@@Gurpreet_69I've started a PhD this year ! It's super fun and I've had the chance to find the two best supervisors ever 🎉 The only problem I predict is fundings. But that's a future me problem and there always exist solutions ! So absolutely don't hesitate to commit to this way. Even if you don't pursue a career in academia your PhD (whatever the subject) is super valuable anywhere at anytime :)
Not really. Automating menial tasks like that let PhDs actually use their PhDs and their brains more. Company more effectively utilizes their smart employees.
Yes. Then some manager agreed to keep him on full pay for another year while he worked on an idea no one believed in. That manager deserves credit for making that bet and giving time for the scientific method to pay dividends even when they were far from guaranteed.
It's crazy how two completely unrelated, seemingly useless discoveries can come together to form something so great. Goes to show that we should never assume something is pointless before trying it
that's base research, one of the biggest challenges we have in science is to defend it, because politicians and companies tend to think that applied research is all that matter, but they don't realize that the applied research only exists because of the base research
I can't imagine being offered a job at a dna research company while just at a bakery. I can't imagine getting to keep your job after it's been automated. I can't imagine getting to pitch a new way of doing things and getting a whole team of people to explore the idea.
Maybe it's something like that if he were a more solid character, public opinion would give a lot more credence to what he's been saying. Another thing the powerful people don't want.
Yeah, I wonder how did the dynamic get to that 😅 like "You'll also give me some Bavarian pretzels, also, do you have a PhD and want to work at a research startup?"
The big difference is that the automation that “took” his job actually allowed him the paid time he needed to invent PCR because unlike any of us who will lose our jobs to automation, he wasn’t dismissed when the more efficient method came online.
@@HungryGhost1986 Here in the US, white workers used to do that using day laborers who they could pay very little to, because there weren't equal opportunity protections & employers could only hire white people if they wanted to.
Right? Sometimes the struggle for survival can lead to innovation, I'm sure; but probably not on the same scale as the suffering that kind of job loss would cause.
I hate how he does this now, you can never go back and watch videos because they have a different thumbnail and title and it's kind of a cheap way to get more people to watch his stuff by accidentally clicking on it thinking it's a new video
I haven't seen it as much recently (and even less after no longer being a Patreon supporter of this channel), but back in the day we'd get quick surveys about which thumbnail we'd most likely click on shortly before a new video was released. Maybe they also asked about titles too--I don't recall. But either way, I think the whole Veritasium crew puts effort into maximizing their views by analyzing the metrics and adapting quickly while a video is still new.
@@AnnaNicole.they just submit several thumbnails and youtube switches between them automatically, choosing whichever one is the best. one of the more recent features, lots of youtubers use it nowadays
A lot of great music, art, inventions etc were made because of psychedelics. Maybe the only class of "drugs" that can improve your life and help someone become a better and more enlightened person
Psychedelics don't do cause inventiveness or creativity. An uncreative person on LSD isn't going to become creative. Jimi Hendrix was an excellent guitar player and creative person before taking any drugs. He practiced, he studied he learned, then he did drugs.
@@nerfherder4284 yeah I think anyone who watches the whole video and takes his drug talk at face value is ignoring the end. Drugs might have helped him, but just because this kook says drugs did all the heavy lifting doesnt mean they actually did.
I think the team at Cetus deserves just as much recognition as Mullis, if not more. We'd be nowhere without them, and props to the manager that recognised the chance
It would have been discovered anyways, that's why they forced publication because others were working on it. Ironically them forcing publication made Mullis famous so they did him a huge favor despite being ungrateful about it. Still a fascinating history. Also that Freeze guy has such a fun name, and the fact he worked with extremophiles (high temp) and has that last name, is so funny.
