so for thousands of years we’re really
probably millions of years our ancestors
have looked up at the sky and wondered
what’s up there and they’ve also have
started to wonder hmm couldn’t we be
alone in this planet now I’m fortunate
that I get to pay get paid to actually
ask some of those questions and sort of
bad news for you your tax dollars are
paying me to try to answer some of those
questions but then about ten years ago I
was told I mean asked if I would start
to look at the technology to help get us
off planet and so that’s what I’m going
to talk to you about today so playing to
the local crowd this is what it looks
like in your day to day life in Boston
but as you start to go off planet things
look very very different so there we are
hovering above the WGBH studios and
here’s a very famous picture that Frank
Borman took of the earth rise from the
moon and you can see the earth starting
to recede and then what I love is this
picture that was taken from the surface
of Mars looking back at the earth can
anyone find the earth I’m gonna help you
out a little mmm-hmm yeah the point of
showing this is that when people start
to go to Mars
they’re not going to be able to keep
calling in and being micromanaged the
way people on space station are they’re
gonna have to be independent so even
though they’re up there they’re gonna be
all sorts of things that they’re gonna
need just like people on earth need
things like Oh transportation life
support food clothing and so on but
unlike on earth they are also going to
need oxygen they’re gonna have to deal
with about a third of the gravity that
we have here they’re gonna have to worry
about habitats power heat light and
radiation protection something that we
don’t actually worry about nearly as
much on the earth because we had this
beautiful atmosphere and magnetosphere
the problem with that is that we also
have a lot of constraints so the biggest
one for us is up mass and the number
that I’ve used for years is it costs
about ten thousand dollars to launch a
can of coke and
ourthe orbit which I calculate the other
day is approximately 10 apples if you’re
not used to cans of coke the problem is
there you are with $10,000 later and
you’re still in low-earth orbit you’re
not even at the Moon or Mars or anything
else so you’re going to have to try to
figure out how to keep the mass as low
as possible so you don’t have to launch
it but on top of that cost issue with
the mass you also have problems of
storage and flexibility and reliability
you can’t just get there and say oops I
forgot to bring because amazon.com just
does not deliver to Mars so you better
be prepared so what is the solution for
this and I’m going to propose to you for
the rest of this talk that the solution
actually is life and when you start to
look at life as a technology you realize
that’s it that’s exactly what we needed
this plant here like every person here
and every one of your dogs and cats and
plants and so on all started as a single
cell so imagine you’re starting is a
very low up mass object and then growing
into something a good deal bigger now my
hero Charles Darwin of course reminds us
that there’s no such thing as a designer
in biology but what if what if we now
have the technology to design biology
maybe even design Oh whole new
life-forms that can do things for us
that we couldn’t have imagined otherwise
so years ago I was asked to start to
sell this program and I was doing that I
was put in front of a panel at NASA as
you might sort of imagine a bunch of
people in suits and white shirts and
pencil protectors and I did this sort of
you know crazy wild this is all that you
know the next great thing and I thought
they would be blowing over and instead
the chairman of the committee just
looked at me straight in the eye and
said so what’s the big idea so it’s like
okay you want Star Trek we’ll do Star
Trek and
let me tell you what the big idea is
well we have used organisms to make
biomaterials for years so here’s a great
picture taken outside of Glasgow and you
can see lots of great biomaterials there
there are trees that you could use to
build houses their sheep were they you
could get your wool from you could get
leather from the sheep I just quickly
glanced around the room I bet there’s no
one in this room that doesn’t have some
kind of animal or plant product on them
some kind of biomaterial but you know
what we’re not going to take sheep and
trees and stuff to Mars that’s nuts
because the up-mass problem but we are
going to take things like this this is
bacillus subtlest those white dots that
you see are spores this happens to be a
bacterium that can form incredibly
resistant spores and when I say
incredibly resistant they’ve proven
themselves so subtlest spores have been
flowing on what was called el def
long-duration exposure facility for
almost six years and some of them
survived that in space unbelievable a
lot better than any of us can do so why
not just take the capabilities like to
make wood or to make wool or spider silk
