Best Ted Talk Ever?

     I adore Laurie Garrett and think her book The Coming Plague is one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read, so I don't know how she muffed that part about a student allegedly bringing a long-extinct plant back to life. I followed up on that after watching this and realized what sounded currently impossible was indeed impossible. It was more a graphic reconstruction of how an extinct plant looked. It was in no way a re-introduction of that species into the world. There would be no way to access that long-lost genetic information or "reconstruct" the plant from scratch via synthetic biology. Scientists have recently found caches of seeds of plants that have been extinct for centuries (as long as 850 years) and managed to bring those species back to life. The new Lazarus species may not be lucky finds of holdout populations but creations of synthetic biology. But if we're talking about plants that go back to the age of the dinosaurs or that antedate them it simply has not happened (and probably never will).A fossil is not a genetic blueprint.

     I saw YouTube commenters picked up on this error too:

anonyarena5 years ago
@ 5:09 QUOTE "Indeed already, a graduate student at Berkeley brought back a form of plant that had been extinct since the Devonian age, and it's back, it's alive, it's replicating it's part of Earth again. Who made that choice? This kid." - This was a rather startling claim! So I checked it out. It turns out the headline "Graduate Student Brings Extinct Plants To Life" only means he did a beautifully rendered illustration of a Devonian age plant. I love you Laurie, but that was very sloppy. He did not bring an extinct plant back to life.

     With that caveat, I'll say I still think this is the best Ted Talk I have ever seen and she did nail the prediction about the cost of the genetic sequencer. They are now going for around a thousand dollars. 

     It's fun to read up on the iGEM competition and see what the kids are creating. There are a number of interesting videos on YouTube detailing these novel organisms. You should see the one where the bacterium's flagellum can collect metals for space mining. Yummy.

 And yeah, probably prepare for CRISPR terrorism.
 


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