Would you like to inspect the original subtitles? These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated:
1
00:00:00,270 --> 00:00:03,020
(dramatic music)
2
00:00:04,910 --> 00:00:07,890
It's famous for its grizzly bears,
3
00:00:07,890 --> 00:00:12,890
its wolves, bison and its geothermal activity.
4
00:00:15,700 --> 00:00:17,200
All of greater Yellowstone
5
00:00:17,200 --> 00:00:20,943
is actually still an active volcano today.
6
00:00:23,040 --> 00:00:26,030
The geysers, hot springs and thermal pools
7
00:00:26,030 --> 00:00:30,151
signal the unrest that continues just below the surface.
8
00:00:30,151 --> 00:00:32,280
(dramatic music)
9
00:00:32,280 --> 00:00:36,710
There's a lot of volcanic activity underground
10
00:00:36,710 --> 00:00:41,710
beneath the GYE and so that expresses itself
11
00:00:41,760 --> 00:00:44,193
in many different ways at the surface.
12
00:00:45,240 --> 00:00:47,450
For many years scientists believed
13
00:00:47,450 --> 00:00:50,580
these pools were devoid of life,
14
00:00:50,580 --> 00:00:54,030
but a fantastic alien world exists
15
00:00:54,030 --> 00:00:56,343
in the waters of Yellowstone's hotspots.
16
00:00:57,540 --> 00:01:01,030
Yellowstone was the first place these were discovered.
17
00:01:01,030 --> 00:01:03,210
The thermal pools are filled with clues
18
00:01:03,210 --> 00:01:04,820
about the earliest life on earth
19
00:01:05,750 --> 00:01:08,103
and even life on distant planets.
20
00:01:09,320 --> 00:01:14,320
We study modern organisms that represent ancient life,
21
00:01:16,100 --> 00:01:19,330
or that give us an idea of where alien life
22
00:01:19,330 --> 00:01:22,639
{\an8}might be able to exist and how it could exist.
23
00:01:22,639 --> 00:01:25,389
{\an8}(dramatic music)
24
00:01:30,187 --> 00:01:33,354
(gentle bright music)
25
00:01:35,780 --> 00:01:39,240
In 1966, scientists discovered organisms
26
00:01:39,240 --> 00:01:41,730
in Yellowstone's boiling hot springs
27
00:01:41,730 --> 00:01:43,717
and called them thermophiles.
28
00:01:45,190 --> 00:01:48,680
A very famous microbiologist started sampling,
29
00:01:48,680 --> 00:01:52,240
{\an8}started doing standard microbiological tests
30
00:01:52,240 --> 00:01:55,430
{\an8}but at higher temperatures and really, really discovered
31
00:01:55,430 --> 00:01:57,983
that organisms were living in these hot springs.
32
00:02:00,870 --> 00:02:03,030
These thermophiles are thriving
33
00:02:03,030 --> 00:02:05,170
in an environment that would be fatal
34
00:02:05,170 --> 00:02:06,813
to most other forms of life.
35
00:02:07,990 --> 00:02:10,860
Thermal pools in and around Yellowstone
36
00:02:10,860 --> 00:02:14,270
are a living laboratory where scientists are even able
37
00:02:14,270 --> 00:02:18,260
to research potential life on distant planets.
38
00:02:18,260 --> 00:02:20,590
Understanding sort of the distribution
39
00:02:20,590 --> 00:02:24,440
of microbial life in extreme environments on our planet
40
00:02:24,440 --> 00:02:27,650
{\an8}gives us an idea of potentially where else
41
00:02:27,650 --> 00:02:30,533
{\an8}they could exist on other planetary bodies.
42
00:02:32,420 --> 00:02:34,110
Montana State University's
43
00:02:34,110 --> 00:02:38,910
Thermal Biology Institute studies bacteria, archaea,
44
00:02:38,910 --> 00:02:42,273
and viruses that hide in the springs and pools.