or whatever and put them in bacillus
subtlest spores and take those with you
off planet so what are you gonna do when
you’re off planet here’s an iconic
picture of Buzz Aldrin looking back at
the eagle when he landed well it was
almost 50 years ago on the surface of
the Moon now if you’re gonna go to the
moon for three days and you’re the first
person to set foot yeah you can live in
a tin can but you wouldn’t want to do
that for say a year and a half so I did
actually a calculation being in
California I looked at what the average
size of a cell at Alcatraz is and I
could news for you the volume in the
Eagle there in the lunar module was
about the size of a cell at Alcatraz if
it were only five feet high so
incredibly cramped living quarters you
just can’t ask a human to stay in there
for long periods of time so why not take
these biomaterials and make something
so here’s an image that colleague of
mine who’s an architect Chris Mauer has
done of what we’ve been proposing and
we’ll get to the point of why I’ve been
standing up here holding something that
looks like a dried sandwich this whole
lecture so we propose that the solution
to the habitat problem on Mars could
just simply lie in a fungus so I’ve now
probably going to turn off everyone from
ever eating a mushroom again so let’s
let’s talk about fungi for a second so
you’re probably familiar with this
fruiting body of the fungus that’s the
mushroom but what we’re interested in
actually is what’s beneath the surface
there the mycelium which are these root
hairlike structures that are really the
main part of the mushroom well it turns
out you can take those there’s a
micrograph I did and you can put them in
a mold and give them a little food and
it doesn’t take much you can grow these
things on sawdust and so on so this
piece here was growing on sawdust and
that mycelium then will fill that
structure to make something we’ve
actually tried growing mycelium on Mars
similar simulant so no one’s actually
going to the surface of Mars but this is
simulating surface of Mars and you can
see those hair like my Celia out there
it’s really amazing stuff how strong can
you make these things well you know I
could give you numbers and tests and so
on but I think that’s probably the best
way to describe it there’s one of my
students proving that you can do this
I’m to do this then you’ve got to figure
out how to put it in context house is
actually gonna happen I mean this is a
great ideal in but how are you gonna get
from here to there so what we’re saying
is you grow up the mycelium in the lab
for example and then you fill up a
little structure maybe a house like
structure that’s tiny that is maybe a
double bagged sort of plastic thing like
an inflatable I sort of think l.l.bean
when I see this and then you put in a
rocket ship and you send it off to Mars
come on launch ten nine eight
well that and at some point you get to
Mars rocket lands
you release the bag and you add a little
water and while I you’ve got your
habitat you know how cool would that be
and the beauty of that is you don’t have
to take something pre-built and so our
estimates are that we could save 90
percent of the mass that mass is
currently proposing by taking up a big
steel structure if we actually grow it
on-site so let me give you another big
idea what about digital information
what’s really interesting is you have a
physical link to your parents and they
have a physical link to their parents
and so on all the way back to the origin
of life you have never broken that
continuum but the fact is that we can do
that today so we have students everyday
in our labs students in Boston even do
this that make up DNA sequences and they
hit the send button and they send into
their local DNA synthesis company now
once you’ve made that physical link
break that physical link where you’re
sending it across town it doesn’t matter
if you’re sending it across the Charles
River or if you’re sending that
information to Mars you’ve broken that
physical link so then once you’re on
Mars or across the river or wherever you
can take that digital information
synthesize the physical DNA put it maybe
in another organism and voila you’ve got
new capabilities there so again you’ve
broken that physical link that’s huge
what about chemistry biology does
chemistry for us on earth and again has
for literally thousands of years I bet
virtually everyone in this room is eaten
something today that has been made by
biology doing chemistry let me give you
a big hint there what about another idea
what about using DNA itself to make a
wire it’s again we’re trying to
miniaturize everything DNA is really
cheap strawberries have a gazillion
amount of DNA you know you could take a
strawberry with you isolate the DNA and
one of my students has figured out a way
to take DNA and tweak it a little bit so
that you can incorporate silver atoms in
very specific places thus making an
electrical wire
so while we’re on the subject of metals
we’re gonna need to use metals for
things like integrated circuits probably