31:30 - I need to add one important caveat: His job was taken over by a machine *and they were still paying him what he needed to survive.* He wasn't exactly discovering this stuff as he was kicked out and had to work at a bakery to survive, his needs were met while a machine was doing the bulk of his job. That potential to create extraordinary things while one's needs are met and they have spare time is universal. As long as we invest in meeting their needs first. “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” ― Stephen Jay Gould
Was about to comment very much the same thing. He doesn't discover anything if he doesn't have the free time and comfort to drive to a cabin he owns. His discovery then doesn't go anywhere unless he's still "plugged in" to his place of work, where he has access to equipment and resources to begin the first tests, and eventually convince the right people where a team starts working on it.
Was going to comment about this. People aren't worried about the fact that a machine is doing their job, they are worried about what will happen to them if they do get replaced.
Hello, this is the best explanation of PCR I have seen. Having defended my PhD in molecular biology in 2006, I can attest that PCR is certainly the most used method in the labs today and have opened so many doors in knowledge and diagnosis possibilities. Thanks for this video ! Next time my friends asks about what I do, I’ll send them the link !
As someone who will likely never be in discussion for a PhD because I just don't have that kind of money OR time, the phrase "defended my PhD" _really_ makes it sound like y'all doctorates have to go through literal mortal combat to secure the degree
@@JFirecracker I presume it differs between countries, but where I live the actual defence itself is mostly a formality. Your mentor won't sign your thesis off unless it's good enough and you've worked properly. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone getting failed at the defence.
Currently a semester away from completing my undergraduate degree in microbiology, and wow... The visuals, explanations, and connections between everything in this video is amazing. Videos like this are what make RUclips such a valuable learning resource.
I like this story as a caution against the "lone genius" stereotype. People think of scientists as all sitting around trying to have the next brilliant insight. That is an important part of it, but most of science is collaborative. It's writing papers and attending and presenting at seminars to share your ideas effectively. A lot of it is methodical, un-flashy lab work that takes a lot of patience to track down things that went wrong. It took almost 3 years from Mullis's initial idea to a working example. A lone genius couldn't have done it all.
@@NewsChannel-y4g No, he had a group of people working on it. Even if they didn't come up with the solution, they helped explore a lot of ideas that didn't end up working, which is an important part of figuring out what does work. Like: he wouldn't have tried TAQ without knowing that the process wasn't working at high temperatures, which was found out by a whole lot of trials to get it to work. Not to discredit the breakthrough of finding polymerase that worked at high temperatures, which was an important thought, but it doesn't stand alone. Even one of the quotes in this video was from another scientist who was the one to extract TAQ polymerase once Mullis suggested it would help. Mullis did invent a lot innovative techniques, but he also had a team of people helping to test all those inventions and get them to workable technology.
The reason (western) people think that way imo is almost entirely due to two men. One who deserves the credit, and one who does not. Thomas Edison outright suppressed any talk of others’ contribution to his inventions, as well as any talk of prior work in the field. He used his immense wealth and stature, in a time without Google or Wikipedia to prove him wrong, to sell himself as THE genius who invented lighting, phonography, and motion pictures. This was a mix of an ego thing and a marketing ploy. He wanted people to believe he was such a genius that anything his company produced must be worth buying. (Edit after posting: probably worth mentioning that on top of these reasons, claiming to have invented whole broad concepts instead of a few practical refinements that helped launch new consumer products was also a business strategy to claim extremely broad patents, to the effect of attempting to suppress competing implementations even when they did not use Edison’s companies’ fundamental designs). Albert Einstein, on the other hand, was legitimately the first person to consider gravity as a movement or structural modification of space itself, as well as the first to propose relativity as a consequence of a fixed, perspective-independent speed of causality (which we call the speed of light). The way he chose to look at theoretical physics changed the world forever in almost every conceivable way. He deserves the massive credit he is given. These two men lived *around* the same time, and their careers essentially created the modern image of the “lone genius” scientist we know in western pop culture.
this guy is similar to another guy, in the field of computer science. "The Art of UNIX Programming" is a well-known and influential book, but the author Eric S. Raymond has gone on to reveal himself to be a deranged right-wing crackpot who constantly rants about how "black people have lower iq and commit more crimes" . If he knew how many minorities are involved with the community software projects he's banned from, he would wonder why he's banned less. white men are welcome in computer science, as long as they keep their racist blathering to themselves and don't force others to read it.