45
00:02:44,730 --> 00:02:46,720
One of the pools they're investigating
46
00:02:46,720 --> 00:02:48,413
is LaDuke Hot Springs.
47
00:02:50,890 --> 00:02:51,960
The field work here,
48
00:02:51,960 --> 00:02:55,650
there's a lot of unique safety issues.
49
00:02:55,650 --> 00:02:59,240
Stepping into a hot springs would be very dangerous,
50
00:02:59,240 --> 00:03:01,463
you can burn yourself very badly.
51
00:03:03,060 --> 00:03:05,740
It's so dangerous that we can't show
52
00:03:05,740 --> 00:03:07,893
how they actually collect their samples.
53
00:03:09,240 --> 00:03:12,870
It's definitely a case of don't try this at home.
54
00:03:12,870 --> 00:03:15,400
We are not going in to these hot springs
55
00:03:15,400 --> 00:03:20,400
with big shovels and digging up truck fulls of material.
56
00:03:20,730 --> 00:03:23,950
We're taking the smallest possible samples that we can
57
00:03:23,950 --> 00:03:26,163
to get the analysis that we wanna get.
58
00:03:27,400 --> 00:03:29,890
Brent is like a bio prospector
59
00:03:29,890 --> 00:03:32,513
as he investigates hot spring biology.
60
00:03:33,490 --> 00:03:36,830
In the pools there's a very large number
61
00:03:36,830 --> 00:03:39,900
of different organisms, so multiple species
62
00:03:39,900 --> 00:03:42,460
of bacteria and archaea.
63
00:03:42,460 --> 00:03:46,050
And then each of those has probably
64
00:03:46,050 --> 00:03:50,253
five or 10 viruses that infect those.
65
00:03:52,090 --> 00:03:53,900
They can provide clues as to
66
00:03:53,900 --> 00:03:57,250
how organisms lived long, long ago
67
00:03:57,250 --> 00:03:59,463
and what types of metabolisms they had.
68
00:04:00,620 --> 00:04:03,950
The rainbow-like colors seen in many areas
69
00:04:03,950 --> 00:04:06,013
come from heat-loving bacteria.
70
00:04:07,120 --> 00:04:09,100
So the photosynthetic organisms
71
00:04:09,100 --> 00:04:12,720
give you the greens and the bright oranges.
72
00:04:12,720 --> 00:04:15,470
Some yellow come from sulfur precipitation
73
00:04:15,470 --> 00:04:17,280
caused by the microbes.
74
00:04:17,280 --> 00:04:19,040
Some of the orange is minerals,
75
00:04:19,040 --> 00:04:21,030
you can get different colored minerals as well.
76
00:04:21,030 --> 00:04:23,400
So it's basically microbes and minerals
77
00:04:23,400 --> 00:04:26,200
interacting in the hot springs that give you the colors.
78
00:04:27,340 --> 00:04:29,470
Brilliant blue in the center
79
00:04:29,470 --> 00:04:32,950
comes from clear water reflecting back blue light,
80
00:04:32,950 --> 00:04:34,143
just like the sky.
81
00:04:35,100 --> 00:04:38,700
The wild, chromatic beauty attracts tourists
82
00:04:38,700 --> 00:04:40,680
but it also draws scientists
83
00:04:40,680 --> 00:04:43,570
that believe these extreme thermal conditions
84
00:04:43,570 --> 00:04:46,403
might replicate those found on other planets.
85
00:04:48,200 --> 00:04:51,860
Dr. Luke McKay is a microbial ecologist
86
00:04:51,860 --> 00:04:53,573
and an astrobiologist.
87
00:04:55,430 --> 00:04:57,710
I'm looking for organisms with
88
00:04:57,710 --> 00:05:00,820
what I call early evolved metabolisms,
89
00:05:00,820 --> 00:05:03,320
metabolisms that originated long, long ago
90
00:05:03,320 --> 00:05:05,433
shortly after the origin of life.