we’re gonna want it for some structures
and so on and things like integrated
circuits ultimately go bad we could talk
a lot about that but I’m gonna I’m gonna
leave it at that that they do go bad and
so where are you gonna get those metals
yeah you could try to mine them with
heavy equipment but you got that up-mass
problem I always tell people the best
way to find the metals for a snoo
cellphone is in a dead cell phone so
what if you take biology as the
technology to get these metals out and
how do you do this well take a look at
the back of a vitamin bottle and you’ll
get an idea of all the sorts of metals
that we actually use in our bodies so we
have a lot of proteins as well as other
organisms that can actually specifically
bind metals so what if we now take those
proteins and maybe attach them to this
fungal mycelium and make a filter so we
can start to pull those metals out in a
very specific way without big mining
equipment and even better we’ve actually
done a proof-of-concept where we’ve then
taken those metals that we pulled out
with proteins and reprinted an
integrated circuit using a plasma
printer you know again how cool
electricity I was asked by the head of
one of the the NASA centers if you could
ever take chemical energy and turn that
into electrical energy well the great
news is is not just the electric eel
that does it everybody in this room who
is still alive and functioning is doing
that part of the food that you’ve eaten
today is gone to operate the nerve cells
in your body but even other organisms
non-sentient ones are creating
electrical energy even bacteria some
bacteria are very good at making little
wires so if we can harvest that ability
of turning chemical energy into
electrical energy again how cool would
that be so here’s some of the big ideas
we talked about let me try one more life
2.0 so for example all of the sugars in
our body are right-handed
why shouldn’t we make an organism with
left-handed sugars why not make an
organism that can do things that no
organism can do today so organisms
normally have evolved to live in very
specific environments so here’s this
lion cub literally up a tree and I took
a picture I’m a bit later and he’s a lot
happier when he was down in the ground
so organisms are designed for specific
environments but what if you can go back
to that idea of synthetic biology and
tweak them around so here’s one of our
favorite places in Yellowstone National
Park this is octopus Springs if you tilt
your head a little bit it sort of looks
like a body and an tentacles coming out
it’s above the boiling temperature of
water those organisms that you see on
the edge and the colors actually match
the temperatures that are there very
very high temperature thermophiles
so why not take organisms that can live
extremes whether it’s high temperature
low temperature or low pH or high pH or
high salt or high levels of radiation
and take some of those capabilities and
put it into other organisms this is a
project that my students have calling I
love this the hell cell and so we’ve
done that we’ve taken organisms and sort
of tweaked them and push them the edges
and this is important for getting us off
planet and also for understanding what
life is like in the universe so let me
give you just a couple of final thoughts
first is this whole idea that we have
all these needs for human settlement off
planet that are in some ways exactly
like we have on the earth that we need
the food and we need the shelter and so
on but we have very very different
constraints of this up-mass problem and
the reliability and the flexibility and
so on but because we have these
constraints that you don’t have here
where you might have to think about the
indigenous petrochemical industry or
whatever you now have constraints that
have to unleash creativity and once you
unleash this creativity because you have
the new constraints you’re forcing
game-changing technological advances
that you wouldn’t have gotten any other
way finally we have to think a little
bit is it a good idea
to take her around with life well the
the sort of easy answer to that is that
probably no one in the room keeps a wolf
cub at home but you might have a puppy
or a dog
you probably didn’t eat Tia sent a this
summer but you ate corn we have been
doing genetic modification with
organisms for literally 10,000 or more
years this is a different approach but
to say all the sudden humans should
never touch an organism it’s kind of
silly because the we have that
capability now to do things that are far
more beneficial for the planet Earth and
for life beyond that and so then the
question is should we and of course I
feel that not only should we at least
we’re getting off Earth but actually if
we don’t use synthetic biology we will
never solve this up-mass problem so once
you think of life as a technology you’ve
got the solution and so with that I’d
like to finish by the way I always
finish and say ad astra which means to
the stars
thank you very much Boston [Applause]