Please do a series on how the transistor was discovered. The point contact transistor, the junction transistor, zone refining and all the small steps required for it to be useful and how Bell Laboratories did it in those years. It fits so well into this format!
I used PCR (and other techniques) to show that horses in Australia were often infected with a then mysterious virus, Equine Rhinitis B (ERBV). It was kinda tricky because we only knew the RNA sequence of just one single virus isolated from a sick horse in Switzerland, 1971. Those ssRNA viruses mutate like crazy, making it difficult to design PCR primers that amplify viral RNA (converted into DNA using reverse transcriptase from a retrovirus) but not all the other junk that is up a horse's snotty nose, including horse DNA.
Is there no BP sequence unique to that virus that if mutations occur in would result in inactive virus? This would mean that replicate DNA would be from that specific virus that is active in the animal.
Im ngl psychedelic's can be incredibly helpful, I had trouble understanding why it was so hard for me to maintain long term friendships in HS, got blazed in college and just slowly realized I was kind of a ahole with no filter. Became self aware and started crushing it in college.
@@veritasium Veritasium seem to believe that Creativity can not be Automated, therefore would always be done by humans if they are given time and the resources to explore domains of knowledge. The truth is, on the spectrum between fully biological to fully synthetic beings, Automation will make the humans obsolete...or designate the humans as just another animal-species in the Ecosystems and the Biomes our overlords wish to maintain.
@@veritasium Veritasium seem to believe that Creativity can not be Automated, therefore would always be done by humans if they are given time and the resources to explore domains of knowledge. The truth is, on the spectrum between fully biological to fully synthetic beings, Automation will make the humans obsolete...or designate the humans as just another animal-species in the Ecosystems and the Biomes our overlords wish to maintain.
Original title: How The Weirdest Guy Won The Nobel Prize Second Title: Infinite DNA Glitch Third title: How One Man Exposed Your DNA Current title: The Simple Trick That Rules Biology
I still like the guy that won a Nobel partly by drinking a beaker of H. Pylori to prove that stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria, not stress. He later also found a link between the *absence* of H. Pylori (and other gut bacteria) and increased rates of allergies.
did they completely eliminate stress as a factor; it's an old story but until you are a victim of a stressful situation (maybe leading to loss of sleep, lower immune system...) you may not value its impact. the same goes with hiv, and coronovirus. not everyone that caught them viruses developed symptoms/disease.
@@carlosgaspar8447 you missed the point entirely. the diseases you point to have somehow not been isolated and no isolated in solution is not isolated. the common thread is fraudchi
31:52 Problem is it's not an abundance of jobs that keeps people occupied with tedious tasks, it's the need to get paid. If Kary Mullis was working at a large medical tech company today he would have been layed off as soon as the probe generating machine rolled in the door, and without access to company resources for months on end he would have never developed PCR.
@@Mendychannel Well there are other issues with AI today, such as it being trained on people's works without them giving consent, hallucinating false info, or in some cases (like United Healthcare's recent AI controversy) having very high error rates. But the biggest one for most people comes down to capitalism.
Mendy there are a few other big issues with generative AI models today. They're trained on people's work without their consent, they can hallucinate false information, and in some specialized cases (such as United Healthcare's claims AI) have crazy high error rates. But the biggest one for most people comes down to capitalism, yeah.
20:56 “I still get goosebumps” - the man ain’t lying, I can see the hair on his arms pricking up! 31:58 Automation allowed the invention to exist, but only because the company kept paying him to work on the idea. I feel like that spirit doesn’t exist anymore. Today they would just lay him off when they got a machine that could do his job.