91
00:05:07,450 --> 00:05:08,980
Brent and Luke know
92
00:05:08,980 --> 00:05:11,380
that the invisible microbes that they hunt
93
00:05:11,380 --> 00:05:13,743
are elusive and diverse.
94
00:05:14,810 --> 00:05:17,930
When we show up at a thermal environment,
95
00:05:17,930 --> 00:05:19,620
typically the first thing we do
96
00:05:19,620 --> 00:05:24,138
is measure the temperature and the pH of the system.
97
00:05:24,138 --> 00:05:25,580
8.14.
98
00:05:25,580 --> 00:05:27,540
Depending on the environment and the type
99
00:05:27,540 --> 00:05:29,260
of thermal feature it is,
100
00:05:29,260 --> 00:05:32,410
we'll take different types of samples for chemical analysis
101
00:05:32,410 --> 00:05:35,430
to understand what types of chemical molecules,
102
00:05:35,430 --> 00:05:39,720
what types of chemistry is the hot spring composed of,
103
00:05:39,720 --> 00:05:41,280
because that will determine
104
00:05:41,280 --> 00:05:43,823
what types of microbes live in the hot spring.
105
00:05:45,500 --> 00:05:48,630
Both bacteria and archaea inhabit the pools
106
00:05:48,630 --> 00:05:52,683
in different proportions and both target viruses.
107
00:05:53,830 --> 00:05:55,830
And so, depending on the hot spring
108
00:05:55,830 --> 00:05:57,880
and the chemistry of the hot spring,
109
00:05:57,880 --> 00:05:59,500
the bacteria or archaea
110
00:05:59,500 --> 00:06:02,250
will use different chemistry, and so,
111
00:06:02,250 --> 00:06:04,250
if you have one hot spring that supports
112
00:06:04,250 --> 00:06:06,400
the metabolism of a lot of different archaea
113
00:06:06,400 --> 00:06:08,990
then you'll have a lot of archaea there.
114
00:06:08,990 --> 00:06:11,020
And pretty much anywhere where you're gonna have
115
00:06:11,020 --> 00:06:12,510
a lot of archaea and bacteria
116
00:06:12,510 --> 00:06:15,020
you're also gonna have a lot of viruses,
117
00:06:15,020 --> 00:06:17,483
and they're gonna be in any of the hot springs.
118
00:06:19,710 --> 00:06:21,160
These microbes are all part
119
00:06:21,160 --> 00:06:22,343
of the tree of life.
120
00:06:23,180 --> 00:06:25,480
All life on earth can be categorized
121
00:06:25,480 --> 00:06:28,120
{\an8}into one of the three domains of life.
122
00:06:28,120 --> 00:06:31,443
{\an8}Those are archaea, bacteria and eurkya.
123
00:06:32,420 --> 00:06:35,330
And bacteria, on the tree of life,
124
00:06:35,330 --> 00:06:39,890
is easily the most diverse of the three domains.
125
00:06:39,890 --> 00:06:43,750
Archaea is smaller and eurkya is even smaller than that
126
00:06:43,750 --> 00:06:47,290
in terms of, you know, if you can imagine an actual tree
127
00:06:47,290 --> 00:06:49,490
it would be like most of the branches
128
00:06:49,490 --> 00:06:51,730
are taken up by bacteria.
129
00:06:51,730 --> 00:06:53,450
It's crazy because when we hear
130
00:06:53,450 --> 00:06:55,450
what organisms are in the main carrier,
131
00:06:55,450 --> 00:06:57,490
we think it's insanely diverse,
132
00:06:57,490 --> 00:06:59,020
because it's us, it's humans,
133
00:06:59,020 --> 00:07:01,310
it's all the animals, insects,
134
00:07:01,310 --> 00:07:05,240
it's all the plants, all the fungi, protists,
135
00:07:05,240 --> 00:07:07,179
but in terms of their DNA, it's actually
136
00:07:07,179 --> 00:07:11,380
a very small fraction of the overall diversity of life.