probably millions of years our ancestors
have looked up at the sky and wondered
what’s up there and they’ve also have
started to wonder hmm couldn’t we be
alone in this planet now I’m fortunate
that I get to pay get paid to actually
ask some of those questions and sort of
bad news for you your tax dollars are
paying me to try to answer some of those
questions but then about ten years ago I
was told I mean asked if I would start
to look at the technology to help get us
off planet and so that’s what I’m going
to talk to you about today so playing to
the local crowd this is what it looks
like in your day to day life in Boston
but as you start to go off planet things
look very very different so there we are
hovering above the WGBH studios and
here’s a very famous picture that Frank
Borman took of the earth rise from the
moon and you can see the earth starting
to recede and then what I love is this
picture that was taken from the surface
of Mars looking back at the earth can
anyone find the earth I’m gonna help you
out a little mmm-hmm yeah the point of
showing this is that when people start
to go to Mars
they’re not going to be able to keep
calling in and being micromanaged the
way people on space station are they’re
gonna have to be independent so even
though they’re up there they’re gonna be
all sorts of things that they’re gonna
need just like people on earth need
things like Oh transportation life
support food clothing and so on but
unlike on earth they are also going to
need oxygen they’re gonna have to deal
with about a third of the gravity that
we have here they’re gonna have to worry
about habitats power heat light and
radiation protection something that we
don’t actually worry about nearly as
much on the earth because we had this
beautiful atmosphere and magnetosphere
the problem with that is that we also
have a lot of constraints so the biggest
one for us is up mass and the number
that I’ve used for years is it costs
about ten thousand dollars to launch a
can of coke and
ourthe orbit which I calculate the other
day is approximately 10 apples if you’re
not used to cans of coke the problem is
there you are with $10,000 later and
you’re still in low-earth orbit you’re
not even at the Moon or Mars or anything
else so you’re going to have to try to
figure out how to keep the mass as low
as possible so you don’t have to launch
it but on top of that cost issue with
the mass you also have problems of
storage and flexibility and reliability
you can’t just get there and say oops I
forgot to bring because amazon.com just
does not deliver to Mars so you better
be prepared so what is the solution for
this and I’m going to propose to you for
the rest of this talk that the solution
actually is life and when you start to
look at life as a technology you realize
that’s it that’s exactly what we needed
this plant here like every person here
and every one of your dogs and cats and
plants and so on all started as a single
cell so imagine you’re starting is a
very low up mass object and then growing
into something a good deal bigger now my
hero Charles Darwin of course reminds us
that there’s no such thing as a designer
in biology but what if what if we now
have the technology to design biology
maybe even design Oh whole new
life-forms that can do things for us
that we couldn’t have imagined otherwise
so years ago I was asked to start to
sell this program and I was doing that I
was put in front of a panel at NASA as
you might sort of imagine a bunch of
people in suits and white shirts and
pencil protectors and I did this sort of
you know crazy wild this is all that you
know the next great thing and I thought
they would be blowing over and instead
the chairman of the committee just
looked at me straight in the eye and
said so what’s the big idea so it’s like
okay you want Star Trek we’ll do Star
Trek and
let me tell you what the big idea is
well we have used organisms to make
biomaterials for years so here’s a great
picture taken outside of Glasgow and you
can see lots of great biomaterials there
there are trees that you could use to
build houses their sheep were they you
could get your wool from you could get
leather from the sheep I just quickly
glanced around the room I bet there’s no
one in this room that doesn’t have some
kind of animal or plant product on them
some kind of biomaterial but you know
what we’re not going to take sheep and
trees and stuff to Mars that’s nuts
because the up-mass problem but we are
going to take things like this this is
bacillus subtlest those white dots that
you see are spores this happens to be a
bacterium that can form incredibly
resistant spores and when I say
incredibly resistant they’ve proven
themselves so subtlest spores have been
flowing on what was called el def
long-duration exposure facility for
almost six years and some of them
survived that in space unbelievable a
lot better than any of us can do so why
not just take the capabilities like to
make wood or to make wool or spider silk
or whatever and put them in bacillus