I am conflicted. I understand that keeping him on board is what gave us this advancement, but what does it say of Cetus that they kept a serial sexual harasser on board when his role at the company became obsolete?
Yeah we should definitely let people that are obnoxious, womanizing, and who have fist fights to keep getting paid to do nothing all day. He said two other companies were catching up so PCR was coming one way or another
Plus, not everyone CAN come up with new ideas when their jobs get taken over by automation. There's no company out there that would willingly keep dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands of people just hanging around, brainstorming ideas when their jobs get automated or replaced with AI on the off chance that one of them creates lighting in a bottle. Not when the whole point of them switching to automation and AI is that it'll save them money in the long term, *specifically because they can let go of expensive human workers*.
Automation will layoff the low ranking employee but you are not going to layoff the person doing a job that required a PHD to do. Especially one that understands your specialized process. The specific situation in this video would happen today.
As an undergraduate research associate, I often take technologies like PCR for granted. I’m guilty of viewing it merely as a tool for obtaining data, without fully appreciating the underlying principles behind it. Excellent video!
Best resume of how PCR techniques evolved I ever heard/saw. Including my university education since 1988, when I attended a molecular biology course at London University College as a student.
Are you restarted? I didn't get a history lesson in physics I learned how to do physics. You are acting like this is a missing thing in education and it isn't, you aren't bright but you watch veritasium and listen and believe everything that comes out of his mouth so of course you aren't bright.
We actually have to study about PCR in our school curriculum (it covers a pretty huge part of it actually) and Oh My God dude, all the explanations by every teacher inside and outside the school campus flew over my head but this... I never would've though that PCR had that much of history and had made such a huge impact on healthcare and forensics and it wasn't even briefly mentioned by the teachers. If this 30 minute video was shown in our class I guarantee you that everybody will pass the exams. Because it felt like a movie rather than a "who'll drop their head first and get kicked out of the class game." This is what RUclips should be for.
I legit just saw the thumbnail and title and I was like “It’s the PCR dude!” I had a lab report on PCR and ended up doing some research for citations and whatnot. Even after more than a decade later it’s easy to remember how much of a brilliant wackadoo he was. My BS BioChem may as well have been basketweaving for as much as I used it professionally, but I still learned so much and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
No no no. During class, they inject you with many pieces of informations. However, not-so-good teacher often fail at linking all those informations. This video helps you connect all those floating around information in your head. Both classes and this video are important.
In school, they mostly explain theory, while understanding neither why it's there in the first place nor its practical implications, and not even making an attempt to relay that information, while those are in fact perhaps the most crucial things when it comes to actually understanding the theory. People aren't made to understand dry theory, we just aren't constructed to do that. People are made, however, to understand _stories._ And it is through storytelling that you will achieve greatest results in explaining any theory. In telling about why it is the way it came to be, instead "well we've done some experiments and we believe that we're correct, don't ask what the experiments are or who performed them or god forbid paper titles, 'cause I don't know any of that".
31:20 That only works if people keep their jobs after most of their work is automated, instead of being laid off, or their coworkers are laid off and the non-automated work is piled onto the minimum possible number of employees, so they're left working just as hard if not harder. Which, unfortunately, is what usually happens.
Not to mention, companies seem to increasingly only care about the bottom line these days. Why keep a bunch of people on and spend money on risky R&D, with no guarantee of success, when they could just immediately save money by let everyone go plus continuing to rake in the cash now that everything is automated. It”s not like all the newly unemployed people would be able to afford new products anyways (you know, on account of not having jobs anymore and all) 😝
The difference is, mullis wasn't hired because that mundane work needed to be done, he was hired because he has a PhD. Once the mundane work was done automatically, he could focus more on specialized work such as PCR. So people who's job is only to do mundane work, will get laid off. But people who are only limited by the mundane work will thrive. The second part is the point he is making.
@@JazzyFizzleDrummers This isn't a "big tech" problem. This is a fundamental feature of capitalism, but yea Veritasium as an entity is pretty defensive of capitalism as a whole.
I work in a molecular biology lab where PCR and sequencing are every day activities. It’s never lost on me how incredible the fundamental science behind it all is, and how brilliant the people who developed it all are. Although at times it really does just feel like transferring small volumes of liquid around!
gotta say veritasium has been going crazy with uploads, some of the most consistent high quality releases i've seen in a long time from any science pub channel
Fascinating story, but the takeaway at the end really sounded weird to me... Yes, automation gave Mullis the opportunity to come up with PCR. But it's not because the automation "opened his mind". It's because he gained free time! Thus, I think we should not glorify recent AI advances for "potentially opening our minds". Instead we should ask: Why isn't all this AI stuff (or any other automation progress, for that matter) resulting in us working lower hours?
Yeah, a 32 hr work week would have helped. Yet in reality someone has to load the machine and push the button, realistically today he would be fired and replaced with a much less skilled "button pusher" who may invent a better way to label everyone's lunch in the fridge, but not new DNA techniques.
Yeah, It's really disingenuous to think that people being laid off in favor of AI is the same as having more free time to innovate. People aren't using AI cause it's better, it's because they don't want to pay salaries.
Yeah I agree the bit about automation was kinda random. But I have a strong feeling Derek is going to make an automation video soon. I know he's done a few before but as the horizon comes closer it is going to be more and more real. Also automation didn't make Mullis an open minded guy, he thought he was abducted and denied HIV and climate change (the former you could accept due to the culture of that time, the latter is undeniable physics that anyone with a half a brain could know is real).
The graphics in this are amazing. Showing more detail when zoomed in and then zooming out to show the classic diagrams. It really connected my understanding of what these diagrams represented in a tangible way.
I think it's noteworthy how much smoother things would have gone for Mullis if he'd been more of a team player. His initial idea for PCR barely took off because he had made too many enemies. His colleagues wrote the initial manuscript with him as a minor author because he'd established himself as unreliable. We like the story of the lone and misanthropic scientist, but in reality scientific advancements are only slowed by people not working together. If you look at journal repositories you often find the most prolific and impactful authors are those that are kind and personable, but those same people fall out of the public consciousness because they don't provide the conflict for a story
Or the more rational extrapolation is that "science" nearly ignored a genius with a revolutionary breakthrough because it was too much of a little click that wouldn't consider ideas from people that didn't conform to their social rules. Imagine how many other revolutionary ideas have been shelved and mocked because the in group of scientists didn't bless the rebel genius
If he was more of a team player, you might have accepted that it was just a feverish dream. That people were right, it was too simple for anyone to not try it. And he would have given up after he met some difficulties... History would have been quite different...it was a unique blend of genius, hard headedness and circumstances that led to PCR.
smart people are as prone to flaws as everyone else we shouldn't think of them as gods or superior beings they're just people, like anyone else and this story is just one of many others that prove this
It's Latif! What a great collaboration! Nasser's enthusiasm for science history is the best part of Radiolab, so him showing up here is a happy surprise!
I have the opposite reaction. Latif is the reason I quit listening to Radiolab - and it was by far my favorite podcast. Robert leaving was a huge blow (his perspectives were brilliant) and then Jad left. I continued to listen to my favorite podcast, but Latif's Scoobydoobiness became really annoying, it rubs me the wrong way. Sorry Latif.
Should have an EPILEPSY WARNING THOUGH. Honesty, I was eye-bulging at the first 30 seconds, then my poor extra dilated eyes get bombarded... tsk tsk editor. Also, it is actually EPILEPTIC, so there's that...