137
00:07:11,380 --> 00:07:13,160
Most of that diversity is captured
138
00:07:13,160 --> 00:07:14,803
within the microbial world.
139
00:07:17,160 --> 00:07:18,920
Single celled archaea
140
00:07:18,920 --> 00:07:21,730
were originally classified with bacteria,
141
00:07:21,730 --> 00:07:23,633
but now have a branch of their own.
142
00:07:25,430 --> 00:07:27,660
Bacteria and archaea are different.
143
00:07:27,660 --> 00:07:29,750
They're branches of life
144
00:07:29,750 --> 00:07:34,633
that separated many, many billions of years ago.
145
00:07:35,850 --> 00:07:37,030
But then, when when we started
146
00:07:37,030 --> 00:07:39,370
to get molecular information,
147
00:07:39,370 --> 00:07:42,277
genomic or genetic information, in sequencing genes
148
00:07:42,277 --> 00:07:45,058
and comparing genes, we started to realize
149
00:07:45,058 --> 00:07:49,090
that bacteria and archaea are incredibly different
150
00:07:49,090 --> 00:07:50,150
from one another.
151
00:07:50,150 --> 00:07:52,973
Their genes are very dissimilar in many cases.
152
00:07:53,910 --> 00:07:56,350
This investigation requires extensive time
153
00:07:56,350 --> 00:07:59,060
in the field and in the lab.
154
00:07:59,060 --> 00:08:00,970
In TBI we're working on
155
00:08:00,970 --> 00:08:04,000
a couple of different aspects of thermophiles.
156
00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:05,760
{\an8}One is very fundamental.
157
00:08:05,760 --> 00:08:08,920
{\an8}So we're taking samples from the hot springs
158
00:08:08,920 --> 00:08:11,340
{\an8}and we've got groups of organisms
159
00:08:11,340 --> 00:08:13,500
{\an8}that no one's ever grown in a laboratory,
160
00:08:13,500 --> 00:08:15,690
{\an8}and nobody knows how to grow them.
161
00:08:15,690 --> 00:08:18,910
{\an8}We find them very common in the hot springs
162
00:08:18,910 --> 00:08:22,520
{\an8}and can't figure out how to reproduce that in the lab.
163
00:08:22,520 --> 00:08:26,100
{\an8}And so we're doing everything we can
164
00:08:26,100 --> 00:08:28,533
to learn about those micro organisms.
165
00:08:29,740 --> 00:08:33,530
If we can grow organisms in the lab we can understand
166
00:08:33,530 --> 00:08:35,640
so much about what they're doing
167
00:08:35,640 --> 00:08:37,620
and you can formulate hypothesis based
168
00:08:37,620 --> 00:08:40,300
on what you see in the hot spring and then test those
169
00:08:40,300 --> 00:08:42,070
in the tube in the lab.
170
00:08:42,070 --> 00:08:44,570
I take a sample from a hot spring
171
00:08:44,570 --> 00:08:48,920
and I extract all the DNA of all the genomes,
172
00:08:48,920 --> 00:08:52,130
of all the organisms, all the microorganisms
173
00:08:52,130 --> 00:08:54,580
in that hot spring sample.
174
00:08:54,580 --> 00:08:57,463
And then I sequence that DNA.
175
00:08:58,330 --> 00:09:01,590
And then the next step is the computer analysis
176
00:09:01,590 --> 00:09:04,850
of trying to understand how to
177
00:09:04,850 --> 00:09:06,990
take all of that genomic information
178
00:09:06,990 --> 00:09:10,863
and isolate different individual microbes.
179
00:09:12,420 --> 00:09:14,910
And then there are the strange viruses
180
00:09:14,910 --> 00:09:17,403
found in the streaming geysers and pools.
181
00:09:18,480 --> 00:09:21,080
You have thermophilic bacteria,
182
00:09:21,080 --> 00:09:23,440
you also have thermophilic archaea
183
00:09:23,440 --> 00:09:25,290
that both live in these hot springs,
184
00:09:25,290 --> 00:09:27,450
and then you have the viruses that infect
185
00:09:27,450 --> 00:09:29,530
both the archaea and the bacteria
186
00:09:29,530 --> 00:09:30,980
that live in the hot springs.
187
00:09:32,450 --> 00:09:35,350
Like bacteria, the word virus
188
00:09:35,350 --> 00:09:38,830
often conjures up images of sickness and death.
189
00:09:38,830 --> 00:09:41,700
But none of the heat loving viruses in Yellowstone
190
00:09:41,700 --> 00:09:45,283
affect our health because our bodies are too cold.
191
00:09:46,960 --> 00:09:50,820
So the viruses in the springs are dependent
192
00:09:50,820 --> 00:09:53,550
on those specific bacteria or archaea,
193
00:09:53,550 --> 00:09:56,923
so they don't infect humans.
194
00:09:58,120 --> 00:09:59,070
All have evolved
195
00:09:59,070 --> 00:10:02,790
from the earliest forms of life on embryonic earth.
196
00:10:02,790 --> 00:10:05,340
But together they suggest that life
197
00:10:05,340 --> 00:10:08,593
may have arisen in super hot environments.
198
00:10:09,900 --> 00:10:13,000
How did life originate here on earth?
199
00:10:13,000 --> 00:10:16,420
And what was the evolutionary history of life?
200
00:10:16,420 --> 00:10:19,070
How did life colonize certain environments
201
00:10:19,070 --> 00:10:23,300
that are very extreme or distinct from other environments?
202
00:10:23,300 --> 00:10:26,150
Some archaea, bacteria and viruses
203
00:10:26,150 --> 00:10:29,330
in extreme environments still live in the same way
204
00:10:29,330 --> 00:10:32,220
as our earliest microbial ancestors
205
00:10:32,220 --> 00:10:34,463
and use the same sources of energy.
206
00:10:35,740 --> 00:10:38,630
We oftentimes find organisms, microbes,
207
00:10:38,630 --> 00:10:42,950
with early evolved or deep evolutionary roots.
208
00:10:42,950 --> 00:10:44,810
In other words, they branch off
209
00:10:44,810 --> 00:10:48,590
at a very, very early point on the tree of life.
210
00:10:48,590 --> 00:10:51,250
And so these are the types of organisms
211
00:10:51,250 --> 00:10:54,450
that are likely, they're not the same
212
00:10:54,450 --> 00:10:57,810
as what was existing four billion years ago,
213
00:10:57,810 --> 00:11:01,390
but they may be more similar to that than anything else.
214
00:11:01,390 --> 00:11:05,960
And so if we understand their sort of modern day cousins
215
00:11:05,960 --> 00:11:07,840
of those ancient organisms,
216
00:11:07,840 --> 00:11:10,623
we can understand more about those ancient organisms.
217
00:11:11,480 --> 00:11:12,313
A new virus
218
00:11:12,313 --> 00:11:15,930
found in Yellowstone's thermal pools by Rebecca Hochstein
219
00:11:15,930 --> 00:11:19,140
and Martin Lawrence has a structure so ancient
220
00:11:19,140 --> 00:11:21,700
that scientists think it may be connected
221
00:11:21,700 --> 00:11:24,690
to the root of the universal tree of life
222
00:11:24,690 --> 00:11:26,270
according to a new study published
223
00:11:26,270 --> 00:11:28,163
by the National Academy of Sciences.
224
00:11:29,410 --> 00:11:32,830
It affects only archaea and it's spindle shaped.
225
00:11:32,830 --> 00:11:35,743
It seems to be part of a rare superfamily.
226
00:11:37,240 --> 00:11:40,350
Every time we go and sample, we find DNA
227
00:11:40,350 --> 00:11:43,230
from organisms that nobody's ever grown,
228
00:11:43,230 --> 00:11:44,920
nobody's ever named.
229
00:11:44,920 --> 00:11:48,720
And so just the diversity of unknown organisms out there
230
00:11:48,720 --> 00:11:51,080
is to me the most exciting.
231
00:11:51,080 --> 00:11:52,140
This is actually like
232
00:11:52,140 --> 00:11:54,850
a very active area of research.
233
00:11:54,850 --> 00:11:57,600
And as new genomic information comes in
234
00:11:57,600 --> 00:12:00,630
on different organisms, we are able to sequence new genomes
235
00:12:00,630 --> 00:12:03,370
and we're able to get new sequences to compare
236
00:12:03,370 --> 00:12:05,840
and to place on the tree of life.
237
00:12:05,840 --> 00:12:07,910
New branches start to arise.
238
00:12:07,910 --> 00:12:10,950
We start to actually discover new branches of life
239
00:12:10,950 --> 00:12:12,600
that we didn't know about before.
240
00:12:13,750 --> 00:12:15,890
The possibilities have experts
241
00:12:15,890 --> 00:12:17,493
in many fields excited.
242
00:12:19,530 --> 00:12:22,100
The main goal of my research
243
00:12:22,100 --> 00:12:26,290
is to understand what organisms are in these hot springs,
244
00:12:26,290 --> 00:12:29,930
but also as an engineer, what can we do with these,
245
00:12:29,930 --> 00:12:32,290
how can they benefit society?
246
00:12:32,290 --> 00:12:35,180
How can we use them to do
247
00:12:35,180 --> 00:12:40,180
any sort of biotechnological task that we set at hand?
248
00:12:41,150 --> 00:12:42,680
As they investigate the ways
249
00:12:42,680 --> 00:12:46,060
that life likely evolved they're inching closer
250
00:12:46,060 --> 00:12:48,723
to finding new places where life might be found.
251
00:12:50,070 --> 00:12:51,820
So as we start to gather data
252
00:12:51,820 --> 00:12:55,380
about the chemistry of Mars or the chemistry of Titan,
253
00:12:55,380 --> 00:12:58,570
or Enceladus or Europa,
254
00:12:58,570 --> 00:13:01,670
all of these exoplanets in our own solar system
255
00:13:01,670 --> 00:13:03,900
that are interesting places where life
256
00:13:03,900 --> 00:13:08,160
may have at least at one point colonized,
257
00:13:08,160 --> 00:13:12,090
then we can understand a lot about those environments
258
00:13:12,090 --> 00:13:13,690
by studying environments on Earth
259
00:13:13,690 --> 00:13:16,443
that are sort of exotic and interesting.
260
00:13:17,970 --> 00:13:20,470
Yellowstone's thermal pools may hold the keys
261
00:13:20,470 --> 00:13:23,823
to the origin of life on our planet and beyond.
262
00:13:25,400 --> 00:13:28,170
There is so much we don't know
263
00:13:28,170 --> 00:13:30,970
and that we're still learning constantly.
264
00:13:30,970 --> 00:13:33,000
Perhaps one day soon
265
00:13:33,000 --> 00:13:35,760
Yellowstone's thermophiles would reveal the answers
266
00:13:35,760 --> 00:13:38,193
to one of the most burning questions in science.
267
00:13:39,190 --> 00:13:42,130
Are we alone in the universe?
268
00:13:42,130 --> 00:13:47,130
I have no evidence to say that we are not alone.
269
00:13:48,530 --> 00:13:50,960
I have not discovered alien life,
270
00:13:50,960 --> 00:13:54,610
but I think it is incredibly probable
271
00:13:54,610 --> 00:13:55,873
that we are not alone.
272
00:13:58,001 --> 00:14:00,584
(bright music)
21232
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get subtitles in any language from opensubtitles.com, and translate them here.