subtlest spores and take those with you
off planet so what are you gonna do when
you’re off planet here’s an iconic
picture of Buzz Aldrin looking back at
the eagle when he landed well it was
almost 50 years ago on the surface of
the Moon now if you’re gonna go to the
moon for three days and you’re the first
person to set foot yeah you can live in
a tin can but you wouldn’t want to do
that for say a year and a half so I did
actually a calculation being in
California I looked at what the average
size of a cell at Alcatraz is and I
could news for you the volume in the
Eagle there in the lunar module was
about the size of a cell at Alcatraz if
it were only five feet high so
incredibly cramped living quarters you
just can’t ask a human to stay in there
for long periods of time so why not take
these biomaterials and make something
so here’s an image that colleague of
mine who’s an architect Chris Mauer has
done of what we’ve been proposing and
we’ll get to the point of why I’ve been
standing up here holding something that
looks like a dried sandwich this whole
lecture so we propose that the solution
to the habitat problem on Mars could
just simply lie in a fungus so I’ve now
probably going to turn off everyone from
ever eating a mushroom again so let’s
let’s talk about fungi for a second so
you’re probably familiar with this
fruiting body of the fungus that’s the
mushroom but what we’re interested in
actually is what’s beneath the surface
there the mycelium which are these root
hairlike structures that are really the
main part of the mushroom well it turns
out you can take those there’s a
micrograph I did and you can put them in
a mold and give them a little food and
it doesn’t take much you can grow these
things on sawdust and so on so this
piece here was growing on sawdust and
that mycelium then will fill that
structure to make something we’ve
actually tried growing mycelium on Mars
similar simulant so no one’s actually
going to the surface of Mars but this is
simulating surface of Mars and you can
see those hair like my Celia out there
it’s really amazing stuff how strong can
you make these things well you know I
could give you numbers and tests and so
on but I think that’s probably the best
way to describe it there’s one of my
students proving that you can do this
I’m to do this then you’ve got to figure
out how to put it in context house is
actually gonna happen I mean this is a
great ideal in but how are you gonna get
from here to there so what we’re saying
is you grow up the mycelium in the lab
for example and then you fill up a
little structure maybe a house like
structure that’s tiny that is maybe a
double bagged sort of plastic thing like
an inflatable I sort of think l.l.bean
when I see this and then you put in a
rocket ship and you send it off to Mars
come on launch ten nine eight
well that and at some point you get to
Mars rocket lands
you release the bag and you add a little
water and while I you’ve got your
habitat you know how cool would that be
and the beauty of that is you don’t have
to take something pre-built and so our
estimates are that we could save 90
percent of the mass that mass is
currently proposing by taking up a big
steel structure if we actually grow it
on-site so let me give you another big
idea what about digital information
what’s really interesting is you have a
physical link to your parents and they
have a physical link to their parents
and so on all the way back to the origin
of life you have never broken that
continuum but the fact is that we can do
that today so we have students everyday
in our labs students in Boston even do
this that make up DNA sequences and they
hit the send button and they send into
their local DNA synthesis company now
once you’ve made that physical link
break that physical link where you’re
sending it across town it doesn’t matter
if you’re sending it across the Charles
River or if you’re sending that
information to Mars you’ve broken that
physical link so then once you’re on
Mars or across the river or wherever you
can take that digital information
synthesize the physical DNA put it maybe
in another organism and voila you’ve got
new capabilities there so again you’ve
broken that physical link that’s huge
what about chemistry biology does
chemistry for us on earth and again has
for literally thousands of years I bet
virtually everyone in this room is eaten
something today that has been made by
biology doing chemistry let me give you
a big hint there what about another idea
what about using DNA itself to make a
wire it’s again we’re trying to
miniaturize everything DNA is really
cheap strawberries have a gazillion
amount of DNA you know you could take a
strawberry with you isolate the DNA and
one of my students has figured out a way
to take DNA and tweak it a little bit so
that you can incorporate silver atoms in
very specific places thus making an
electrical wire
so while we’re on the subject of metals
we’re gonna need to use metals for
things like integrated circuits probably