As someone whose career (and many citations) has been largely thanks to these early discoveries getting pieced together just at the right moment to break open the doors to DNA exploration, I appreciate the Mullis story as an illustration of how diverse "scientists" really are. Not all are super-geeks or model citizens, and certainly only a rare few are perfect role models. You can be any kind of person (good or terrible) and still contribute as long as you follow your curiosities. Great video!
I know a guy like this - he's pretty deep into the authism spectrum, and by no means, nothing bad about people that are in that spectrum, I am my self, but there are different levels. A nurse I knew told me a story. She had been working in intensive care where people arrive with the most horrific issues, like gun shots, traffic accidents and so forth and she told me there were doctors working there that were outright aholes, unable to communicate with people around them, just like this one portraited, but to the task of patching someone up, they were right on the task, 24 hours straight and quite ofte succeded. Sometimes, being nice and handsome, isn't needed, if that isn't your job…
Indeed he does sound like being on the spectrum. And curiously surprisingly many doctors fall in that group you describe. But work places are slowly waking up to how much of a negative impact a single person can be to the whole work force and usually their input is not unique and irreplaceable.
@@Yupppi I'm not so sure - according to this nurse, the doctors in question were priceless when it came to doing the job, it was just all the rest that was bad :P
I spent two weeks studying this in my Bio classroom last year and this video explained everything I had learned in 30 minutes. A very good job done with a very exciting topic.
It’s almost poetic-a scientist studying bacteria in extreme heat is named Freeze. You couldn’t make this up! The beauty of science is how random ideas, seemingly unrelated, can collide and spark groundbreaking discoveries. It’s a reminder that no effort is ever truly wasted. And going from a bakery to a cutting-edge DNA lab? Then pitching an idea bold enough to inspire an entire team? That’s a once-in-a-lifetime leap.
The video romanticises the story. Read the Wikipedia page about Mullis. He'd had a couple of fellowships after his PHd, but took time away from academia to manage a bakery. He was tempted back with another fellowship and then given a top job in the research dept of Cetus. He didn't just pitch an idea to the team. He was the captain of the team. Cetus paid him a bonus of 10,000 when he invented PCR. The company later sold the patent for 300 million. And then he went mad.
Fascinating story. Judging by how it took the team months, it really shows how much effort is required to iron out the details when going from idea conceptualization to commercialization.
I am a Veritasium follower since 2019 when I was a high school student. This channel has contributed immensely in fueling my curiosity towards science. Now I am a masters student and works with pcr almost daily. I feel very exited and somewhat blessed when Derek makes videos which are related to my study. Thankyou Derek. This channel feels home ❤
My wife has a masters in micro biology (doesn't work in that field any more), so I have to watch these videos alone. She can't watch them because they just reminder her of school and former work and she hates it. But I am an ignoramus in a non-stem field and I find this incredible and fun to watch! Thanks Derek!
I have this phenomenon between my wife and anything dental related. She's a dentist and hates the job and school she went through to get there. Most health science videos are a no-go if she's around.
But of course, that isn't the story that gets spread. The story that gets spread is the insinuation that recreational drug use is the key to inventiveness.
For real, drug and alcohol induced psychosis is real. Even as (relatively) safe as it is to smoke Marijuana after the age of 25, most people still don't realize that if you have a history of mental illness in your family and feel off when you smoke, you gamble with a VERY high risk of drug induced psychosis. So many people ruin their minds and lives because they're told to "smoke through it" or that they're "conquering demons/ego." I wish people would actually read the studies and realize the full extent of the pros and cons.
@@nannyg666 Yeah, even though success is typically associated with years of hard work, and use of recreational drugs is associated with less-desirable outcomes, it's more entertaining to focus on the outliers. It's kind of like survivor bias.
Basically you bind your staring nucleotide via it's 3’-hydroxyl group to a support, the nucleotides are capped (with dimethoxytrityl) so your don't just get a string of the same one. You do an acid wash to remove the cap, flush your next 3' capped nucleotides with 5' phosphoramidite groups, they form a phosphite triester bond with the anchored nucleotide, then you just repeat with each nucleotide you need.
As an undergraduate researcher, I have been studying PCR (first encounter in high school) and now trying it out for myself in college. This video gave me goosebumps because the entire concept of it is just so simple yet freaking ingenious. My professor always says that every research counts no matter how small and this is probably the best example I could have found.
As someone who spent my genetics thesis doing PCR and gel electrophoresis over and over and over again every day, this is such a great video to explain this amazing literal life hack
Your content is always excellent, Derek, but this one is outstanding! Hands down, the best explanation of the PCR I have ever come across - not to mention the engaging historical context. Please keep up this good work - there are very many of us who appreciate it greatly! 😀
Amazing video ! As a PhD student I use PCR at least multiple times a week, and didn’t know about the crazy story of its discovery. Thank you for this well-narrated story
@@nerfherder4284 I wouldn't say CRISPR uses the same mechanics as PCR. CRISPR essentially uses a protein (Cas9) that cuts DNA wherever you want it, guided by a chain molecule similar to DNA called RNA. This mechanism is used by bacteria to combat viral DNA being streamed into their cells, by cutting it in specific areas. Scientists can use this mechanism to perform cuts in DNA, but consequently, also many other things. Since cells sometimes attempt to fix cuts in DNA using free DNA in the cell, scientists can perform cuts on the cell's DNA in the presence of genes they want the cell to express. This way, the cell may insert the gene, making a genetic modification. Alternatively, scientists can use a modified Cas9 that doesn't cut DNA but still moves to the specific area in the cell using the RNA molecule, with added addons like inhibitor/activator, allowing the scientists to express/inhibit genes for their studies. Hope this helps!
@@nerfherder4284 Crispr-cas9 is more similar to the restriction enzymes that he spoke on early in the video. Basically cuts both strands of DNA at a specific site and with that open site you can add in a gene or not.
@@nerfherder4284 Crispr uses guide rnas (short pieces of rna that bind to specific restriction enzymes like cas9) to guide those restriction enzymes to a specific target dna they also bind to. There those restriction enzymes can "cut" the target dna. This cut needs to be repaired by the cell which often leads to small pieces of dna missing at the break point. You can also use another repair mechanism used by cells to insert fragments of dna into the breaking point. Those techniques allow biologists to "knock out" certain genes(make them stop working) and to add just about any piece of dna into specific places that can be controlled via specific guide rnas ("knock in").
Kary is the biggest example of both the advantages and dangers of having a very open mind. You're able to come up with and consider way more ideas, some of which might be groundbreaking and society changing but most of which will be weird, bad or outright terrible. Drugs can open your mind up but more openess isn't usually a good thing.
All major scientific breakthroughs come from entertaining very strange ideas rejected by most, defying consensus to chase where evidence seems to point. Both ends of the intelligence spectrum do this, but geniuses are occasionally right. It's the process of examining and filtering those ideas that matters.
Another fantastic piece. With probably the best production values on RUclips certainly on this type of topic. I'd have loved to have had access to these videos when I was at school. The closest we had to anything like this was the Christmas lectures.
You know who else is a great story teller Derek. Man ..in this world of "shorts" form content you post this masterpiece of a video. Absolutely awesome work 👍
Isn’t it incredible how chance and persistence shape the biggest breakthroughs? From a bakery job to pioneering DNA research, this story is a testament to following unexpected paths. And who would’ve thought that bacteria thriving in boiling heat could hold the key to solving such complex problems? Science really thrives on the unexpected twists.
It is fundamental to remember that all of this was only possible because he had access to education in the first place, social connections and money to adress all his basic needs (and a cabin in the woods) while also having free time from work. Chance is by far the most important factor in a society divided by classes. Unfortunately its very hard to win a nobel prize while trying to just eat something.
