okay so who came with family raise your
hands
this is awesome and it was actually a
trick question because if there’s
anybody who didn’t raise their hand
everybody came here with family and
that’s part of the talk today is that
that everybody here is related to each
other this is in a zoo it’s the place we
come to contemplate how we’re tied into
the web of life around us not just to
fellow humanity but to beyond humanity
as well and the talk today we’re gonna
get into a really neat part of our own
genomes that reveals this and I think of
this as our magic genes our most
informative genes I’m going to tell you
why they obsess me for for many reasons
but there’s a really ticklish one that
has to do with the zoo today and I think
John may have alluded to it in the
introduction so anybody on the screen
here anybody recognized the the little
tree diagram who drew that tree as you
may know Darwin you got it
so it was drawn by so the original Chuck
D Charles Darwin was the the person who
drew this tree and he was kind of
figuring out in his head what trees
might look like historically
evolutionary trees as his ideas were
bubbling up now Darwin himself if we
look at his family tree he had a really
interesting forbear so he might have
come to this talk with his grandfather
whose name was Erasmus so and Erasmus
was a naturalist himself so there was
ideas in the air in Darwin’s time and
when he talked with his grandfather his
grandfather might have floated one of
these ideas his idea was that all life
might share what he called one living
filament and this was very prescient in
some sense it was way before we knew
anything about genetics but of course if
we fast forward today to today we can
think of the filament within us within
our cells that that DNA those
chromosomes that make up our genomes as
that living filament that ties life
together from now way back into the past
and if you think about flipping those
those chromosomes to make that filament
we could ask a question where in our DNA
is most informative where does it tell
us the most about us there’s one part of
our genomes that I want to show you and
I’m going to see
if you can spot it so I’m gonna show you
a bunch of charts that scientists use to
scan across our genomes and say where
does it matter what spelling somebody
carries for a disease
so for typhus for typhoid fever for
example that there’s a little spot
there’s a peak there if we slow down
here so there’s a peak there on the
sixth chromosome you can see let’s slow
down as we go through here so if you
look at the sixth band in every one of
these little slides here you’ll see
there’s there’s really strong peak for
these various diseases they could be
infections like who gets typhus who gets
HIV one who gets have hepatitis C who
gets liver damage if they take a
particular drug in this case we go
forward one who gets multiple sclerosis
there’s the same peak showing up and so
on that that chromosome six if we keep
going forward we’ll see all kinds of
different diseases bechet’s disease a
mystery disease of the Silk Road
narcolepsy one of our speakers later
today has a narcolepsy and it’s a traces
to the same part of our genomes some
kinds of tumors as well even kind of
interesting not so crucially important
stuff like hair loss and and sometimes
very important things like peanut
allergies same part of chromosome six so
this part of chromosome six turns out to
be really interesting it’s also exactly
the same part of our genomes that we
screen for transplant match for trying
to find that crucial person who matches
you if you’re a patient in need of say
bone marrow or a kidney it’s the part of
our genomes that’s so rare to match and
it tells us so much about many many
questions and this part of our genomes
is called HLA it’s a little cluster of
genes there on chromosome six we can see
if we blow that chromosome up and I
think of it like a little prism it opens
light onto many many questions in our
lives so it makes proteins that are kind
of like hands there are five genes think
of them as the five fingers on each hand
two copies mom and dad’s copies that
they gave you those help us help our
cells sense the world within us sort of
figure out what’s going on inside and
how do we respond to it is there a
threat is there a bug that’s in US a
bacterium a virus etc is there an
allergen should we not not respond
and those genes help us decide how to
respond they strongly shape our health
and our health outlook for many
questions that we just looked at and
they are in many ways the epicenter of
diversity in our genomes they’re where
our genomes vary more letter for letter
than just about anywhere else that’s why
it’s so hard to find that match for
somebody who needs a bone marrow
transplant cuz they vary so much and
that variation is incredible so let’s
let’s go forward a little bit here and
let’s look at let’s imagine that we took
everybody’s copies of chromosome 6 not
just in the room here not just in the
other people who are watching in remote
audiences as well but everybody on the
planet so all roughly 7 billion times –
so roughly 15 billion copies of
chromosome 6 and we pick a random letter
a spot on that chromosome not an HLA
somewhere else we ask what’s the family
tree look like for all those copies how
are they related to each other if we go
back in time and if we make a tree let’s
go forward one little slide there we’ll
see that that that’s what the tree would
look like roughly that’s just a thousand
copies there but it’s a very complex
tree the tips are us there that our
copies are sort of the fruit at the tips
the root is back in time and there that
root goes back about a million years to
one person’s copy that gave rise to all
of our copies for that typical site in
it on a chromosome now that’s about them
that’s more or less million years
wherever you look in our genomes except
for spots like HLA that are really
really mysterious
so HLA we have to actually shrink down
the tree that were just looked at and we
have to instead look at a tree that
instead goes about 40 million years deep
so if the if the original tree for a
regular spot in our genomes is like a
Christmas tree the tree for HLA is like
a giant redwood it would go through the
roof here way into the sky it’s
incredibly deep and that 40 million
years if you think about it takes us
back to Darwin’s tree and what he was
thinking about evolutionarily so he was
trying to contemplate where where
humanity and other animals and plants
and everything in the planet came from
and he was thinking about that tree
his his thinking evolved and here we
have another another older male primate
this is ketone bay here in the zoo he’s
also got a branch he’s thinking about
the tree as well and Darwin’s thinking
on trees evolved to the next picture of
a tree which was his first attempt at
understanding the tree of primates so
how are people related to other primates
and he thought that he thought we were
closely related to chimpanzees to
gorillas he didn’t quite get the tree
exactly right but he got close if we
look at the tree this is how we
typically think of it so let’s let’s
look at our tree we’ve got some chimps
chimps and bonobos on the left there
we’ve got people in the middle there
we’ve got our gorillas on there so we’ve
got Kiki and ketone bay here in the zoo
and we’ve got orangutans on the far
right how are they related in a tree
well typically for a typical spot in our
genomes we can advance the slide this is
what the tree would look like most
people are more closely related to each
other more gorillas gorillas are more
closely related to each other and then
they come together at the the taxon
level deeper in time but for HLA
remember we’re going so deep that that
five million year depth that separates
us from chimpanzees or the six or seven
million that separates us most of the
time from Kitumba and Kiki that’s just
like a moat we can jump across it’s not
even there it’s 40 million years deep so
if we look at the HLA tree we could
actually be you each of us is more
closely related to some gorilla in HLA
than to some other people
each gorilla is more closely related to
some of us in HLA than to some other
gorillas okay think about that it’s kind
of crazy you’re you and the person next
to you
you’re closely related in most of your
genomes but in HLA you could be really
really far apart and you could actually
be closer to Kiki and that person could
be closer to ketone babe okay so if we
forward to the last slide that could
even come to your family so let’s say
that you would have a sibling
and you and your sibling got different
copies of HLA from your parents so you
got copy one from mom copy one from dad
your sibling got copy two from mom copy
two from dad that means you could
actually be closer to ketone Bay in HLA
than to your own sibling and your own
sibling could be closer to Kiki than to
you okay this is a new kind of
understanding of how of how the web of
life and the trees that go deep into our
past tie us together not just with each
other as people but even beyond those
boundaries sometimes and the talks we’re
gonna hear today I think are gonna are
gonna resonate with that they’re about
our responsibilities to each other as
humans as people but also to the planet
we live on and that we share with
everybody else in the zoo here and
outside so thank you so much for
listening and I’m excited to hear the
rest of the talks with you [Applause]
hands
this is awesome and it was actually a
trick question because if there’s
anybody who didn’t raise their hand
everybody came here with family and
that’s part of the talk today is that
that everybody here is related to each
other this is in a zoo it’s the place we
come to contemplate how we’re tied into
the web of life around us not just to
fellow humanity but to beyond humanity
as well and the talk today we’re gonna
get into a really neat part of our own
genomes that reveals this and I think of
this as our magic genes our most
informative genes I’m going to tell you
why they obsess me for for many reasons
but there’s a really ticklish one that
has to do with the zoo today and I think
John may have alluded to it in the
introduction so anybody on the screen
here anybody recognized the the little
tree diagram who drew that tree as you
may know Darwin you got it
so it was drawn by so the original Chuck
D Charles Darwin was the the person who
drew this tree and he was kind of
figuring out in his head what trees
might look like historically
evolutionary trees as his ideas were
bubbling up now Darwin himself if we
look at his family tree he had a really
interesting forbear so he might have
come to this talk with his grandfather
whose name was Erasmus so and Erasmus
was a naturalist himself so there was
ideas in the air in Darwin’s time and
when he talked with his grandfather his
grandfather might have floated one of
these ideas his idea was that all life
might share what he called one living
filament and this was very prescient in
some sense it was way before we knew
anything about genetics but of course if
we fast forward today to today we can
think of the filament within us within
our cells that that DNA those
chromosomes that make up our genomes as
that living filament that ties life
together from now way back into the past
and if you think about flipping those
those chromosomes to make that filament
we could ask a question where in our DNA
is most informative where does it tell
us the most about us there’s one part of
our genomes that I want to show you and
I’m going to see
if you can spot it so I’m gonna show you
a bunch of charts that scientists use to
scan across our genomes and say where
does it matter what spelling somebody
carries for a disease
so for typhus for typhoid fever for
example that there’s a little spot
there’s a peak there if we slow down
here so there’s a peak there on the
sixth chromosome you can see let’s slow
down as we go through here so if you
look at the sixth band in every one of
these little slides here you’ll see
there’s there’s really strong peak for
these various diseases they could be
infections like who gets typhus who gets
HIV one who gets have hepatitis C who
gets liver damage if they take a
particular drug in this case we go
forward one who gets multiple sclerosis
there’s the same peak showing up and so
on that that chromosome six if we keep
going forward we’ll see all kinds of
different diseases bechet’s disease a
mystery disease of the Silk Road
narcolepsy one of our speakers later
today has a narcolepsy and it’s a traces
to the same part of our genomes some
kinds of tumors as well even kind of
interesting not so crucially important
stuff like hair loss and and sometimes
very important things like peanut
allergies same part of chromosome six so
this part of chromosome six turns out to
be really interesting it’s also exactly
the same part of our genomes that we
screen for transplant match for trying
to find that crucial person who matches
you if you’re a patient in need of say
bone marrow or a kidney it’s the part of
our genomes that’s so rare to match and
it tells us so much about many many
questions and this part of our genomes
is called HLA it’s a little cluster of
genes there on chromosome six we can see
if we blow that chromosome up and I
think of it like a little prism it opens
light onto many many questions in our
lives so it makes proteins that are kind
of like hands there are five genes think
of them as the five fingers on each hand
two copies mom and dad’s copies that
they gave you those help us help our
cells sense the world within us sort of
figure out what’s going on inside and
how do we respond to it is there a
threat is there a bug that’s in US a
bacterium a virus etc is there an
allergen should we not not respond
and those genes help us decide how to
respond they strongly shape our health
and our health outlook for many
questions that we just looked at and
they are in many ways the epicenter of
diversity in our genomes they’re where
our genomes vary more letter for letter
than just about anywhere else that’s why
it’s so hard to find that match for
somebody who needs a bone marrow
transplant cuz they vary so much and
that variation is incredible so let’s
let’s go forward a little bit here and
let’s look at let’s imagine that we took
everybody’s copies of chromosome 6 not
just in the room here not just in the
other people who are watching in remote
audiences as well but everybody on the
planet so all roughly 7 billion times –
so roughly 15 billion copies of
chromosome 6 and we pick a random letter
a spot on that chromosome not an HLA
somewhere else we ask what’s the family
tree look like for all those copies how
are they related to each other if we go
back in time and if we make a tree let’s
go forward one little slide there we’ll
see that that that’s what the tree would
look like roughly that’s just a thousand
copies there but it’s a very complex
tree the tips are us there that our
copies are sort of the fruit at the tips
the root is back in time and there that
root goes back about a million years to
one person’s copy that gave rise to all
of our copies for that typical site in
it on a chromosome now that’s about them
that’s more or less million years
wherever you look in our genomes except
for spots like HLA that are really
really mysterious
so HLA we have to actually shrink down
the tree that were just looked at and we
have to instead look at a tree that
instead goes about 40 million years deep
so if the if the original tree for a
regular spot in our genomes is like a
Christmas tree the tree for HLA is like
a giant redwood it would go through the
roof here way into the sky it’s
incredibly deep and that 40 million
years if you think about it takes us
back to Darwin’s tree and what he was
thinking about evolutionarily so he was
trying to contemplate where where
humanity and other animals and plants
and everything in the planet came from
and he was thinking about that tree
his his thinking evolved and here we
have another another older male primate
this is ketone bay here in the zoo he’s
also got a branch he’s thinking about
the tree as well and Darwin’s thinking
on trees evolved to the next picture of
a tree which was his first attempt at
understanding the tree of primates so
how are people related to other primates
and he thought that he thought we were
closely related to chimpanzees to
gorillas he didn’t quite get the tree
exactly right but he got close if we
look at the tree this is how we
typically think of it so let’s let’s
look at our tree we’ve got some chimps
chimps and bonobos on the left there
we’ve got people in the middle there
we’ve got our gorillas on there so we’ve
got Kiki and ketone bay here in the zoo
and we’ve got orangutans on the far
right how are they related in a tree
well typically for a typical spot in our
genomes we can advance the slide this is
what the tree would look like most
people are more closely related to each
other more gorillas gorillas are more
closely related to each other and then
they come together at the the taxon
level deeper in time but for HLA
remember we’re going so deep that that
five million year depth that separates
us from chimpanzees or the six or seven
million that separates us most of the
time from Kitumba and Kiki that’s just
like a moat we can jump across it’s not
even there it’s 40 million years deep so
if we look at the HLA tree we could
actually be you each of us is more
closely related to some gorilla in HLA
than to some other people
each gorilla is more closely related to
some of us in HLA than to some other
gorillas okay think about that it’s kind
of crazy you’re you and the person next
to you
you’re closely related in most of your
genomes but in HLA you could be really
really far apart and you could actually
be closer to Kiki and that person could
be closer to ketone babe okay so if we
forward to the last slide that could
even come to your family so let’s say
that you would have a sibling
and you and your sibling got different
copies of HLA from your parents so you
got copy one from mom copy one from dad
your sibling got copy two from mom copy
two from dad that means you could
actually be closer to ketone Bay in HLA
than to your own sibling and your own
sibling could be closer to Kiki than to
you okay this is a new kind of
understanding of how of how the web of
life and the trees that go deep into our
past tie us together not just with each
other as people but even beyond those
boundaries sometimes and the talks we’re
gonna hear today I think are gonna are
gonna resonate with that they’re about
our responsibilities to each other as
humans as people but also to the planet
we live on and that we share with
everybody else in the zoo here and
outside so thank you so much for
listening and I’m excited to hear the
rest of the talks with you [Applause]
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