we’re gonna want it for some structures
and so on and things like integrated
circuits ultimately go bad we could talk
a lot about that but I’m gonna I’m gonna
leave it at that that they do go bad and
so where are you gonna get those metals
yeah you could try to mine them with
heavy equipment but you got that up-mass
problem I always tell people the best
way to find the metals for a snoo
cellphone is in a dead cell phone so
what if you take biology as the
technology to get these metals out and
how do you do this well take a look at
the back of a vitamin bottle and you’ll
get an idea of all the sorts of metals
that we actually use in our bodies so we
have a lot of proteins as well as other
organisms that can actually specifically
bind metals so what if we now take those
proteins and maybe attach them to this
fungal mycelium and make a filter so we
can start to pull those metals out in a
very specific way without big mining
equipment and even better we’ve actually
done a proof-of-concept where we’ve then
taken those metals that we pulled out
with proteins and reprinted an
integrated circuit using a plasma
printer you know again how cool
electricity I was asked by the head of
one of the the NASA centers if you could
ever take chemical energy and turn that
into electrical energy well the great
news is is not just the electric eel
that does it everybody in this room who
is still alive and functioning is doing
that part of the food that you’ve eaten
today is gone to operate the nerve cells
in your body but even other organisms
non-sentient ones are creating
electrical energy even bacteria some
bacteria are very good at making little
wires so if we can harvest that ability
of turning chemical energy into
electrical energy again how cool would
that be so here’s some of the big ideas
we talked about let me try one more life
2.0 so for example all of the sugars in
our body are right-handed
why shouldn’t we make an organism with
left-handed sugars why not make an
organism that can do things that no
organism can do today so organisms
normally have evolved to live in very
specific environments so here’s this
lion cub literally up a tree and I took
a picture I’m a bit later and he’s a lot
happier when he was down in the ground
so organisms are designed for specific
environments but what if you can go back
to that idea of synthetic biology and
tweak them around so here’s one of our
favorite places in Yellowstone National
Park this is octopus Springs if you tilt
your head a little bit it sort of looks
like a body and an tentacles coming out
it’s above the boiling temperature of
water those organisms that you see on
the edge and the colors actually match
the temperatures that are there very
very high temperature thermophiles
so why not take organisms that can live
extremes whether it’s high temperature
low temperature or low pH or high pH or
high salt or high levels of radiation
and take some of those capabilities and
put it into other organisms this is a
project that my students have calling I
love this the hell cell and so we’ve
done that we’ve taken organisms and sort
of tweaked them and push them the edges
and this is important for getting us off
planet and also for understanding what
life is like in the universe so let me
give you just a couple of final thoughts
first is this whole idea that we have
all these needs for human settlement off
planet that are in some ways exactly
like we have on the earth that we need
the food and we need the shelter and so
on but we have very very different
constraints of this up-mass problem and
the reliability and the flexibility and
so on but because we have these
constraints that you don’t have here
where you might have to think about the
indigenous petrochemical industry or
whatever you now have constraints that
have to unleash creativity and once you
unleash this creativity because you have
the new constraints you’re forcing
game-changing technological advances
that you wouldn’t have gotten any other
way finally we have to think a little
bit is it a good idea
to take her around with life well the
the sort of easy answer to that is that
probably no one in the room keeps a wolf
cub at home but you might have a puppy
or a dog
you probably didn’t eat Tia sent a this
summer but you ate corn we have been
doing genetic modification with
organisms for literally 10,000 or more
years this is a different approach but
to say all the sudden humans should
never touch an organism it’s kind of
silly because the we have that
capability now to do things that are far
more beneficial for the planet Earth and
for life beyond that and so then the
question is should we and of course I
feel that not only should we at least
we’re getting off Earth but actually if
we don’t use synthetic biology we will
never solve this up-mass problem so once
you think of life as a technology you’ve
got the solution and so with that I’d
like to finish by the way I always
finish and say ad astra which means to
the stars
thank you very much Boston [Applause]
Please follow and like us: