacterium,

1299
01:15:17.130 --> 01:15:19.860
across the boundaries of what you might think of

1300
01:15:19.860 --> 01:15:23.780
are a species or a type, just a constant interchange.

1301
01:15:23.780 --> 01:15:26.820
- Lynn pointed this out in a very major way,

1302
01:15:26.820 --> 01:15:30.220
that there\'s one planetary bacterial organism

1303
01:15:30.220 --> 01:15:31.970
that has been helping to run the planet

1304
01:15:31.970 --> 01:15:34.160
ever since life started.

1305
01:15:34.160 --> 01:15:35.940
- So what is all life on Earth?

1306
01:15:35.940 --> 01:15:38.450
What\'s the real answer to what all life is,

1307
01:15:38.450 --> 01:15:41.000
it\'s either bacteria in their own communities

1308
01:15:41.000 --> 01:15:45.690
like these or it\'s bacteria in new kinds of communities

1309
01:15:45.690 --> 01:15:50.410
which we recognize as plants or animals or protists or fungi

1310
01:15:50.410 --> 01:15:54.960
but basically, it\'s the unit in life is bacteria.

1311
01:15:54.960 --> 01:15:57.130
These are communities of bacteria.

1312
01:15:57.130 --> 01:15:58.710
These microbes are out there

1313
01:15:58.710 --> 01:16:03.190
and they\'ve been there for about 3,500 million years

1314
01:16:06.390 --> 01:16:09.830
and if you listen very carefully you can hear them singing.

1315
01:16:11.750 --> 01:16:14.400
They are singing in English to help us out tonight

1316
01:16:16.230 --> 01:16:18.430
and if they are not, I\'ll translate for you.

1317
01:16:19.300 --> 01:16:23.460
The song is, got along without you before I met ya,

1318
01:16:23.460 --> 01:16:26.510
gonna get along without you now.

1319
01:16:26.510 --> 01:16:27.343
Thank you.

1320
01:16:28.183 --> 01:16:30.800
♪ Uh huh, mhm ♪

1321
01:16:30.800 --> 01:16:34.316
♪ Gonna get along without you now ♪

1322
01:16:34.316 --> 01:16:36.638
♪ Uh huh, mhm ♪

1323
01:16:36.638 --> 01:16:40.446
♪ Gonna get along without you now ♪

1324
01:16:40.446 --> 01:16:43.084
♪ You told me I was the neatest thing ♪

1325
01:16:43.084 --> 01:16:46.176
♪ You even asked me to wear your ring ♪

1326
01:16:46.176 --> 01:16:49.176
♪ You ran around with every girl in town ♪

1327
01:16:49.176 --> 01:16:52.037
♪ You didn\'t even care if it got me down ♪

1328
01:16:52.037 --> 01:16:55.214
♪ Uh huh, mhm ♪

1329
01:16:55.214 --> 01:16:58.032
♪ Gonna get along without you now ♪

1330
01:16:58.032 --> 01:17:01.032
♪ Uh huh, mhm ♪

1331
01:17:01.032 --> 01:17:04.216
♪ Gonna get along without you now ♪

1332
01:17:04.216 --> 01:17:07.404
♪ Got along without you before I met you ♪

1333
01:17:07.404 --> 01:17:10.118
♪ Gonna get along without you now ♪

1334
01:17:10.118 --> 01:17:13.216
♪ Gonna find somebody who\'s twice as cute ♪

1335
01:17:13.216 --> 01:17:16.920
♪ Because I didn\'t like you anyhow ♪

1336
01:17:16.920 --> 01:17:19.010
Oh, come on, super spirillum swim by.

1337
01:17:20.300 --> 01:17:21.320
Show yourself off.

1338
01:17:27.201 --> 01:17:30.868
(gentle instrumental music)

1339
01:17:37.820 --> 01:17:40.810
We are symbionts on a symbiotic planet.

1340
01:17:40.810 --> 01:17:42.010
Symbiosis is everywhere.

1341
01:17:43.060 --> 01:17:44.330
What is this lichen?

1342
01:17:44.330 --> 01:17:45.580
Product of symbiosis.

1343
01:17:45.580 --> 01:17:46.650
What does that mean?

1344
01:17:46.650 --> 01:17:48.560 line:15%
It means in the lichen you have the alga,

1345
01:17:48.560 --> 01:17:51.030 line:15%
which is the green part, which is making the food,

1346
01:17:51.030 --> 01:17:54.100 line:15%
and it\'s teamed up with the fungi, which is the white part.

1347
01:17:54.100 --> 01:17:56.580
Together, when they grow together they form,

1348
01:17:56.580 --> 01:17:58.660
by symbiosis, a lichen.

1349
01:17:58.660 --> 01:18:00.350
The lichen looks like a plant.

1350
01:18:00.350 --> 01:18:02.090
It\'s very similar to a plant.

1351
01:18:02.090 --> 01:18:03.690
It used to be called a plant.

1352
01:18:03.690 --> 01:18:05.080
We know it\'s not a plant.

1353
01:18:05.080 --> 01:18:07.110
It\'s the product of symbiosis.

1354
01:18:07.110 --> 01:18:10.280
Symbiosis is a very simple word and a very simple idea.

1355
01:18:10.280 --> 01:18:13.500
It\'s simply the living together of unlike organisms.

1356
01:18:13.500 --> 01:18:14.960
In fact in the early definition

1357
01:18:14.960 --> 01:18:18.610
it was the living together of differently named organisms.

1358
01:18:18.610 --> 01:18:20.500
- [John] So according to Lynn,

1359
01:18:20.500 --> 01:18:23.600
these ants don\'t have a symbiotic relationship

1360
01:18:23.600 --> 01:18:26.830
with each other, nor do these people

1361
01:18:26.830 --> 01:18:30.190
because they are each of the same species.

1362
01:18:30.190 --> 01:18:33.270
- You do not have a symbiotic relationship with your father

1363
01:18:33.270 --> 01:18:34.490
because, as far as we know,

1364
01:18:34.490 --> 01:18:36.600
you and he belong to the same species,

1365
01:18:36.600 --> 01:18:39.310
although sometimes I\'m sure you wonder.

1366
01:18:39.310 --> 01:18:41.760
- [John] But what about this egret and this deer?

1367
01:18:42.690 --> 01:18:44.330
This bee and this flower?

1368
01:18:45.180 --> 01:18:47.460
I think Lynn would say no,

1369
01:18:47.460 --> 01:18:50.970
they don\'t have a symbiotic relationship with each other,

1370
01:18:50.970 --> 01:18:55.610
because they don\'t live in physical contact with each other

1371
01:18:55.610 --> 01:18:57.910
for a prolonged period of time.

1372
01:18:59.200 --> 01:19:02.190
But they are important ecological relationships.

1373
01:19:03.510 --> 01:19:08.490
It gets confusing because most people and many biologists

1374
01:19:08.490 --> 01:19:12.210
describe symbiosis as mutually beneficial

1375
01:19:13.310 --> 01:19:16.920
but these are words that Lynn did not like to use

1376
01:19:16.920 --> 01:19:18.300
when describing nature.

1377
01:19:19.190 --> 01:19:21.310
- The word mutually beneficial,

1378
01:19:21.310 --> 01:19:23.840
a plus relationship for symbionts,

1379
01:19:23.840 --> 01:19:26.731
and pathogenic, a negative relationship

1380
01:19:26.731 --> 01:19:29.693
or one has costs and the other benefits.

1381
01:19:29.693 --> 01:19:33.210
The terminology is just totally inappropriate

1382
01:19:33.210 --> 01:19:34.240
for the analysis

1383
01:19:34.240 --> 01:19:37.730
and it\'s a case where it\'s actually impeded understanding.

1384
01:19:38.783 --> 01:19:42.140
(gentle instrumental music)

1385
01:19:42.140 --> 01:19:44.840
You can change the environment such that the relationship

1386
01:19:44.840 --> 01:19:47.750
which was mutually beneficially and very helpful

1387
01:19:47.750 --> 01:19:52.750
becomes exploitative, or detrimental or even necrotrophic,

1388
01:19:53.050 --> 01:19:54.840
that\'s where one kills the other.

1389
01:19:54.840 --> 01:19:56.190 line:15%
- Now the field has grown,

1390
01:19:56.190 --> 01:19:58.010 line:15%
it\'s not just Lynn Margulis anymore.

1391
01:19:58.010 --> 01:20:01.700 line:15%
Before that symbiosis was identifiable with Lynn Margulis.

1392
01:20:01.700 --> 01:20:04.320
If you said symbiosis, people said, oh, Lynn Margulis,

1393
01:20:04.320 --> 01:20:06.800
just like if you said, evolution, Darwin.

1394
01:20:06.800 --> 01:20:07.800
Identical story.

1395
01:20:07.800 --> 01:20:11.810
Identical story, because she articulated the idea,

1396
01:20:11.810 --> 01:20:13.070
she championed it,

1397
01:20:13.070 --> 01:20:15.070
she put those ideas out there.

1398
01:20:15.070 --> 01:20:17.280
- It should be realized that symbiosis

1399
01:20:17.280 --> 01:20:18.750
is the way of the world

1400
01:20:18.750 --> 01:20:20.560
and there are many, many different kinds

1401
01:20:20.560 --> 01:20:22.260
but you have symbiosis everywhere.

1402
01:20:23.590 --> 01:20:25.310
- [John] I traveled to Quebec

1403
01:20:25.310 --> 01:20:28.040
where Lynn\'s colleague Andre Fortin

1404
01:20:28.040 --> 01:20:30.030
and his graduate students

1405
01:20:30.030 --> 01:20:33.470
gave me a brief lesson in the wonders of mycorrhiza.

1406
01:20:40.046 --> 01:20:44.549
- [John] So that white, that white is all mycorrhizas?

1407
01:20:44.549 --> 01:20:45.632 line:15%
- [Man] Yup.

1408
01:21:06.881 --> 01:21:08.542
- [Man] So there\'s an ectomycorrihza.

1409
01:21:08.542 --> 01:21:13.542 line:15%
And we know because it\'s the little forks.

1410
01:21:23.400 --> 01:21:28.070
- [John] A network of microscopically thin tubular-filaments

1411
01:21:28.070 --> 01:21:33.070
penetrate into soil and rocks to find water and nutrients,

1412
01:21:33.530 --> 01:21:36.670
literally extending the root system of the plant.

1413
01:21:39.360 --> 01:21:42.900
Unfortunately, deep plowing and other modern agricultural

1414
01:21:42.900 --> 01:21:45.420
techniques destroy mycorrhizae.

1415
01:21:46.340 --> 01:21:50.610
I traveled to India to learn how the mycorrhizal symbiosis

1416
01:21:50.610 --> 01:21:53.380
has the potential to revolutionize agriculture.

1417
01:21:54.520 --> 01:21:56.580
In order to help grow crops

1418
01:21:56.580 --> 01:21:59.229
in depleted soils and reduce dependence

1419
01:21:59.229 --> 01:22:02.750
on expensive and polluting fertilizers,

1420
01:22:02.750 --> 01:22:07.200
mycorrhizae are being re-introduced into the system.

1421
01:22:07.200 --> 01:22:10.990
At the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi,

1422
01:22:10.990 --> 01:22:13.470
various plants and their associated

1423
01:22:13.470 --> 01:22:16.370
mycorrhizal fungi are grown.

1424
01:22:16.370 --> 01:22:19.460
Then the roots are cultured in the laboratory,

1425
01:22:19.460 --> 01:22:23.301
where spores are produced, harvested dried,

1426
01:22:23.301 --> 01:22:27.700 line:15%
and made into various forms that are delivered to farmers.

1427
01:22:27.700 --> 01:22:29.810 line:15%
- And these tablets have spores in them.

1428
01:22:31.180 --> 01:22:34.910
So you have the same size containers,

1429
01:22:34.910 --> 01:22:39.240
same quantity of substrate, with the same day of sowing

1430
01:22:41.680 --> 01:22:44.000
- [John] In the mycorrhizal symbiosis,

1431
01:22:44.000 --> 01:22:46.640
the plant gives the fungus food,

1432
01:22:46.640 --> 01:22:50.900
while the fungus helps the plants find water and nutrients,

1433
01:22:50.900 --> 01:22:53.001
helps them grow on rocks,

1434
01:22:53.001 --> 01:22:57.770
and what\'s most amazing, the mycorrhizae allow plants

1435
01:22:57.770 --> 01:22:59.770
to communicate with one another.

1436
01:23:00.960 --> 01:23:05.460
So if one plant is attacked by insects or a fungus,

1437
01:23:05.460 --> 01:23:08.042
it will mount a chemical defense

1438
01:23:08.042 --> 01:23:11.220
and it will send a message to neighboring plants

1439
01:23:11.220 --> 01:23:13.230
through the mycorrhizae

1440
01:23:13.230 --> 01:23:17.170
so that those plants can prepare their defense.

1441
01:23:24.439 --> 01:23:27.570
- [John] So you\'re saying that the mycorrhizal fungi

1442
01:23:27.570 --> 01:23:32.187
allow the two plants to communicate with one another?

1443
01:23:35.090 --> 01:23:39.320 line:15%
- [John] So if I was to dig up this dandelion there,

1444
01:23:39.320 --> 01:23:41.500 line:15%
would I see any?

1445
01:23:57.814 --> 01:24:01.040 line:15%
- And so I think that when we look back in time

1446
01:24:01.040 --> 01:24:04.560 line:15%
we can see that perhaps plants were never really plants,

1447
01:24:04.560 --> 01:24:08.630
we call them that, but they are plant/fungal consortia.

1448
01:24:10.340 --> 01:24:12.820
- [John] And it\'s the same with animals.

1449
01:24:12.820 --> 01:24:16.350
- What we know as coral is a consortium

1450
01:24:16.350 --> 01:24:20.340
of the coral genome and its products

1451
01:24:20.340 --> 01:24:25.340 line:15%
but also a symbiotic algae called zooxanthellae.

1452
01:24:25.540 --> 01:24:28.080
When we talk about coral bleaching,

1453
01:24:28.080 --> 01:24:31.370
when we say that the environment is heating up

1454
01:24:31.370 --> 01:24:34.300
and the corals are being bleached,

1455
01:24:34.300 --> 01:24:36.170
what it means is that the corals

1456
01:24:36.170 --> 01:24:39.340
are losing their symbiotic algae

1457
01:24:39.340 --> 01:24:43.290
and as such cannot get the carbon that they need

1458
01:24:43.290 --> 01:24:45.490
through photosynthesis and they die.

1459
01:24:46.860 --> 01:24:51.860
The coral itself is not one organism, it\'s several organisms

1460
01:24:52.660 --> 01:24:55.370
it\'s a consortium of organisms.

1461
01:24:55.370 --> 01:24:59.860
When you think about a cow which can\'t digest cellulose

1462
01:24:59.860 --> 01:25:04.860
without its symbionts, or any mammal

1463
01:25:05.760 --> 01:25:08.920
which can\'t really develop its digestive system

1464
01:25:08.920 --> 01:25:11.180
or its gut associated lymphoid tissue

1465
01:25:11.180 --> 01:25:13.880
without symbionts, we\'re consortia.

1466
01:25:15.470 --> 01:25:19.250
- You have a symbiotic relationship with your eyelash mites

1467
01:25:19.250 --> 01:25:21.450
and, of course, your underarm bacteria,

1468
01:25:21.450 --> 01:25:23.820
your between-the-toes bacteria, and so on.

1469
01:25:23.820 --> 01:25:25.950
So if you feel you\'re falling apart,

1470
01:25:25.950 --> 01:25:27.700
it\'s because you\'re falling apart.

1471
01:25:27.700 --> 01:25:30.160 line:15%
- And so when I see an animal like ourselves,

1472
01:25:30.160 --> 01:25:33.050 line:15%
I\'m also seeing us as containers for bacteria

1473
01:25:33.050 --> 01:25:35.430
and scaffolding for bacteria.

1474
01:25:35.430 --> 01:25:36.860 line:15%
- You know, there are many people who think

1475
01:25:36.860 --> 01:25:38.400 line:15%
that they actually invented us

1476
01:25:38.400 --> 01:25:40.090 line:15%
so they had a nice place to live,

1477
01:25:40.090 --> 01:25:41.970
which is like us building houses,

1478
01:25:41.970 --> 01:25:43.250
the bacteria built houses,

1479
01:25:43.250 --> 01:25:44.660
we ended up being them.

1480
01:25:44.660 --> 01:25:46.690
- We have a resident microbiota.

1481
01:25:46.690 --> 01:25:49.400 line:15%
Different things live in our bronchial tubes

1482
01:25:49.400 --> 01:25:52.330 line:15%
from our trachea from our nasal cavities,

1483
01:25:52.330 --> 01:25:54.940 line:15%
and each one of those is a stable community.

1484
01:25:54.940 --> 01:25:57.470
- I love bacteria, okay.

1485
01:25:57.470 --> 01:25:59.370
We cannot live without them.

1486
01:25:59.370 --> 01:26:02.830
if you don\'t have any bacteria, you die.

1487
01:26:02.830 --> 01:26:05.270
- To me, some of the most interesting studies

1488
01:26:05.270 --> 01:26:07.750
have been done on the skin.

1489
01:26:07.750 --> 01:26:11.680
If you study the microbiota in the palm of your hand,

1490
01:26:11.680 --> 01:26:13.370
the microbiota in the palm of your hand

1491
01:26:13.370 --> 01:26:15.090
is different from the microbiota

1492
01:26:15.090 --> 01:26:17.670
in the center of your forearm

1493
01:26:17.670 --> 01:26:20.980
is different from the microbiota in the axil of your arm.

1494
01:26:22.430 --> 01:26:26.900
The microbiota in the axil of my arm is more closely related

1495
01:26:26.900 --> 01:26:29.750
to the microbiota in the axil of your arm

1496
01:26:29.750 --> 01:26:33.275
than the microbiota in the axil of my arm to the microbiota

1497
01:26:33.275 --> 01:26:36.130
in my mid-forearm.

1498
01:26:36.130 --> 01:26:39.590
So in other words, that suggests a strong coevolution

1499
01:26:39.590 --> 01:26:41.320
in site specificity.

1500
01:26:41.320 --> 01:26:44.050
- [John] If our body is full of bacteria,

1501
01:26:44.050 --> 01:26:46.000
when do they arrive?

1502
01:26:46.890 --> 01:26:48.590
- So they arrive immediately

1503
01:26:48.590 --> 01:26:52.370
as the baby descends the birth canal.

1504
01:26:52.370 --> 01:26:54.000
- [John] So, when I go to the supermarket

1505
01:26:54.000 --> 01:26:58.250
and they have all the wipes and when you wipe your hands

1506
01:26:58.250 --> 01:27:01.870
and you\'re killing those bacteria.

1507
01:27:01.870 --> 01:27:06.330
- So I actually don\'t know what\'s in those wipes,

1508
01:27:06.330 --> 01:27:08.870
but if it\'s in the same that\'s in Purell dispensers,

1509
01:27:08.870 --> 01:27:13.580
like if it has high levels of alcohol and what not,

1510
01:27:13.580 --> 01:27:17.360
what happens is you will destroy some

1511
01:27:17.360 --> 01:27:19.570
of your normal microbiota in your hands

1512
01:27:19.570 --> 01:27:21.770
and what it will do is it will cause you

1513
01:27:21.770 --> 01:27:24.310
to get skin infections and what not

1514
01:27:24.310 --> 01:27:27.610
because your normal microbiota are a part of your health.

1515
01:27:27.610 --> 01:27:30.540 line:15%
- And they\'re finding that microbiomes in general

1516
01:27:30.540 --> 01:27:34.680 line:15%
are very very diverse, except when you get sick.

1517
01:27:35.734 --> 01:27:38.830
Then they find that the diversity of microbiomes

1518
01:27:38.830 --> 01:27:41.770
collapses down and that the sickened people

1519
01:27:41.770 --> 01:27:44.670
who have a particular type of cancer for example,

1520
01:27:44.670 --> 01:27:46.820
their microbiomes get very similar.

1521
01:27:46.820 --> 01:27:48.440
- Throughout their body?
- Throughout their bodies.

1522
01:27:48.440 --> 01:27:51.780
And so this person who has a particular type of colon cancer

1523
01:27:51.780 --> 01:27:54.450
and this person has a particular type of colon cancer,

1524
01:27:54.450 --> 01:27:56.590
their microbiomes are very similar.

1525
01:27:56.590 --> 01:28:00.320
Disease states means that you lose diversity.

1526
01:28:00.320 --> 01:28:04.730
You lose the homeostasis that the microbiota is giving you.

1527
01:28:04.730 --> 01:28:08.720
- I think personally that we feel happy

1528
01:28:08.720 --> 01:28:10.960
when our component bacteria

1529
01:28:11.860 --> 01:28:16.050
are growing and eating

1530
01:28:16.050 --> 01:28:16.990
and so on.

1531
01:28:16.990 --> 01:28:21.910
We feel terrible when they are cramped for space

1532
01:28:21.910 --> 01:28:26.530
and they are drowning and choking in their own waste

1533
01:28:26.530 --> 01:28:28.840
and that it\'s a sense of health.

1534
01:28:28.840 --> 01:28:30.780
Now, I can\'t define health.

1535
01:28:30.780 --> 01:28:32.263
You probably can\'t define health either

1536
01:28:32.263 --> 01:28:34.620
but we all know what health is.

1537
01:28:34.620 --> 01:28:37.300
When our components are healthy,

1538
01:28:37.300 --> 01:28:38.720
yes, that\'s what feeling good is.

1539
01:28:38.720 --> 01:28:42.030
It\'s an equivalency but that\'s my personal opinion.

1540
01:28:42.030 --> 01:28:45.510
- We have 10 to the 13th animal cells,

1541
01:28:45.510 --> 01:28:48.650
and we have 10 to the 14th bacterial cells,

1542
01:28:48.650 --> 01:28:51.550
so we\'re 90% non-human by cell.

1543
01:28:52.780 --> 01:28:57.780
By gene, we are something like one to 200.

1544
01:28:58.000 --> 01:29:00.840
In other words, there\'s one human gene

1545
01:29:00.840 --> 01:29:03.430
for every 200 microbial genes.

1546
01:29:03.430 --> 01:29:07.830
- So we\'re more them than us

1547
01:29:07.830 --> 01:29:09.660
by the old nomenclature,

1548
01:29:09.660 --> 01:29:13.420
but by today\'s nomenclature, we are an ecosystem.

1549
01:29:13.420 --> 01:29:16.150
That\'s the story, that\'s the new story,

1550
01:29:16.150 --> 01:29:17.550
that\'s the science revolution

1551
01:29:17.550 --> 01:29:21.210
that Lynn was working to show so hard,

1552
01:29:21.210 --> 01:29:24.310
and incredibly is just bursting out now

1553
01:29:24.310 --> 01:29:26.030
in the scientific community.

1554
01:29:26.030 --> 01:29:27.490
- What we\'re finding out now

1555
01:29:27.490 --> 01:29:32.490
is that we actually need these symbionts

1556
01:29:32.650 --> 01:29:34.500
to develop properly.

1557
01:29:34.500 --> 01:29:39.310
We\'ve subcontracted developmental signals to bacteria.

1558
01:29:39.310 --> 01:29:44.160
- The microbes are integrated into our physiology.

1559
01:29:44.160 --> 01:29:47.040
- They\'re really very much part of our body.

1560
01:29:47.040 --> 01:29:50.870
- [Man] So we\'ve co-evolved, co-developed and co-metabolize?

1561
01:29:50.870 --> 01:29:52.570
- Yeah, yeah.

1562
01:29:52.570 --> 01:29:55.370
This is a new way of thinking about biology.

1563
01:29:55.370 --> 01:29:57.880
- And now the definition scientists are beginning to use

1564
01:29:57.880 --> 01:30:01.310
is holobiont, meaning that the individual

1565
01:30:01.310 --> 01:30:03.560
is no longer one genome.

1566
01:30:03.560 --> 01:30:06.860
Human genome, and then there is some other genes from us,

1567
01:30:06.860 --> 01:30:08.440
some other organisms over here.

1568
01:30:08.440 --> 01:30:09.350
No.

1569
01:30:09.350 --> 01:30:14.080
- We\'re consortia and the holobiont is what the name is

1570
01:30:14.080 --> 01:30:18.270
for this consortium, it\'s a name for a team.

1571
01:30:18.270 --> 01:30:19.103
- Wow.

1572
01:30:19.103 --> 01:30:22.850
So you start to think in terms of organisms

1573
01:30:22.850 --> 01:30:25.402
as complex ecological systems.

1574
01:30:25.402 --> 01:30:29.069
(gentle instrumental music)

1575
01:30:30.010 --> 01:30:33.920
- [Lynn] Every animal or plant or even fungus

1576
01:30:33.920 --> 01:30:38.040
that we look at and label and consider an individual

1577
01:30:38.040 --> 01:30:43.040
is in fact many different individuals of different species.

1578
01:30:44.530 --> 01:30:47.630
- But what Lynn was important for was, I think,

1579
01:30:47.630 --> 01:30:49.740
getting people to think synthetically,

1580
01:30:50.900 --> 01:30:52.730
bringing people together.

1581
01:30:52.730 --> 01:30:55.430
She had so much energy when she walked into a room,

1582
01:30:55.430 --> 01:30:58.170
Lynn\'s here, it was inspirational for everybody.

1583
01:30:58.170 --> 01:30:59.900
Everybody was touched by Lynn.

1584
01:30:59.900 --> 01:31:02.450
Anybody who knew her was touched by Lynn.

1585
01:31:02.450 --> 01:31:03.610 line:15%
- And she was very cooperative.

1586
01:31:03.610 --> 01:31:06.900 line:15%
She would help lots and lots and lots of different people,

1587
01:31:06.900 --> 01:31:08.900 line:15%
some scientists, some non-scientists.

1588
01:31:08.900 --> 01:31:09.850
She promoted people.

1589
01:31:09.850 --> 01:31:11.560
She connected people.

1590
01:31:11.560 --> 01:31:15.430
- Her door was always open, and she always invited us

1591
01:31:15.430 --> 01:31:18.060
and many other people over for dinner

1592
01:31:18.060 --> 01:31:20.320
so dinners were a big event.

1593
01:31:20.320 --> 01:31:22.380
There was always lively discussion

1594
01:31:22.380 --> 01:31:24.030
and everybody was well fed.

1595
01:31:24.030 --> 01:31:26.310
It was a good place to be.

1596
01:31:26.310 --> 01:31:28.470
It was a just continuation of the learning

1597
01:31:28.470 --> 01:31:29.520
in a different place.

1598
01:31:33.358 --> 01:31:34.850
- I was sitting at the microscope one day

1599
01:31:34.850 --> 01:31:36.950
and I was asking her questions

1600
01:31:36.950 --> 01:31:38.070
and it was getting late

1601
01:31:38.070 --> 01:31:40.500
and she said, well, of course you got to go soon, don\'t you?

1602
01:31:40.500 --> 01:31:43.150
I said, yeah, yeah I\'ve got to go.

1603
01:31:43.150 --> 01:31:45.120 line:15%
I told her, I have to go chase after this girl,

1604
01:31:45.120 --> 01:31:47.750 line:15%
and she said, Alex, when you want to stay

1605
01:31:47.750 --> 01:31:51.220 line:15%
and sit on a Saturday night and look at the organisms

1606
01:31:51.220 --> 01:31:54.050
just as much if not more, she held up her finger like that,

1607
01:31:54.050 --> 01:31:56.120
than you want to chase pretty girls,

1608
01:31:56.120 --> 01:31:57.630
then you\'ll be a scientist.

1609
01:31:58.975 --> 01:32:01.140
- Beth, come and take a look at cilia.

1610
01:32:01.140 --> 01:32:03.510
Beth, forget the phone calls.

1611
01:32:03.510 --> 01:32:05.020
Look at...

1612
01:32:05.020 --> 01:32:07.080
This is an absolutely remarkable video.

1613
01:32:08.710 --> 01:32:12.144
Here\'s a spore germinating in the soil.

1614
01:32:12.144 --> 01:32:13.989
It\'s a little time lapse here.

1615
01:32:13.989 --> 01:32:15.989
And out comes an amoeba.

1616
01:32:17.244 --> 01:32:21.565
Now the amoebae start feeding and they start dividing

1617
01:32:21.565 --> 01:32:23.046
and feeding, dividing and feeding,

1618
01:32:23.046 --> 01:32:25.178
essentially feeding on bacteria

1619
01:32:25.178 --> 01:32:28.145
until they deplete the bacteria.

1620
01:32:28.145 --> 01:32:29.577
- It\'s amazing.
- It\'s unbelievable.

1621
01:32:29.577 --> 01:32:31.464
It\'s a different world.
- This is really inner space.

1622
01:32:31.464 --> 01:32:33.106
- It\'s the protist world.
- Yeah.

1623
01:32:33.106 --> 01:32:35.742
- It\'s the protist world.
- Yeah.

1624
01:32:35.742 --> 01:32:37.950
- Now that\'s the same organism.

1625
01:32:37.950 --> 01:32:41.070
Each of those is one of the amoebae you just saw

1626
01:32:41.070 --> 01:32:45.737
and they start aggregating toward an aggregation center.

1627
01:32:46.632 --> 01:32:48.218
And they form this sort of slug stage.

1628
01:32:48.218 --> 01:32:51.208
I\'m sure is reminiscent of organisms you\'ve seen before.

1629
01:32:51.208 --> 01:32:52.517
This is Minakatella

1630
01:32:52.517 --> 01:32:55.912
studied in the sacred forest of Japan by Minaka.

1631
01:32:55.912 --> 01:32:58.860
These are now the amoebae that didn\'t get into the pack.

1632
01:32:58.860 --> 01:33:02.457
And these are the ones that went multicellular.

1633
01:33:02.457 --> 01:33:05.374
And so you have this amoeboid mass.

1634
01:33:08.884 --> 01:33:13.816
It\'s dryness that induces the upright development.

1635
01:33:13.816 --> 01:33:17.718
If you cut through it, it\'s all packed amoebae.

1636
01:33:17.718 --> 01:33:21.385
(gentle instrumental music)

1637
01:33:29.205 --> 01:33:32.872
(gentle instrumental music)

1638
01:33:44.996 --> 01:33:49.445
♪ My days have grown so lonely ♪

1639
01:33:49.445 --> 01:33:53.612
♪ For I have lost my one and only ♪

1640
01:33:55.497 --> 01:33:57.914
- [John] I\'m trying to reimagine this person

1641
01:33:57.914 --> 01:34:02.421
walking toward me out of the mist as a holobiont,

1642
01:34:02.421 --> 01:34:05.231
a community of interdependent organisms,

1643
01:34:05.231 --> 01:34:09.481
with many interacting gemomes, human and bacterial,

1644
01:34:10.394 --> 01:34:12.502
but it\'s hard to do.

1645
01:34:12.502 --> 01:34:16.051
Isn\'t she really an individual, with one set,

1646
01:34:16.051 --> 01:34:18.903
her own personal set of genes

1647
01:34:18.903 --> 01:34:20.928
that she inherited from her parents,

1648
01:34:20.928 --> 01:34:24.637
and which are a blue print that determine who she is

1649
01:34:24.637 --> 01:34:26.637
and who she will become?

1650
01:34:28.218 --> 01:34:31.371
This idea, called genetic determinism,

1651
01:34:31.371 --> 01:34:35.067
or, as people often say: it\'s in our genes,

1652
01:34:35.067 --> 01:34:37.495
is so ingrained in our culture

1653
01:34:37.495 --> 01:34:39.697
that millions of dollars were spent

1654
01:34:39.697 --> 01:34:43.547
to decode the human genome with the expectation

1655
01:34:43.547 --> 01:34:47.296
that we would uncover genes for human diseases

1656
01:34:47.296 --> 01:34:51.012
and abnormalities and be able to cure them.

1657
01:34:51.012 --> 01:34:54.587
But the results of the massive Human Genome Project

1658
01:34:54.587 --> 01:34:56.188
were disappointing.

1659
01:34:56.188 --> 01:35:00.126
Very few genes were found that related one to one

1660
01:35:00.126 --> 01:35:04.698
with human characteristics, normal or abnormal.

1661
01:35:04.698 --> 01:35:07.102
Indeed the very concept of the gene

1662
01:35:07.102 --> 01:35:10.082
was brought into question.

1663
01:35:10.082 --> 01:35:14.117
- The gene is one of those complex philosophical concepts

1664
01:35:14.117 --> 01:35:16.633 line:15%
which was useful at one time,

1665
01:35:16.633 --> 01:35:19.912 line:15%
but is now kind of hindering progress.

1666
01:35:19.912 --> 01:35:24.352
(gentle instrumental music)

1667
01:35:24.352 --> 01:35:29.195 line:15%
- We\'ve woken up 10 years later to the fact that knowing,

1668
01:35:29.195 --> 01:35:32.270 line:15%
as it were what some people called The Book of Life,

1669
01:35:32.270 --> 01:35:35.137
doesn\'t actually tell you very much about life,

1670
01:35:35.137 --> 01:35:37.907
and that\'s a huge shock.

1671
01:35:37.907 --> 01:35:40.688
But I don\'t think we\'ve yet absorbed how big a shock

1672
01:35:40.688 --> 01:35:43.710
it really is because it isn\'t just that,

1673
01:35:43.710 --> 01:35:46.821
okay, sequencing the genome doesn\'t tell you the answer

1674
01:35:46.821 --> 01:35:48.549
to the question, what is life?

1675
01:35:48.549 --> 01:35:51.716
It\'s also that many of the assumptions

1676
01:35:53.081 --> 01:35:55.944
that led to those predictions about what we would be able

1677
01:35:55.944 --> 01:35:58.987
to do once we had sequenced the genome have turned out

1678
01:35:58.987 --> 01:36:00.487
to be incorrect.

1679
01:36:00.487 --> 01:36:04.987
- The idea that genes control in a unidirectional way,

1680
01:36:04.987 --> 01:36:08.140
there\'s no direct evidence for it at all.

1681
01:36:08.140 --> 01:36:08.973
That\'s the basic thing.

1682
01:36:08.973 --> 01:36:09.806 line:15%
There\'s no evidence.

1683
01:36:09.806 --> 01:36:11.716 line:15%
Here\'s a hypothesis that\'s not even recognized

1684
01:36:11.716 --> 01:36:13.260 line:15%
to be a hypothesis.

1685
01:36:13.260 --> 01:36:14.618 line:15%
It\'s just taken as a truth.

1686
01:36:14.618 --> 01:36:16.571
- And that\'s much more disturbing.

1687
01:36:16.571 --> 01:36:19.151
And that\'s where we have to completely rethink

1688
01:36:19.151 --> 01:36:22.151
our basic assumptions about biology.

1689
01:36:23.774 --> 01:36:26.995
- [John] To do so, I\'ll follow Lynn\'s lead,

1690
01:36:26.995 --> 01:36:30.662
go back to the basics and ask, what is life?

1691
01:36:31.539 --> 01:36:33.521
- Life, what is life?

1692
01:36:33.521 --> 01:36:35.506
Life is not a thing.

1693
01:36:35.506 --> 01:36:37.340
Life is a process.

1694
01:36:37.340 --> 01:36:39.625
It\'s a process that makes itself,

1695
01:36:39.625 --> 01:36:42.659
and as far as we know it\'s always based on cells.

1696
01:36:42.659 --> 01:36:46.565
Cells may be as small as a millionth of a meter,

1697
01:36:46.565 --> 01:36:50.813
which is a micron, and these things wrap themselves

1698
01:36:50.813 --> 01:36:53.692
into structures of their own making.

1699
01:36:53.692 --> 01:36:57.031
Intrinsic to life is the propensity to grow;

1700
01:36:57.031 --> 01:37:00.664
to grow, to excrete, to exchange material,

1701
01:37:00.664 --> 01:37:04.978
and to grow, and to grow, and to grow, and this is life.

1702
01:37:04.978 --> 01:37:07.857
Life is a way of behaving.

1703
01:37:07.857 --> 01:37:12.173
If you have a bull and he\'s fighting the bullfighter,

1704
01:37:12.173 --> 01:37:13.993
this is life.

1705
01:37:13.993 --> 01:37:17.057
Five minutes later the bull is dead.

1706
01:37:17.057 --> 01:37:18.514
There\'s no life there.

1707
01:37:18.514 --> 01:37:19.905
The DNA is there.

1708
01:37:19.905 --> 01:37:21.066
The carbon is there.

1709
01:37:21.066 --> 01:37:23.430
The water is there, but the bull is dead.

1710
01:37:23.430 --> 01:37:25.039
What has been lost?

1711
01:37:25.039 --> 01:37:28.901
What has been lost is the process, and what is the process?

1712
01:37:28.901 --> 01:37:32.502
It is the self-making process where components

1713
01:37:32.502 --> 01:37:35.863
from the environment are taken in and moved around

1714
01:37:35.863 --> 01:37:39.104
and changed chemically to do what, to make more.

1715
01:37:39.104 --> 01:37:40.416
Why, to make more.

1716
01:37:40.416 --> 01:37:41.862
Why, to make more.

1717
01:37:41.862 --> 01:37:45.745
Life is always expanding, always making more of itself.

1718
01:37:45.745 --> 01:37:48.026
Now some people use a fancy word for this,

1719
01:37:48.026 --> 01:37:49.718
and they call it autopoiesis.

1720
01:37:49.718 --> 01:37:51.736
That is the self-making.

1721
01:37:51.736 --> 01:37:54.815
This is a good word because this word tells us

1722
01:37:54.815 --> 01:37:57.815
that the system itself makes itself.

1723
01:38:01.419 --> 01:38:04.086
So what is the smallest simplest

1724
01:38:06.752 --> 01:38:09.333
unit, material, that can do this?

1725
01:38:09.333 --> 01:38:10.696
This is a cell.

1726
01:38:10.696 --> 01:38:15.284
We know of nothing less complicated than a cell

1727
01:38:15.284 --> 01:38:18.598
that has this property of making more, of growing,

1728
01:38:18.598 --> 01:38:22.465
of making more, of growing, and eventually reproducing.

1729
01:38:22.465 --> 01:38:24.513
- [John] Fritjof Capra showed me a way

1730
01:38:24.513 --> 01:38:27.013
to understand the cell system.

1731
01:38:28.298 --> 01:38:31.032
Here\'s a stylized eukaryotic cell

1732
01:38:31.032 --> 01:38:33.580
with the major parts labeled.

1733
01:38:33.580 --> 01:38:37.933
Now replace these labels with each part\'s function.

1734
01:38:37.933 --> 01:38:41.210
It becomes clear that all the parts of the cell

1735
01:38:41.210 --> 01:38:43.793
work together like a community.

1736
01:38:46.035 --> 01:38:48.794
The prevailing neo-Darwinist point of view

1737
01:38:48.794 --> 01:38:51.285
which Lynn Margulis disputed

1738
01:38:51.285 --> 01:38:55.202
is that the DNA molecule controls the organism.

1739
01:38:56.698 --> 01:39:00.345
But DNA is a part of the cell system

1740
01:39:00.345 --> 01:39:03.512
and doesn\'t actively control anything.

1741
01:39:04.571 --> 01:39:08.221
- DNA by itself doesn\'t do anything.

1742
01:39:08.221 --> 01:39:10.864
It can only be replicated.

1743
01:39:10.864 --> 01:39:12.855
It can only be expressed.

1744
01:39:12.855 --> 01:39:14.605 line:15%
- [Lynn] And I think

1745
01:39:22.672 --> 01:39:25.005
- DNA is a storage molecule,

1746
01:39:25.952 --> 01:39:28.360
quite a fascinating storage molecule,

1747
01:39:28.360 --> 01:39:30.823
but it\'s not telling the cell what to do.

1748
01:39:30.823 --> 01:39:34.780
It\'s part of the cell that is being used

1749
01:39:34.780 --> 01:39:36.368
as the cell reproduces.

1750
01:39:36.368 --> 01:39:39.900
It\'s the cell that reproduces, not the DNA that reproduces.

1751
01:39:39.900 --> 01:39:44.185
- The way I would put it is to go back to ideas

1752
01:39:44.185 --> 01:39:48.352
that Barbara McClintock developed way back in the,

1753
01:39:49.305 --> 01:39:50.735
well, she got the Nobel Prize

1754
01:39:50.735 --> 01:39:53.715
for her work on Jumping Genes about 1983.

1755
01:39:53.715 --> 01:39:57.813
She described the genome as an organ of the cell,

1756
01:39:57.813 --> 01:39:58.969
and that\'s lovely.

1757
01:39:58.969 --> 01:40:01.945
Because what it tells you is that it\'s a kind of database,

1758
01:40:01.945 --> 01:40:04.448
and that the rest of the cell and indeed the tissues

1759
01:40:04.448 --> 01:40:06.320
and the organs beyond the cells,

1760
01:40:06.320 --> 01:40:09.299
are what tell it what to do.

1761
01:40:09.299 --> 01:40:13.966
- We see that cells are actually in charge of their DNA.

1762
01:40:15.169 --> 01:40:18.252
Cells control the reading of the DNA,

1763
01:40:19.407 --> 01:40:22.141
access to different parts of the DNA,

1764
01:40:22.141 --> 01:40:25.295
expression of different data that\'s in the DNA

1765
01:40:25.295 --> 01:40:28.273
- I think we have therefore to reverse our thinking.

1766
01:40:28.273 --> 01:40:30.157
Instead of thinking that everything follows

1767
01:40:30.157 --> 01:40:32.663
once you know the genome, you can, as it were,

1768
01:40:32.663 --> 01:40:34.733
mechanically compute from the genome

1769
01:40:34.733 --> 01:40:37.153
to reproduce the whole of biology.

1770
01:40:37.153 --> 01:40:40.065
You got to reverse it; and ask the question:

1771
01:40:40.065 --> 01:40:42.167
How on earth does the rest of the system

1772
01:40:42.167 --> 01:40:45.107
tell the genome what to do?

1773
01:40:45.107 --> 01:40:48.247
- [John] This question, how does the organism

1774
01:40:48.247 --> 01:40:49.830
instruct its genes,

1775
01:40:51.183 --> 01:40:52.545
is at the heart

1776
01:40:52.545 --> 01:40:57.053
of the scientific discipline called epigenetics.

1777
01:40:57.053 --> 01:41:01.927 line:15%
- Epigenetics is really the ways by which different genes

1778
01:41:01.927 --> 01:41:05.271 line:15%
are used at different times and places

1779
01:41:05.271 --> 01:41:07.188
so that the same genome

1780
01:41:08.979 --> 01:41:11.799
that you inherit in your fertilized egg

1781
01:41:11.799 --> 01:41:13.757
can give rise to this set of proteins

1782
01:41:13.757 --> 01:41:16.852
in muscle cells, this set of proteins in neurons,

1783
01:41:16.852 --> 01:41:18.940
this set of proteins in lymphocytes,

1784
01:41:18.940 --> 01:41:21.716
this set of proteins in pancreas cells

1785
01:41:21.716 --> 01:41:24.887
so that the one genome can give rise

1786
01:41:24.887 --> 01:41:27.152
to all these different cell types.

1787
01:41:27.152 --> 01:41:28.986
That\'s epigenetics.

1788
01:41:28.986 --> 01:41:32.403
It involves how the genes are being used.

1789
01:41:34.619 --> 01:41:37.378
What you look like, what you act like,

1790
01:41:37.378 --> 01:41:40.461
is not merely a read out of a genome.

1791
01:41:41.352 --> 01:41:45.685
- So this comes back to the idea that the full story

1792
01:41:47.579 --> 01:41:49.875
doesn\'t lie in the genes alone.

1793
01:41:49.875 --> 01:41:52.766
It lies in all that structuring.

1794
01:41:52.766 --> 01:41:55.419
All of that, well I have to call it the system.

1795
01:41:55.419 --> 01:41:58.836 line:15%
- The whole metabolic network of the cell

1796
01:42:00.699 --> 01:42:03.883 line:15%
has an effect on these genetic processes.

1797
01:42:03.883 --> 01:42:06.970
And the metabolic network of the cell

1798
01:42:06.970 --> 01:42:09.720
is influenced by the environment.

1799
01:42:10.572 --> 01:42:12.870
So according to what we eat,

1800
01:42:12.870 --> 01:42:15.805
according to maybe toxic chemicals in the air,

1801
01:42:15.805 --> 01:42:19.055
this will affect our genetic processes.

1802
01:42:19.983 --> 01:42:22.290
- [John] It\'s common to ask if a disease,

1803
01:42:22.290 --> 01:42:24.701
physical characteristic or behavior

1804
01:42:24.701 --> 01:42:29.021
is caused by the genes or the environment.

1805
01:42:29.021 --> 01:42:30.604
Nature or nurture?

1806
01:42:31.748 --> 01:42:35.415
From this new perspective it is always both.

1807
01:43:00.274 --> 01:43:01.941 line:15%
- The more we assume

1808
01:43:04.405 --> 01:43:07.509 line:15%
about the characteristics of human beings

1809
01:43:07.509 --> 01:43:10.186
being genetically determined,

1810
01:43:10.186 --> 01:43:13.186
the less effort we are going to put

1811
01:43:13.186 --> 01:43:15.519
into sustaining environments

1812
01:43:21.523 --> 01:43:25.356
in which people will grow up as humane humans.

1813
01:43:49.170 --> 01:43:51.560
(gentle instrumental music)

1814
01:43:51.560 --> 01:43:54.810
- [John] She is a complex metabolizing system.

1815
01:43:55.970 --> 01:43:58.340
It is this entire system,

1816
01:43:58.340 --> 01:44:01.020
including her genome, her microbiome,

1817
01:44:03.110 --> 01:44:03.943
her culture,

1818
01:44:07.370 --> 01:44:08.450
and her environment,

1819
01:44:09.430 --> 01:44:13.500
that determines who she is and who she will become.

1820
01:44:19.442 --> 01:44:23.109
(gentle instrumental music)

1821
01:44:34.390 --> 01:44:35.900
I have often been troubled

1822
01:44:35.900 --> 01:44:39.980
by the idea that the magnificent diversity of life

1823
01:44:39.980 --> 01:44:42.430
came about through the natural selection

1824
01:44:42.430 --> 01:44:44.470
of a string of accidents,

1825
01:44:44.470 --> 01:44:47.330
random genetic mutations that happen

1826
01:44:47.330 --> 01:44:50.030
when the DNA, the genes, are copied.

1827
01:44:51.030 --> 01:44:52.570
Yet this is the basis

1828
01:44:52.570 --> 01:44:55.250
of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution

1829
01:44:55.250 --> 01:44:56.620
that is taught in schools.

1830
01:44:57.840 --> 01:44:59.950
- Random mutation and natural selection

1831
01:44:59.950 --> 01:45:01.710
is a gross oversimplification

1832
01:45:03.010 --> 01:45:05.760
and it\'s wrong because we now know a lot

1833
01:45:05.760 --> 01:45:08.690
about the processes of variation.

1834
01:45:09.700 --> 01:45:13.810
First of all, we\'ve learned that cells

1835
01:45:13.810 --> 01:45:16.810
can repair copying errors,

1836
01:45:16.810 --> 01:45:18.980
can detect them and correct them;

1837
01:45:19.820 --> 01:45:22.160
so they\'re reduced to a bare minimum,

1838
01:45:22.160 --> 01:45:23.510
less than one in a billion.

1839
01:45:24.670 --> 01:45:28.290
So it\'s a kind of quality control which is going on.

1840
01:45:28.290 --> 01:45:32.260
The cell is not the helpless victim of mistakes

1841
01:45:32.260 --> 01:45:34.910
that its replication apparatus makes.

1842
01:45:34.910 --> 01:45:37.430 line:15%
- Jim Shapiro, Lynn, and I interacted as a trio

1843
01:45:37.430 --> 01:45:38.300 line:15%
for some time.

1844
01:45:39.840 --> 01:45:43.620 line:15%
Jim\'s work, of course, nicely produced in his book,

1845
01:45:43.620 --> 01:45:46.900
Evolution: A View from the 21st Century,

1846
01:45:46.900 --> 01:45:51.010
demonstrates just how far from random mutations are.

1847
01:45:51.010 --> 01:45:52.620 line:15%
- What\'s happened is we\'ve gone

1848
01:45:52.620 --> 01:45:54.990 line:15%
from random mutation and accidents,

1849
01:45:54.990 --> 01:45:57.480 line:15%
which was a default assumption

1850
01:45:57.480 --> 01:46:00.900
in the absence of any real knowledge

1851
01:46:00.900 --> 01:46:02.250
of how these things worked,

1852
01:46:03.510 --> 01:46:08.510
to understanding that genetic change is an active process

1853
01:46:08.710 --> 01:46:11.770
that cells carry out on their genomes.

1854
01:46:13.220 --> 01:46:14.630
- I didn\'t know that.

1855
01:46:14.630 --> 01:46:16.650
It was for me a major discovery

1856
01:46:16.650 --> 01:46:20.100
through Lynn, then contacting with Jim, as it were,

1857
01:46:20.100 --> 01:46:24.740
to find out not only were mutations not random,

1858
01:46:24.740 --> 01:46:29.410
so that part of the standard story was clearly incorrect,

1859
01:46:29.410 --> 01:46:32.650
but that the frequency of mutations in particular areas

1860
01:46:32.650 --> 01:46:37.310
can be influenced by the environment and by the physiology.

1861
01:46:37.310 --> 01:46:38.890
- The DNA is changed

1862
01:46:39.870 --> 01:46:42.556
by a whole series of different kinds

1863
01:46:42.556 --> 01:46:45.470
of bio-chemical processes.

1864
01:46:45.470 --> 01:46:49.050
In many cases these involve cutting and splicing DNA,

1865
01:46:49.940 --> 01:46:52.420
just as we do in the laboratory,

1866
01:46:52.420 --> 01:46:53.253
and that\'s why I like

1867
01:46:53.253 --> 01:46:56.370
to call it natural genetic engineering.

1868
01:46:58.850 --> 01:47:01.260
- The point is that information is flowing

1869
01:47:01.260 --> 01:47:05.650 line:15%
from the environment and there is feedback to the genome.

1870
01:47:05.650 --> 01:47:08.230
- Instead of being a read-only memory system,

1871
01:47:09.240 --> 01:47:13.730
the genome is a read-write memory system.

1872
01:47:15.030 --> 01:47:17.370
- [John] One of the pioneering scientists

1873
01:47:17.370 --> 01:47:21.160
who studied the ability of the genome to change

1874
01:47:21.160 --> 01:47:23.450 line:15%
in response to the environment

1875
01:47:23.450 --> 01:47:26.160 line:15%
was the Nobel Prize winner Barbara McClintock.

1876
01:47:27.250 --> 01:47:29.310
- I am very much interested

1877
01:47:30.360 --> 01:47:34.370
in the nature of changes

1878
01:47:34.370 --> 01:47:36.700
that occur in the genome

1879
01:47:36.700 --> 01:47:41.120
when the genome meets something very unexpected.

1880
01:47:41.120 --> 01:47:44.270
- So what she\'s talking about is cells

1881
01:47:45.130 --> 01:47:49.300
dealing with their genomes in a sentient manner,

1882
01:47:50.210 --> 01:47:54.361
in a cognitive manner, where they sense damage

1883
01:47:54.361 --> 01:47:59.361
and take the appropriate steps to repair the damage.

1884
01:47:59.830 --> 01:48:03.100
- It\'s very smart to be able to sense it,

1885
01:48:03.100 --> 01:48:04.630
to be able to regulate it.

1886
01:48:04.630 --> 01:48:07.920
So when I first started talking about smart cells,

1887
01:48:07.920 --> 01:48:09.600
there were many, many smiles,

1888
01:48:09.600 --> 01:48:11.440
but I think we have to recognize

1889
01:48:11.440 --> 01:48:13.410
that the cells are very smart.

1890
01:48:13.410 --> 01:48:14.940 line:15%
- The thing that Lynn argued,

1891
01:48:17.430 --> 01:48:19.360 line:15%
which certainly most neo-Darwinists

1892
01:48:19.360 --> 01:48:21.320
nor most people would accept,

1893
01:48:22.170 --> 01:48:27.170
is that all beings on the planet are sentient beings.

1894
01:48:27.400 --> 01:48:28.990
All.

1895
01:48:28.990 --> 01:48:32.290
They make decisions, they make choices.

1896
01:48:32.290 --> 01:48:34.560 line:15%
- Well, life is matter that chooses.

1897
01:48:41.490 --> 01:48:44.090
- [John] You would say that cells are cognitive,

1898
01:48:44.090 --> 01:48:45.090
and that they think.

1899
01:48:46.274 --> 01:48:49.080
- I don\'t use the word think myself,

1900
01:48:49.080 --> 01:48:50.860
because I think it\'s like consciousness.

1901
01:48:50.860 --> 01:48:55.860
It\'s a word which is filled with philosophical implications

1902
01:48:58.910 --> 01:49:03.640
and a lot of desire on our part to limit it to ourselves.

1903
01:49:04.630 --> 01:49:07.640
I like the word cognitive because you can define it.

1904
01:49:08.800 --> 01:49:12.480
Cognition is action based on sensory information.

1905
01:49:13.410 --> 01:49:14.420
- [John] Okay.

1906
01:49:14.420 --> 01:49:17.630
I can certainly say that this caterpillar has cognition,

1907
01:49:18.510 --> 01:49:22.000
but what about the oak tree it is crawling on?

1908
01:49:22.000 --> 01:49:24.080
Does it have cognition?

1909
01:49:24.080 --> 01:49:28.980
For Barbara McClintock, that green ball growing on the tree,

1910
01:49:28.980 --> 01:49:31.720
an oak gall, holds an answer.

1911
01:49:32.630 --> 01:49:35.840
- The galls on oak trees,

1912
01:49:35.840 --> 01:49:40.840
a particular wasp has a particular oak tree that it goes to.

1913
01:49:41.010 --> 01:49:46.010
As soon as it lays its egg, the cells are reprogrammed

1914
01:49:46.600 --> 01:49:49.610
to make a very particular structure,

1915
01:49:49.610 --> 01:49:51.910
one that it isn\'t using itself at all.

1916
01:49:51.910 --> 01:49:55.980
What has happened to that genome to reprogram it?

1917
01:49:57.240 --> 01:50:00.760
- [John] This oak gall is a symbiosis

1918
01:50:00.760 --> 01:50:03.350
between an insect and a plant.

1919
01:50:06.310 --> 01:50:11.310
- So there is a misconception that Lynn was not a Darwinist,

1920
01:50:11.590 --> 01:50:13.750
and that\'s not true at all.

1921
01:50:15.220 --> 01:50:20.190 line:15%
Where she and the Neo-Darwinist paradigm differed

1922
01:50:20.190 --> 01:50:23.410 line:15%
was in the source of innovation.

1923
01:50:23.410 --> 01:50:26.880
Where do you get new species?

1924
01:50:26.880 --> 01:50:28.330
Where do you get new traits?

1925
01:50:29.660 --> 01:50:32.950
The Neo-Darwinist paradigm is you get new traits

1926
01:50:32.950 --> 01:50:35.910
from mutations and you get new traits

1927
01:50:35.910 --> 01:50:38.840
from sexual recombination.

1928
01:50:38.840 --> 01:50:43.840
She said, fine, but that\'s a very small amount of change.

1929
01:50:45.710 --> 01:50:48.520
When we look at big evolutionary change,

1930
01:50:48.520 --> 01:50:50.170
when we look at speciation,

1931
01:50:50.170 --> 01:50:53.880
we have lots and lots of examples that involve symbiosis.

1932
01:50:58.080 --> 01:51:01.910 line:15%
- When de Bary, Anton de Bary, coined the word symbiosis,

1933
01:51:03.270 --> 01:51:06.920 line:15%
1876 I think, argued immediately

1934
01:51:06.920 --> 01:51:09.350
that this was going to be a form of evolution

1935
01:51:09.350 --> 01:51:11.560
that was distinct from Darwinian gradualism,

1936
01:51:11.560 --> 01:51:13.980
that this was saltational, this was leaps.

1937
01:51:15.060 --> 01:51:16.620
- [John] In that email from Lynn

1938
01:51:16.620 --> 01:51:18.950
that I carry around in my pocket,

1939
01:51:18.950 --> 01:51:22.260
Lynn writes: saltatory evolution prevails,

1940
01:51:24.330 --> 01:51:27.840
and then lists a handful of ways in which evolution

1941
01:51:27.840 --> 01:51:32.840
results from organisms exchanging and acquiring genomes.

1942
01:51:34.050 --> 01:51:38.280
She calls them all merger-integration-fusion processes.

1943
01:51:39.390 --> 01:51:42.500
First on the list is symbiogenesis.

1944
01:51:44.130 --> 01:51:45.650
- What is symbiogenesis?

1945
01:51:45.650 --> 01:51:48.820
It is simply symbiosis leading to new kinds of evolution.

1946
01:51:49.990 --> 01:51:52.930
What we now know which is so different,

1947
01:51:52.930 --> 01:51:53.763
in fact it\'s different

1948
01:51:53.763 --> 01:51:55.880
from what many people are taught today,

1949
01:51:55.880 --> 01:51:57.760
is that it\'s not just the lichen

1950
01:51:57.760 --> 01:52:00.310
that is the product of symbiogenesis;

1951
01:52:00.310 --> 01:52:03.710
it is all animal cells, all plant cells,

1952
01:52:03.710 --> 01:52:06.660
all fungal cell and all protoctist cells,

1953
01:52:06.660 --> 01:52:10.100
that is, all life on Earth that is not bacteria

1954
01:52:10.100 --> 01:52:12.100
is a product of symbiogenesis.

1955
01:52:12.100 --> 01:52:13.120
What does that mean?

1956
01:52:13.120 --> 01:52:16.050
It means that very different sorts of organisms

1957
01:52:16.050 --> 01:52:19.410
came together to make a new kind of being.

1958
01:52:19.410 --> 01:52:22.020
People who work with computers know this very well.

1959
01:52:22.020 --> 01:52:25.140
You don\'t start all over making the modem.

1960
01:52:25.140 --> 01:52:27.930
You don\'t start all over making the hard disk.

1961
01:52:27.930 --> 01:52:32.170
You recombine already refined parts

1962
01:52:32.170 --> 01:52:34.870
that were already developed by others.

1963
01:52:34.870 --> 01:52:38.270
And then you get something genuinely new.

1964
01:52:38.270 --> 01:52:42.330
- [John] One of Lynn\'s favorite examples of symbiogenesis

1965
01:52:42.330 --> 01:52:44.420
are green animals.

1966
01:52:44.420 --> 01:52:46.780
- [John] The ancestor of this worm, swallowed, ate,

1967
01:52:46.780 --> 01:52:49.800
but did not digest the green entity

1968
01:52:49.800 --> 01:52:52.730
that does photosynthesis and it resulted

1969
01:52:52.730 --> 01:52:55.500
in these green worms that are fully photosynthetic,

1970
01:52:55.500 --> 01:52:58.190
have lost their mouths and they are really very different

1971
01:52:58.190 --> 01:53:01.770
from their immediate ancestors who are not photosynthetic.

1972
01:53:01.770 --> 01:53:03.850
These kinds of symbiogenetic events,

1973
01:53:03.850 --> 01:53:06.040
that is the living together of organisms

1974
01:53:06.040 --> 01:53:07.950
with very different abilities

1975
01:53:07.950 --> 01:53:12.330
that lead to really new tissues, new organs, new forms,

1976
01:53:12.330 --> 01:53:14.320
to me is a much more,

1977
01:53:14.320 --> 01:53:15.580
it\'s not a much more important,

1978
01:53:15.580 --> 01:53:18.831
it is the major mechanism of change

1979
01:53:18.831 --> 01:53:21.860
in the fossil record and in evolution.

1980
01:53:21.860 --> 01:53:26.860
- She realized that sometimes, organisms swallow bacteria

1981
01:53:27.670 --> 01:53:31.790
and take them apart and incorporate their genome

1982
01:53:31.790 --> 01:53:35.440
into the larger organism\'s genome.

1983
01:53:35.440 --> 01:53:39.120
This was of course, then spectacularly supported

1984
01:53:39.570 --> 01:53:42.220 line:15%
and verified by the Human Genome Project

1985
01:53:42.220 --> 01:53:46.450 line:15%
where to their great surprise geneticists found strands

1986
01:53:46.450 --> 01:53:50.260
and strands of bacterial genomes within the human genome.

1987
01:53:51.320 --> 01:53:53.540
- [John] In Acquiring Genomes,

1988
01:53:53.540 --> 01:53:56.670
A Theory of the Origins of Species,

1989
01:53:56.670 --> 01:54:00.060
Lynn and Dorion show that the important variations

1990
01:54:00.060 --> 01:54:02.520
that lead to evolutionary change

1991
01:54:02.520 --> 01:54:05.130
come from the acquisition of genomes.

1992
01:54:06.530 --> 01:54:08.560
The book investigates the ways

1993
01:54:08.560 --> 01:54:12.310
through which individual cells and organisms

1994
01:54:12.310 --> 01:54:17.310
acquire and recombine DNA from more than a single source.

1995
01:54:18.520 --> 01:54:23.490
Lynn Margulis and other scientists call these processes sex.

1996
01:54:23.490 --> 01:54:28.380
This is an electron micrograph of bacterial sex.

1997
01:54:28.380 --> 01:54:31.670
- In 1986, my co-author Dorion Sagan and I

1998
01:54:31.670 --> 01:54:33.770
wrote a book called The Origins of Sex

1999
01:54:33.770 --> 01:54:36.540
and everybody was looking at it

2000
01:54:36.540 --> 01:54:38.990
to try and find out what they really are interested in

2001
01:54:38.990 --> 01:54:40.670
and they were very disappointed

2002
01:54:40.670 --> 01:54:42.690
because it\'s a very biological book

2003
01:54:42.690 --> 01:54:45.340
and its full of protoctists and other organisms.

2004
01:54:47.030 --> 01:54:49.260
- [John] Reading this book I realized

2005
01:54:49.260 --> 01:54:51.200
that, like most people,

2006
01:54:51.200 --> 01:54:53.870
my understanding of sex and reproduction

2007
01:54:53.870 --> 01:54:55.160
was limited to animals.

2008
01:54:56.200 --> 01:54:59.976
But there are organisms that reproduce without sex.

2009
01:54:59.976 --> 01:55:03.726
(gentle instrumental music)

2010
01:55:10.790 --> 01:55:13.610
And there is sex, the acquisition of DNA

2011
01:55:13.610 --> 01:55:17.180
by a cell or organism, without reproduction.

2012
01:55:25.930 --> 01:55:30.590
And there is what Lynn called forbidden fertilization,

2013
01:55:30.590 --> 01:55:34.530
sex between two very different types of organisms,

2014
01:55:34.530 --> 01:55:36.900
producing a third type of organism.

2015
01:55:38.190 --> 01:55:43.190
- Geosiphon only is made when a member of one kingdom,

2016
01:55:44.260 --> 01:55:47.170
so what we have here is a fungus,

2017
01:55:47.170 --> 01:55:49.900
is fertilized by a member of another kingdom.

2018
01:55:49.900 --> 01:55:54.900
Now, the little flitting strings here are cyanobacteria

2019
01:55:56.120 --> 01:55:58.480
and what we have here is a literal mating.

2020
01:55:59.750 --> 01:56:03.140
This is the pornographic action right there.

2021
01:56:03.140 --> 01:56:07.080
The fungus is breaking down its cell membrane

2022
01:56:07.080 --> 01:56:11.720
and its cell wall and it\'s taking the cyanobacterium

2023
01:56:11.720 --> 01:56:13.390
into its own body

2024
01:56:13.390 --> 01:56:15.730
and you end up with this little moss like thing

2025
01:56:15.730 --> 01:56:17.830
that is not a plant and not a moss at all.

2026
01:56:19.240 --> 01:56:21.340
You have a new organism

2027
01:56:21.340 --> 01:56:25.530
formed routinely by a fertilization like fusion

2028
01:56:25.530 --> 01:56:28.140
between members of different kingdoms.

2029
01:56:28.140 --> 01:56:30.440
- Mixing between organisms

2030
01:56:30.440 --> 01:56:33.450
that normally don\'t mate together, or hybridization,

2031
01:56:34.400 --> 01:56:38.730
is a very powerful source of genetic novelty.

2032
01:56:43.130 --> 01:56:46.300
- [John] I have often wondered how is it possible

2033
01:56:46.300 --> 01:56:50.550
that this caterpillar will one day become this moth.

2034
01:56:52.760 --> 01:56:56.300
How did this bizarre life cycle come to be?

2035
01:56:59.550 --> 01:57:03.170
On the Isle of Man, between Great Britain and Ireland,

2036
01:57:03.170 --> 01:57:08.170
I met Don Williamson, a scientist and colleague of Lynn\'s,

2037
01:57:08.400 --> 01:57:11.830
who developed a controversial hypothesis

2038
01:57:11.830 --> 01:57:14.610
that provides an answer to this very question.

2039
01:57:15.760 --> 01:57:19.340
- I was collecting icanus on a rocky beach,

2040
01:57:19.340 --> 01:57:22.650
and I slipped and fell on my head and I had a stroke.

2041
01:57:22.650 --> 01:57:24.530
I\'ve never been the same since.

2042
01:57:26.590 --> 01:57:31.240
- [John] Don Williamson spent his career studying larvae

2043
01:57:31.240 --> 01:57:34.840
living in plankton and is highly regarded in this field.

2044
01:57:35.740 --> 01:57:39.420
Plankton is a world of life most of us know nothing about.

2045
01:57:40.760 --> 01:57:44.610
Huge masses of organisms floating in the ocean.

2046
01:57:44.610 --> 01:57:49.050
Don\'s story begins with one planktonic larva in particular,

2047
01:57:49.050 --> 01:57:50.810
that of a starfish.

2048
01:57:50.810 --> 01:57:51.900
- Luidi scarci.

2049
01:57:52.750 --> 01:57:55.590
I have a picture of it on my fridge

2050
01:57:55.590 --> 01:57:59.050
just to remind me, that\'s how it all started.

2051
01:57:59.050 --> 01:58:03.910
This particular starfish, the five-armed juvenile,

2052
01:58:03.910 --> 01:58:07.570 line:15%
merely drops off the swimming larva.

2053
01:58:07.570 --> 01:58:12.570 line:15%
This larva could go on swimming for a further three months.

2054
01:58:15.530 --> 01:58:18.090 line:15%
This struck me as amazing.

2055
01:58:18.090 --> 01:58:22.200 line:15%
How can an animal,

2056
01:58:24.440 --> 01:58:27.540
one animal, hatch from one egg,

2057
01:58:28.720 --> 01:58:33.200
diverge into two animals that are really two animals,

2058
01:58:34.090 --> 01:58:39.090
one of which will be drifting away in the plankton

2059
01:58:39.160 --> 01:58:43.750
while the other is on the sea floor

2060
01:58:43.750 --> 01:58:48.600
crawling about and feeding itself.

2061
01:58:52.040 --> 01:58:55.570
This was an anomaly

2062
01:58:55.570 --> 01:58:58.380
that puzzled me and intrigued me

2063
01:58:59.420 --> 01:59:01.280
throughout my life.

2064
01:59:01.280 --> 01:59:04.480
- [John] After many years of puzzling over this

2065
01:59:04.480 --> 01:59:06.010
and other anomalies,

2066
01:59:06.010 --> 01:59:10.310
Don came up with an answer: hybridization.

2067
01:59:10.310 --> 01:59:13.840
- In the sea, a male and a female

2068
01:59:13.840 --> 01:59:18.000
actually mating individually is extremely rare.

2069
01:59:19.170 --> 01:59:24.170 line:15%
Most cases, the female sheds her eggs,

2070
01:59:24.730 --> 01:59:26.320 line:15%
the male sheds his sperm,

2071
01:59:27.564 --> 01:59:30.620
and all the fertilization takes place in the water.

2072
01:59:31.700 --> 01:59:34.860
If you do get two unrelated groups

2073
01:59:34.860 --> 01:59:39.860
spawning at the same time, there\'s every opportunity

2074
01:59:40.150 --> 01:59:43.840
for some of the eggs to get fertilized

2075
01:59:43.840 --> 01:59:47.420
with the sperm of the unrelated species.

2076
01:59:48.390 --> 01:59:53.250
In most cases, nothing happens, but once in a million years,

2077
01:59:53.250 --> 01:59:58.250
literally once in a million years, you get a viable hybrid.

2078
02:00:00.260 --> 02:00:04.360
- [John] The result is what Don calls a sequential hybrid.

2079
02:00:06.860 --> 02:00:11.150
First, one animal is born from an egg and lives its life.

2080
02:00:12.570 --> 02:00:15.090
This animal is traditionally called a larva.

2081
02:00:16.600 --> 02:00:19.720
Then that animal transforms itself

2082
02:00:19.720 --> 02:00:21.100
into what\'s called a pupa.

2083
02:00:23.230 --> 02:00:28.230
Inside the pupa, enzymes digest the larva\'s tissues

2084
02:00:28.488 --> 02:00:30.750
leaving a rich gooey fluid.

2085
02:00:31.900 --> 02:00:36.170
And from this egg-like fluid, a second animal is born.

2086
02:00:37.370 --> 02:00:40.450
So as the result of hybridization,

2087
02:00:40.450 --> 02:00:44.550
from one set of chromosomes two animals are born,

2088
02:00:44.550 --> 02:00:45.910
one after the other.

2089
02:00:47.740 --> 02:00:50.681
Don performed hybridization experiments

2090
02:00:50.681 --> 02:00:52.890
and had some bizarre results.

2091
02:00:53.980 --> 02:00:58.980
- So I got hundreds of little larvae spinning about.

2092
02:01:01.660 --> 02:01:04.940
They were fascinating little creatures

2093
02:01:04.940 --> 02:01:08.990
but like nothing I had seen before.

2094
02:01:09.860 --> 02:01:14.420
- [John] His work continues to disturb many scientists.

2095
02:01:14.420 --> 02:01:17.400
A few of Lynn\'s colleagues urged me

2096
02:01:17.400 --> 02:01:20.630
not to include Don Williamson in this film.

2097
02:01:21.550 --> 02:01:23.830
But when I talked to them further,

2098
02:01:23.830 --> 02:01:27.930
I realized that they hadn\'t read his books or papers

2099
02:01:27.930 --> 02:01:32.010
and were relying on hearsay and on one paper

2100
02:01:32.010 --> 02:01:35.530
that sought to disprove his theories, but doesn\'t.

2101
02:01:37.260 --> 02:01:40.280
Why do scientists want so much

2102
02:01:40.280 --> 02:01:42.290
for Don Williamson to be wrong?

2103
02:01:44.120 --> 02:01:48.210
It was while reading a review of Don\'s second book

2104
02:01:48.210 --> 02:01:50.445
that I found the answer.

2105
02:01:50.445 --> 02:01:54.940
The reviewer writes that if Williamson is correct,

2106
02:01:54.940 --> 02:01:58.530
then our current understanding of animal evolution

2107
02:01:58.530 --> 02:02:00.750
is fundamentally wrong,

2108
02:02:00.750 --> 02:02:04.940
and many scientific careers have essentially been wasted.

2109
02:02:06.080 --> 02:02:08.717
Don\'s theory strikes at the very core

2110
02:02:09.250 --> 02:02:13.690 line:15%
of contemporary thinking on evolution: Darwin\'s tree model.

2111
02:02:16.780 --> 02:02:19.740
- The concept that the tree is the right topology

2112
02:02:21.830 --> 02:02:23.020
I think is very wrong.

2113
02:02:24.640 --> 02:02:26.410
It\'s very wrong, even Woese\'s tree

2114
02:02:28.570 --> 02:02:33.570
because a tree assumes that the lineages continue to branch

2115
02:02:34.610 --> 02:02:37.490
and branch and branch from a common ancestor

2116
02:02:37.490 --> 02:02:41.990
and Stephen Bell himself showed that there was movement

2117
02:02:41.990 --> 02:02:44.470
of genetic material from one branch to another.

2118
02:02:44.470 --> 02:02:49.470
That makes the topology a net, a web, and no longer a tree.

2119
02:02:50.320 --> 02:02:53.740
In that Oxford debate with Lynn, Richard Dawkins

2120
02:02:53.740 --> 02:02:57.380
and others that I have excerpted throughout this film,

2121
02:02:57.380 --> 02:03:01.440
there\'s a revealing moment which was only recorded in audio.

2122
02:03:16.975 --> 02:03:19.829
(gentle instrumental music)

2123
02:03:19.829 --> 02:03:21.120
- [John] It would be convenient

2124
02:03:21.120 --> 02:03:24.780
if nature conformed to the theories of biologists,

2125
02:03:26.030 --> 02:03:30.730
but we must humbly admit that as we learn more about nature,

2126
02:03:30.730 --> 02:03:32.800
our theories must change.

2127
02:03:35.120 --> 02:03:39.950
And much of evolution remains an awe inspiring mystery.

2128
02:03:43.000 --> 02:03:46.990
Evolution is the growth and development of life

2129
02:03:47.870 --> 02:03:52.870
from one cell to a living system with many interconnected

2130
02:03:52.890 --> 02:03:56.310
and co-evolving parts that covers the Earth.

2131
02:03:57.790 --> 02:04:01.560
And Lynn Margulis would be quick to point out that the cars,

2132
02:04:01.560 --> 02:04:05.850
clothing and buildings in this photo may not be alive,

2133
02:04:06.790 --> 02:04:10.360
but they are part of our living system,

2134
02:04:10.360 --> 02:04:13.990
which evolves from generation to generation.

2135
02:04:21.747 --> 02:04:25.414
(gentle instrumental music)

2136
02:04:33.980 --> 02:04:37.690
- In the early \'60s scientists were asked,

2137
02:04:37.690 --> 02:04:42.080 line:15%
they were asked to develop a life detection apparatus.

2138
02:04:42.080 --> 02:04:44.820
That is, how can you tell if a planet has life on it?

2139
02:04:44.820 --> 02:04:47.260
In fact NASA approached the scientific community

2140
02:04:47.260 --> 02:04:48.660
with this problem.

2141
02:04:48.660 --> 02:04:53.570 line:15%
- I was hired by NASA in 1961, it\'s a long time ago,

2142
02:04:53.570 --> 02:04:55.730
mainly because I\'d invented a number

2143
02:04:55.730 --> 02:04:59.830
of exceedingly sensitive detection devices.

2144
02:04:59.830 --> 02:05:02.600
- And I want to tell you how NASA asking the question

2145
02:05:02.600 --> 02:05:05.217
has changed so dramatically our views

2146
02:05:05.217 --> 02:05:08.320
of the Earth as a planet.

2147
02:05:08.320 --> 02:05:13.310
The Gaia hypothesis says that you can detect life

2148
02:05:13.310 --> 02:05:15.550
from an atmosphere of a planet.

2149
02:05:15.550 --> 02:05:19.340
- If the atmosphere is completely at equilibrium,

2150
02:05:19.340 --> 02:05:21.890
or near to it, then there\'s unlikely

2151
02:05:21.890 --> 02:05:23.560
to be any life on the planet,

2152
02:05:24.780 --> 02:05:25.980
- [John] The atmosphere.

2153
02:05:26.930 --> 02:05:29.610
We are bathed in it.

2154
02:05:29.610 --> 02:05:32.030
It connects each of us to each other.

2155
02:05:33.270 --> 02:05:36.210
It transports much of the matter

2156
02:05:36.210 --> 02:05:38.450
that life uses to make itself,

2157
02:05:44.620 --> 02:05:47.490
- I was sitting in a room, in an office

2158
02:05:47.490 --> 02:05:51.000
that I shared with Carl Sagan at JPL

2159
02:05:51.000 --> 02:05:55.720
and we were discussing life on Mars and how to find it,

2160
02:05:55.720 --> 02:05:58.680
when in marched an astronomer, Lou Kaplan,

2161
02:05:58.680 --> 02:06:01.050
with his arms full of sheets of paper.

2162
02:06:01.050 --> 02:06:02.690
We all said, well, what\'s this?

2163
02:06:04.110 --> 02:06:08.580
When we looked at it closely it was the complete analysis

2164
02:06:08.580 --> 02:06:11.200
of the Martian and Venus atmospheres.

2165
02:06:12.490 --> 02:06:14.680
We said to Lou, well, interpret it for us.

2166
02:06:14.680 --> 02:06:15.740
What\'s it mean?

2167
02:06:15.740 --> 02:06:18.290
He said, it means that the atmospheres of both planets

2168
02:06:18.290 --> 02:06:20.300
are almost entirely carbon dioxide

2169
02:06:20.300 --> 02:06:22.750
with only traces of the other gases present.

2170
02:06:23.970 --> 02:06:25.812
I immediately knew this meant

2171
02:06:25.812 --> 02:06:28.730
that they were both dead planets.

2172
02:06:28.730 --> 02:06:31.550
- The Earth as a planet is profoundly different

2173
02:06:31.550 --> 02:06:34.780
from our sister planets, that is Mars on the one hand

2174
02:06:34.780 --> 02:06:36.420
and Venus on the other.

2175
02:06:36.420 --> 02:06:39.140
And the differences have to be understood

2176
02:06:39.140 --> 02:06:41.145
as a product of life.

2177
02:06:41.145 --> 02:06:43.230
- If you look at the Earth\'s atmosphere,

2178
02:06:43.230 --> 02:06:46.320
it\'s wildly out of equilibrium, incredibly.

2179
02:06:46.320 --> 02:06:47.153
Just think of it.

2180
02:06:47.153 --> 02:06:48.820
There\'s methane and oxygen mixed.

2181
02:06:48.820 --> 02:06:51.420
If it was a different composition it would blow up.

2182
02:06:53.100 --> 02:06:56.370
Something must be regulating or it wouldn\'t stay constant.

2183
02:06:56.370 --> 02:06:59.770
- Gas composition of the lower atmosphere, the temperature,

2184
02:07:00.650 --> 02:07:04.230
the oxidation state, that these things,

2185
02:07:04.230 --> 02:07:06.310
that these aspects of the lower atmosphere

2186
02:07:06.310 --> 02:07:11.310
are modified by the presence of living organisms

2187
02:07:12.210 --> 02:07:15.150
in such a way as to regulate the atmosphere

2188
02:07:15.150 --> 02:07:18.730
to keep these aspects within a range suitable

2189
02:07:18.730 --> 02:07:20.370
for life on the surface.

2190
02:07:20.370 --> 02:07:22.410
It says therefore that the lower atmosphere

2191
02:07:22.410 --> 02:07:24.900
is not a passive environment

2192
02:07:24.900 --> 02:07:27.382
but it is an actively modulated environment

2193
02:07:27.382 --> 02:07:29.540
for life on the surface.

2194
02:07:29.540 --> 02:07:31.000
- That was my eureka moment.

2195
02:07:31.000 --> 02:07:33.700
Here was this great system that was looking after itself

2196
02:07:33.700 --> 02:07:35.540
and keeping the planet habitable.

2197
02:07:36.699 --> 02:07:40.366
(gentle instrumental music)

2198
02:07:45.620 --> 02:07:49.180 line:15%
The conventional wisdom held by geologists

2199
02:07:49.180 --> 02:07:51.960 line:15%
was that life was a kind of passenger on the Earth.

2200
02:07:51.960 --> 02:07:55.380 line:15%
- The Earth was thought of as basically a dead ball of rock

2201
02:07:55.380 --> 02:07:58.160 line:15%
with a thin smear of life on its surface

2202
02:07:58.160 --> 02:08:00.910 line:15%
that didn\'t have any influence or much influence

2203
02:08:00.910 --> 02:08:03.560
on what the composition of the surface looked like.

2204
02:08:04.800 --> 02:08:06.700
The geologists were in charge.

2205
02:08:06.700 --> 02:08:07.760
There were different departments,

2206
02:08:07.760 --> 02:08:09.440
geology, meteorology, chemistry,

2207
02:08:09.440 --> 02:08:11.510
and they didn\'t really talk to each other very much.

2208
02:08:11.510 --> 02:08:14.210
That\'s a fragmented reductionist approach

2209
02:08:14.210 --> 02:08:15.660
to understanding the Earth.

2210
02:08:15.660 --> 02:08:18.900
- Now, the Gaia notion is quite different.

2211
02:08:18.900 --> 02:08:21.070
It sees the evolution of life

2212
02:08:21.070 --> 02:08:24.350
and the evolution of the planet as not two processes

2213
02:08:24.350 --> 02:08:26.910
but one single tightly coupled process.

2214
02:08:26.910 --> 02:08:28.705
- The rocks, the atmosphere, the biota,

2215
02:08:28.705 --> 02:08:31.640
they\'re tightly coupled, they interact as a system.

2216
02:08:31.640 --> 02:08:34.810
- It is hard to believe from an astronomical point of view

2217
02:08:34.810 --> 02:08:36.620
that the temperature is simply

2218
02:08:36.620 --> 02:08:38.830
by accident maintained constant.

2219
02:08:38.830 --> 02:08:40.180
We prefer to believe

2220
02:08:40.180 --> 02:08:42.860
that there is an active temperature regulating system

2221
02:08:42.860 --> 02:08:44.740
and when we look around we see

2222
02:08:44.740 --> 02:08:47.940
that it is really the sum of the organisms

2223
02:08:47.940 --> 02:08:51.360
and their activities that have the potential

2224
02:08:51.360 --> 02:08:52.770
for regulating the temperature.

2225
02:08:52.770 --> 02:08:57.560
- I\'d first come along and published on Gaia in 1965

2226
02:08:57.560 --> 02:08:59.490
long before I met Lynn.

2227
02:08:59.490 --> 02:09:03.480 line:15%
- He intuited that Gaia existed and that Gaia must work.

2228
02:09:03.480 --> 02:09:04.950 line:15%
He couldn\'t say how.

2229
02:09:04.950 --> 02:09:08.240
I think Lynn played a key role in getting him thinking

2230
02:09:08.240 --> 02:09:10.760
in a way that together they could begin to say

2231
02:09:10.760 --> 02:09:11.910
how it could happen.

2232
02:09:11.910 --> 02:09:16.910
- It was about 1971 I think when she asks Carl,

2233
02:09:18.430 --> 02:09:19.930
by then they were divorced,

2234
02:09:21.430 --> 02:09:25.420
did anybody know about oxygen in the atmosphere

2235
02:09:25.420 --> 02:09:29.730
and how it came and what role it played?

2236
02:09:30.640 --> 02:09:33.000
He sort of hummed and hawed and eventually said,

2237
02:09:33.000 --> 02:09:35.320
well, you best speak to Jim Lovelock.

2238
02:09:35.320 --> 02:09:37.090
He\'s got some strange ideas

2239
02:09:37.090 --> 02:09:39.260
on how the atmosphere came about.

2240
02:09:39.260 --> 02:09:43.900
She was probably more aware than anybody I\'d met

2241
02:09:43.900 --> 02:09:48.800
about the role of bacteria, micro-organisms generally,

2242
02:09:48.800 --> 02:09:51.100
in the infrastructure of the Earth.

2243
02:09:51.100 --> 02:09:53.030
- We think it\'s the major groups of bacteria

2244
02:09:53.030 --> 02:09:55.370
that actually are running the Gaian system.

2245
02:09:55.370 --> 02:09:59.481
- And this was an incredibly valuable contribution.

2246
02:09:59.481 --> 02:10:02.340
(gentle instrumental music)

2247
02:10:02.340 --> 02:10:05.310
Most scientists before then, if not all,

2248
02:10:05.310 --> 02:10:07.570
tended to regard the bacteria as something

2249
02:10:07.570 --> 02:10:08.820
in a pathology lab.

2250
02:10:10.220 --> 02:10:13.160
They didn\'t think the whole ruddy show was running on them.

2251
02:10:13.160 --> 02:10:14.850
- There\'s something more than chemistry

2252
02:10:14.850 --> 02:10:16.190
on the surface of the planet.

2253
02:10:16.190 --> 02:10:18.250
And this more than chemistry turns out to be life

2254
02:10:18.250 --> 02:10:19.900
and that is the basic idea.

2255
02:10:19.900 --> 02:10:21.350
- We got on exceedingly well.

2256
02:10:23.650 --> 02:10:25.310
She was the first person I\'d met

2257
02:10:25.310 --> 02:10:29.360
that would listen to anything I had to say about Gaia.

2258
02:10:29.360 --> 02:10:30.600
- I love Jim Lovelock.

2259
02:10:30.600 --> 02:10:35.050
I think he\'s the most original, mischievous,

2260
02:10:36.170 --> 02:10:38.490
anti-academic mind I\'ve ever met.

2261
02:10:39.450 --> 02:10:44.170
He\'s just totally original and very science grounded.

2262
02:10:44.170 --> 02:10:47.530
- And that allowed them together, I think, in the early \'70s

2263
02:10:47.530 --> 02:10:50.310
to have this extraordinary outburst of creativity.

2264
02:10:50.310 --> 02:10:53.120
Suggesting all kinds of extraordinary ways

2265
02:10:53.120 --> 02:10:56.450
in which life could be involved in regulating methane

2266
02:10:56.450 --> 02:10:59.200
in the atmosphere and in turn oxygen in the atmosphere,

2267
02:11:00.570 --> 02:11:03.300
how bacterial life is entwined in the,

2268
02:11:03.300 --> 02:11:07.260
what we call the biogeochemical cycles that support life.

2269
02:11:07.260 --> 02:11:09.840
Some of those ideas have stood the test of time

2270
02:11:09.840 --> 02:11:11.040
and others of course haven\'t.

2271
02:11:11.040 --> 02:11:14.040
But it was the creative outburst, if you like,

2272
02:11:14.040 --> 02:11:15.760
in this interdisciplinary fusion

2273
02:11:15.760 --> 02:11:18.250
that is incarnated in those two people.

2274
02:11:18.250 --> 02:11:21.640
You have the depth of insight into biology

2275
02:11:21.640 --> 02:11:22.860
from Lynn on the one hand.

2276
02:11:22.860 --> 02:11:25.270
You have this physical, chemical

2277
02:11:25.270 --> 02:11:27.610
and almost philosophical reasoning of Jim Lovelock

2278
02:11:27.610 --> 02:11:28.933
on the other.

2279
02:11:28.933 --> 02:11:32.600
(gentle instrumental music)

2280
02:11:35.710 --> 02:11:38.720
It basically arose as an idea, Gaia,

2281
02:11:38.720 --> 02:11:41.190
almost in some ways arguably at the wrong time.

2282
02:11:41.190 --> 02:11:44.350
Because it arose at a time when biologists

2283
02:11:44.350 --> 02:11:48.290
were trying to purge any notion of things

2284
02:11:48.290 --> 02:11:49.800
being for the good of the species

2285
02:11:49.800 --> 02:11:53.030
or for the good of the collective out of their theory.

2286
02:11:53.030 --> 02:11:55.550
- The criticisms of the neo-Darwinists

2287
02:11:55.550 --> 02:11:58.170
were getting almost out of hand by then.

2288
02:11:58.170 --> 02:11:59.210 line:15%
- What I\'m not happy about

2289
02:11:59.210 --> 02:12:02.810 line:15%
is to talk about the function of a particular gas

2290
02:12:02.810 --> 02:12:05.350 line:15%
in the regulation of the biosphere

2291
02:12:05.350 --> 02:12:08.450
because it implies that individual organisms

2292
02:12:08.450 --> 02:12:10.800
that are manufacturing that gas are doing it

2293
02:12:10.800 --> 02:12:12.130
for the good of the biosphere.

2294
02:12:12.130 --> 02:12:15.350
It further implies that if it were bad for them

2295
02:12:15.350 --> 02:12:17.540
as individuals they might still do it

2296
02:12:17.540 --> 02:12:20.500
because that\'s the only way that the biosphere will persist

2297
02:12:20.500 --> 02:12:22.730
and the real danger is that people will think,

2298
02:12:22.730 --> 02:12:24.660
will assume that individual organisms

2299
02:12:24.660 --> 02:12:26.894
will sacrifice themselves for the benefit

2300
02:12:26.894 --> 02:12:29.660
of the entire system, and that\'s wrong.

2301
02:12:29.660 --> 02:12:31.520
And it\'s dangerously wrong in the sense

2302
02:12:31.520 --> 02:12:34.010
that it\'s very, very widely believed among laymen

2303
02:12:34.010 --> 02:12:35.210
and even among professionals.

2304
02:12:35.210 --> 02:12:38.950
- Neo-Darwinism, which was the developed branch

2305
02:12:38.950 --> 02:12:41.250
of Darwin\'s great theory,

2306
02:12:44.250 --> 02:12:45.380
seemed to be taken

2307
02:12:45.380 --> 02:12:49.570
by many as the final last word that was on the subject,

2308
02:12:49.570 --> 02:12:51.000
which is always dangerous.

2309
02:12:51.890 --> 02:12:55.810
They wrongly assumed that Gaia was against it.

2310
02:12:55.810 --> 02:13:00.810
- They saw anything that looked like an argument

2311
02:13:01.060 --> 02:13:04.200
for cooperation or so forth,

2312
02:13:04.200 --> 02:13:07.385
and Gaia was the grandest argument in their eyes

2313
02:13:07.385 --> 02:13:09.440
of biological cooperation,

2314
02:13:09.440 --> 02:13:12.870
as being somehow heretical to the theory.

2315
02:13:12.870 --> 02:13:17.030
- One senior British scientist,

2316
02:13:17.030 --> 02:13:18.510
John Maynard Smith,

2317
02:13:18.510 --> 02:13:20.820
referred to Gaia as an evil religion.

2318
02:13:24.070 --> 02:13:27.320
They were intemperate in their language generally.

2319
02:13:27.320 --> 02:13:31.110
Lynn was very combative and would usually fight them.

2320
02:13:31.110 --> 02:13:33.230
What was it Richard Dawkins referred to her

2321
02:13:33.230 --> 02:13:34.240
as Attila the Hen.

2322
02:13:35.440 --> 02:13:36.950
That was Lynn.

2323
02:13:36.950 --> 02:13:39.790
She was right, of course, and he was wrong.

2324
02:13:39.790 --> 02:13:42.970
- Since we have not discovered or worked out

2325
02:13:42.970 --> 02:13:44.340
all the mechanistic details.

2326
02:13:44.340 --> 02:13:45.320
and I certainly agree

2327
02:13:45.320 --> 02:13:48.390
we are nowhere near having finished that job,

2328
02:13:48.390 --> 02:13:51.670
people say: I don\'t believe it, you don\'t have a mechanism,

2329
02:13:51.670 --> 02:13:54.470
therefore the phenomenon of regulation doesn\'t exist.

2330
02:13:54.470 --> 02:13:56.860
Those people will be biting their tongues

2331
02:13:56.860 --> 02:13:58.420
in another decade or so.

2332
02:13:58.420 --> 02:13:59.940 line:15%
- We found mechanisms.

2333
02:13:59.940 --> 02:14:04.190 line:15%
We showed that but for life the carbon dioxide

2334
02:14:04.190 --> 02:14:08.050
in the atmosphere now would be so great that we\'d be fried.

2335
02:14:09.430 --> 02:14:13.080
Life has pumped it down continuously so that it\'s low.

2336
02:14:13.080 --> 02:14:14.410
There is a mechanism,

2337
02:14:14.410 --> 02:14:18.140
the pumping out of carbon dioxide to keep the planet cool.

2338
02:14:18.140 --> 02:14:20.120
Now we\'ve discovered another mechanism,

2339
02:14:20.120 --> 02:14:23.110
the clouds are produced by algae over the oceans.

2340
02:14:27.180 --> 02:14:30.290
They didn\'t really ever read any of the papers on Gaia.

2341
02:14:31.870 --> 02:14:34.490
They just got scuttle-butt from their students

2342
02:14:35.780 --> 02:14:38.710
and I\'ve even got this in writing from William Hamilton.

2343
02:14:38.710 --> 02:14:41.530
He apologized for never having read my papers

2344
02:14:41.530 --> 02:14:43.560
and just assumed that what was said around

2345
02:14:43.560 --> 02:14:45.580
about Gaia was correct.

2346
02:14:45.580 --> 02:14:48.104
- [John] Do you think the name was a problem?

2347
02:14:48.104 --> 02:14:49.600
- Yeah, probably.

2348
02:14:49.600 --> 02:14:52.760
But what would you have done?

2349
02:14:52.760 --> 02:14:55.550 line:15%
It so happened I lived in a village with Bill Golding

2350
02:15:12.500 --> 02:15:14.747
- However, because of its mythological connotations

2351
02:15:14.747 --> 02:15:17.350
that immediately gets up the backs

2352
02:15:17.350 --> 02:15:20.500
of a number of purist scientists

2353
02:15:20.500 --> 02:15:25.500
who would rather have less laden language.

2354
02:15:25.580 --> 02:15:27.560
- Jim Lovelock says, which is wonderful,

2355
02:15:27.560 --> 02:15:30.870
he said, well, let them think the Earth is a pile of rocks

2356
02:15:30.870 --> 02:15:31.703
and they can kick it.

2357
02:15:31.703 --> 02:15:34.210
But let them think that it\'s a live organism,

2358
02:15:34.210 --> 02:15:35.450
they respect it.

2359
02:15:35.450 --> 02:15:37.680
I say, that\'s not right, Jim.

2360
02:15:37.680 --> 02:15:40.400
- I look on the Earth as a living object.

2361
02:15:40.400 --> 02:15:43.300
I think the definition of life needs refining.

2362
02:15:43.300 --> 02:15:46.770
- To me the Gaia theory is absolutely not:

2363
02:15:46.770 --> 02:15:48.280
the Earth is an organism.

2364
02:15:48.280 --> 02:15:50.800
It\'s the Earth is a physiological system

2365
02:15:50.800 --> 02:15:54.270
made up of ecosystems, themselves made up of communities,

2366
02:15:54.270 --> 02:15:56.540
and that the minimal unit is a cell.

2367
02:15:57.481 --> 02:16:01.148
(gentle instrumental music)

2368
02:16:33.790 --> 02:16:35.940
- [John] An email from Lynn Margulis

2369
02:16:35.940 --> 02:16:37.320
started me on a journey.

2370
02:16:38.620 --> 02:16:40.680
During the making of this film,

2371
02:16:40.680 --> 02:16:42.930
I have had daily conversations with Lynn.

2372
02:16:44.240 --> 02:16:48.000
She continually provoked and challenged me

2373
02:16:48.000 --> 02:16:49.150
to dig a little deeper.

2374
02:16:50.310 --> 02:16:52.910
She will, I\'m sure, continue to do so.

2375
02:16:57.900 --> 02:17:01.440
As I stare at my reflection, a thought surfaces.

2376
02:17:03.050 --> 02:17:05.530
Perhaps Descartes\' famous expression

2377
02:17:05.530 --> 02:17:07.580
I think, therefore I am,

2378
02:17:08.560 --> 02:17:13.260
should be changed to we think, therefore I am.

2379
02:17:14.360 --> 02:17:18.140
For indeed, I am the product of communities

2380
02:17:18.140 --> 02:17:22.330
of cognitive cells and symbionts that make up my body,

2381
02:17:23.180 --> 02:17:26.994
and a product of the social and ecological communities

2382
02:17:26.994 --> 02:17:28.510
of which I am a part.

2383
02:17:29.440 --> 02:17:33.110
And together, we are Gaia, a symbiotic Earth.

2384
02:17:34.340 --> 02:17:38.090
- We are part of it, you see, and we have sentience.

2385
02:17:38.090 --> 02:17:40.860
This is why Gaia is the sentient entity

2386
02:17:40.860 --> 02:17:44.093
because we\'re an important animal species in it

2387
02:17:44.093 --> 02:17:47.340
and we\'ve let it see itself for the first time.

2388
02:17:49.420 --> 02:17:52.600
We are through our intelligence and communications,

2389
02:17:52.600 --> 02:17:55.640
in a way, the nervous system of our planet.

2390
02:17:55.640 --> 02:17:58.150
We can\'t help it because we\'re part of it.

2391
02:17:58.150 --> 02:18:01.020
So we should be he heart and the mind of the Earth,

2392
02:18:01.020 --> 02:18:01.980
not it\'s malady.

2393
02:18:03.050 --> 02:18:05.350
I\'ve tried to show you that Gaia theory

2394
02:18:05.350 --> 02:18:07.830
provides an intellectual habitat

2395
02:18:07.830 --> 02:18:11.570
where understanding of the Earth can evolve and grow.

2396
02:18:11.570 --> 02:18:13.450
Perhaps its greatest value lies

2397
02:18:13.450 --> 02:18:17.110
in its metaphor of a living Earth which reminds us

2398
02:18:17.110 --> 02:18:19.670
that we are part of it and most of all

2399
02:18:19.670 --> 02:18:23.160
that there are no human rights, only human obligations.

2400
02:18:23.160 --> 02:18:23.993
Thank you.

2401
02:18:26.000 --> 02:18:28.610
It\'s become a live thinking planet.

2402
02:18:28.610 --> 02:18:30.060
Think where it\'s going to go?

2403
02:18:31.690 --> 02:18:34.470
\'Cause we\'re only a stage in evolution.

2404
02:18:34.470 --> 02:18:36.850
- [John] So you\'re very optimistic.

2405
02:18:36.850 --> 02:18:38.668
You seem--
- Oh, yes.

2406
02:18:38.668 --> 02:18:41.370 line:15%
(gentle instrumental music)

2407
02:18:41.370 --> 02:18:43.370 line:15%
We certainly were kindred souls,

2408
02:18:43.370 --> 02:18:45.310 line:15%
she was a rebel and so was I.

2409
02:18:53.003 --> 02:18:56.670
(gentle instrumental music)

2410
02:19:00.570 --> 02:19:04.080 line:15%
- If I asked her, are you awed by life, she would say yes.

2411
02:19:05.780 --> 02:19:08.780 line:15%
That\'s as close to spirituality or anything else I could get

2412
02:19:09.980 --> 02:19:14.480
because she was, but also driven to try and understand.

2413
02:19:16.330 --> 02:19:17.880
- [Lynn] Has the fluid ever been analyzed?

2414
02:19:17.880 --> 02:19:20.580
- No, no.
- Well, you know the fluid

2415
02:19:20.580 --> 02:19:23.430
is going to be the breakdown product of what happened

2416
02:19:23.430 --> 02:19:24.860
when it was sealed.

2417
02:19:24.860 --> 02:19:26.770
- When Lynn was a girl

2418
02:19:26.770 --> 02:19:28.890
she said she wanted to be an explorer,

2419
02:19:28.890 --> 02:19:29.990
and she wanted to be an explorer

2420
02:19:29.990 --> 02:19:32.570
in the most adventurous sense of that word.

2421
02:19:32.570 --> 02:19:36.690
Completely, freely, genuinely curious

2422
02:19:36.690 --> 02:19:38.610
about the world around her

2423
02:19:38.610 --> 02:19:42.480 line:15%
and being smart enough to be able to interpret the world

2424
02:19:42.480 --> 02:19:43.991 line:15%
as a scientist.

2425
02:19:43.991 --> 02:19:46.158
- [Lynn] We\'re going to go through the abdomen.

2426
02:19:46.158 --> 02:19:47.660
- [Man] Through the abdomen.

2427
02:19:47.660 --> 02:19:49.530
- [John] Embedded in this piece of amber

2428
02:19:49.530 --> 02:19:53.070
is a 20 million year old termite.

2429
02:19:53.070 --> 02:19:56.070 line:15%
Lynn studied termites her entire career.

2430
02:19:56.070 --> 02:19:57.470 line:15%
- I don\'t know whether we have enough or not,

2431
02:19:57.470 --> 02:19:59.690 line:15%
but let\'s just take a look.

2432
02:20:03.830 --> 02:20:04.910
Oh boy, there they are.

2433
02:20:04.910 --> 02:20:06.260
We\'ve got hundreds of them.

2434
02:20:07.720 --> 02:20:12.620 line:15%
- Termites, she loved Mastotermes Darwiniensis.

2435
02:20:12.620 --> 02:20:17.620
- [Lynn] Mastotermes Darwiniensis from Darwin, Australia

2436
02:20:19.450 --> 02:20:21.080
brought by Betsy Dyer.

2437
02:20:22.420 --> 02:20:24.510
Well, Andrew, why they are called Mastotermes

2438
02:20:24.510 --> 02:20:27.990
is very obvious, because they masticate.

2439
02:20:29.220 --> 02:20:31.490
Look at those jaws, look at those jaws.

2440
02:20:31.490 --> 02:20:34.450
- [John] In order to digest the wood they eat,

2441
02:20:34.450 --> 02:20:39.280
termites rely on a community of symbiotic protists

2442
02:20:39.280 --> 02:20:40.720
that live in their gut.

2443
02:20:40.720 --> 02:20:44.690
- [Lynn] The hind gut has coruga,

2444
02:20:48.040 --> 02:20:49.560
Mixotricha paradoxa

2445
02:20:51.280 --> 02:20:52.680
and Delta triconmypha.

2446
02:20:53.650 --> 02:20:57.010
- [John] But the protists don\'t do it by themselves,

2447
02:20:57.010 --> 02:20:59.910
they each include a community of bacteria.

2448
02:21:01.190 --> 02:21:04.830
One of these protists, Mixotricha paradoxa,

2449
02:21:04.830 --> 02:21:08.750
Lynn called the beast with five genomes.

2450
02:21:08.750 --> 02:21:11.720
Because in addition to its own genome,

2451
02:21:11.720 --> 02:21:15.830
it has a community of spherical bacteria in its gut,

2452
02:21:15.830 --> 02:21:19.890
and three different bacteria on its surface.

2453
02:21:19.890 --> 02:21:23.590
The wiggling hair-like things on the edge there

2454
02:21:23.590 --> 02:21:26.920
are two kinds of spirochete bacteria

2455
02:21:26.920 --> 02:21:28.440
that move the protist around.

2456
02:21:29.430 --> 02:21:32.330
- [Lynn] The little faster beating treponemes in there

2457
02:21:33.430 --> 02:21:37.850
and spastic ca-mel-ee par-eh-lima in the cortex,

2458
02:21:37.850 --> 02:21:41.830
the three surface components of Mixotricha paradoxa.

2459
02:21:44.060 --> 02:21:45.660
- [John] Communities of bacteria

2460
02:21:47.000 --> 02:21:49.030
within communities of protists

2461
02:21:52.010 --> 02:21:53.010
within termites

2462
02:21:56.300 --> 02:21:57.900
within communities of termites

2463
02:21:59.040 --> 02:22:02.990
within ecosystems within Gaia.

2464
02:22:10.910 --> 02:22:14.900
Lynn Margulis\'s quest to understand the origin

2465
02:22:14.900 --> 02:22:19.650 line:15%
of the first nucleated cell propelled her ever onward.

2466
02:22:20.820 --> 02:22:21.670 line:15%
- [Lynn] My what?

2467
02:22:25.060 --> 02:22:26.320 line:15%
- Oh, plans for science.

2468
02:22:27.230 --> 02:22:28.640
They are very simple.

2469
02:22:28.640 --> 02:22:31.340
They are the same as they were 40 years ago.

2470
02:22:31.340 --> 02:22:34.210
I like to tell my children and my students

2471
02:22:34.210 --> 02:22:37.080
that we\'ve won three out of four.

2472
02:22:37.080 --> 02:22:42.080
We won the archaeabacterial nature of the cytoplasm,

2473
02:22:42.103 --> 02:22:43.960
bacterial nature of the cytoplasm;

2474
02:22:44.810 --> 02:22:49.010
of course the mitochondria, and the chloroplasts,

2475
02:22:49.010 --> 02:22:50.870
and they still won\'t let me publish,

2476
02:22:52.650 --> 02:22:56.150
I\'m still being rejected on the spirochete stuff

2477
02:22:56.150 --> 02:22:57.110
by some people.

2478
02:22:57.110 --> 02:22:58.210
So that\'s what I want to do.

2479
02:22:58.210 --> 02:23:00.500
I want to finish four out of four,

2480
02:23:00.500 --> 02:23:02.620
not three out of four, four out of four.

2481
02:23:02.620 --> 02:23:05.650
Finish, that\'s the plan.

2482
02:23:06.940 --> 02:23:08.260 line:15%
- But that\'s what she was like.

2483
02:23:08.260 --> 02:23:11.840 line:15%
Extremely, extreme devotion to that concept.

2484
02:23:11.840 --> 02:23:13.680 line:15%
Wouldn\'t let it go because it was key.

2485
02:23:13.680 --> 02:23:14.513
It was big.

2486
02:23:15.560 --> 02:23:19.450
- [John] Lynn Margulis\'s serial endosymbiosis theory

2487
02:23:19.450 --> 02:23:24.090
is clearly explained in her book her book, Symbiogentics,

2488
02:23:24.090 --> 02:23:27.500
The Fourth Edition of Symbiosis in Cell Evolution.

2489
02:23:28.750 --> 02:23:32.820
Finished just before her death, it remains unpublished.

2490
02:23:34.820 --> 02:23:39.820 line:15%
- I quote Blaise Pascal with a very beautiful statement

2491
02:23:40.000 --> 02:23:42.560 line:15%
where he says, knowledge is like a sphere.

2492
02:23:43.480 --> 02:23:46.870
The larger it gets, the larger gets the surface

2493
02:23:46.870 --> 02:23:49.630
which is the boundary to the unknown.

2494
02:23:49.630 --> 02:23:51.510
The unknown is always there.

2495
02:23:51.510 --> 02:23:55.210
As knowledge grows so the unknown grows.

2496
02:23:55.210 --> 02:23:56.900
- [Lynn] Mixotricha lasted from the late Archean.

2497
02:23:58.860 --> 02:24:00.213
I don\'t know.

2498
02:24:00.213 --> 02:24:02.954
Hold that up to the camera please.

2499
02:24:02.954 --> 02:24:05.240
Let me get that lower part.

2500
02:24:05.240 --> 02:24:07.450
Right, and look at that.

2501
02:24:07.450 --> 02:24:10.980
- [John] Through a life of open-minded, rigorous

2502
02:24:10.980 --> 02:24:14.160
and passionate scientific inquiry,

2503
02:24:14.160 --> 02:24:18.060
Lynn Margulis gave us a new way of thinking about life

2504
02:24:18.980 --> 02:24:21.179
and about ourselves.

2505
02:24:21.179 --> 02:24:24.846
(gentle instrumental music)

2506
02:24:29.780 --> 02:24:32.840
- Well, I think I may have promised, at least I meant to,

2507
02:24:34.650 --> 02:24:38.650
to give Emily Dickinson, my next door neighbor,

2508
02:24:38.650 --> 02:24:42.650
that superb nineteenth century poet, the last word here.

2509
02:24:43.600 --> 02:24:44.850
And she\'s talking

2510
02:24:44.850 --> 02:24:49.850
about us biologists and scientists.

2511
02:24:50.860 --> 02:24:53.880
The poem is called What Mystery Pervades a Well

2512
02:24:53.880 --> 02:24:55.920
but this is the last stanza.

2513
02:24:55.920 --> 02:24:57.730
And this is what she says:

2514
02:24:57.730 --> 02:25:00.860
For nature is a stranger yet.

2515
02:25:00.860 --> 02:25:03.120
The ones who cite her most

2516
02:25:03.120 --> 02:25:04.840
have not passed her haunted house,

2517
02:25:04.840 --> 02:25:07.490
nor simplified her ghost.

2518
02:25:07.490 --> 02:25:10.080
To pity those who know her not

2519
02:25:10.080 --> 02:25:12.040
is helped by the regret

2520
02:25:12.040 --> 02:25:15.480
that those who know her, know her less

2521
02:25:15.480 --> 02:25:17.520
the nearer her they get.

2522
02:25:18.637 --> 02:25:20.040
Thank you.

2523
02:25:20.040 --> 02:25:23.790
(gentle instrumental music)