@@WaffleStaffel A much more accomplished and influential scientist, Linus Pauling, won two Nobels and yet in his later years promoted large-dose vitamin C as a cancer cure and cold preventative. Both claims are not supported by scientific evidence. Being successful in one field is no guarantee of credibility in another area. Being a celebrity doesn't make a person wise (RFK jr).
@@AutPen38 You'd think, the way he's presented by this dude without a sense of shame. Have you ever actually listened to/read any of his positions on the issues mentioned in this video? He would definitely have had something to say about how the PCR was used to justify extra-constitutional behavior by the authorities over the last 4 years, had he lived...
celsius since the problem was that boiling water destroys the proteins or whatever those were called and we know that water boils at roughly 100 degrees celsius
Your videos and content has got so so much better ,I think this version of Veritasium is presenting science like a movie ,all the information is placed so carefully i wont ever forget names of the scientist you mentioned although they were in my textbooks i never paid attention until you dropped this ,Amazing work dude
At 30:00, the orator states "Does HIV cause AIDS. How does a virus cause a syndrome?" The definition of a syndrome is a group of symptoms associated with a condition. When a person has a cold, certain symptoms are expected. We know that colds are caused by a virus. He answered his question: Yes, a virus can cause a syndrome.
Colds aren't always causes by viruses Sometimes you just get run down because you're overworking or your lacking nutrients and your body also decides to detox or get rid of crap, that's why you sweat, vomit, and get a runny nose. Your body doesn't just get sick in response to viruses.
@@althepsyphros3314a cold is caused by a Rhinovirus. You are more likely to get infected with a virus when you are "run down". Being "run down" isn't a cold.
I knew PCR stood for 'polymerase chain reaction', but what the hell was that? Thank you for describing, in detail, what 'that' was, and how it was achieved, and how a heat loving bacteria and a weird scientist made it possible. Without you I would never have taken the time and effort to really get the details. So, a big "Thank You" for your hard work creating these videos, which elucidate so many things in our world. You might be a superhero, and maybe should have a cape!
2:22 Of course a PhD student would end up in a bakery after submitting their thesis
No nation respects intellectuals. They are taken for granted.
@@Gurpreet_69 I would try to motivate you but your name seems Indian. Give up bro. This country doesn't care about research
The PhD to baker pipeline is real!
@@Gurpreet_69I've started a PhD this year ! It's super fun and I've had the chance to find the two best supervisors ever 🎉
The only problem I predict is fundings. But that's a future me problem and there always exist solutions !
So absolutely don't hesitate to commit to this way. Even if you don't pursue a career in academia your PhD (whatever the subject) is super valuable anywhere at anytime :)
@@Gurpreet_69 everyone on that path ends up like bro ;-;
the biologist working with bacteria at boiling temperatures was named Freeze?? that is so perfect
when you realise that in chemistry glass and salt are frozen!!
Mr Freeze
@@laurensa.1803❤
Dr. Freeze.
Damn monkeys (If you've seen enough dragon ball, you'll get the reference).
the fact that he wasn't fired the day that machine arrived was a miracle
Shows how much privilege white men have.
Not really. Automating menial tasks like that let PhDs actually use their PhDs and their brains more. Company more effectively utilizes their smart employees.
Wouldn’t happen in todays world. “Automation will free you from the dread of work” is a weird take for someone who is being replaced by AI
Yes. Then some manager agreed to keep him on full pay for another year while he worked on an idea no one believed in.
That manager deserves credit for making that bet and giving time for the scientific method to pay dividends even when they were far from guaranteed.
That's the difference between having a boss with a BBA and a PhD.
This video is going to break the record for most title changes in 24hrs.
What were they, mine was from doing drugs to saved millions
"How one man exposed your DNA"
The Curious Life of Kary Mullis and His Infinite DNA Glitch
How the weirdest guy won the Nobel prize.
they all start copying mrbeast, changing the title and the goofy thumbnails
It's crazy how two completely unrelated, seemingly useless discoveries can come together to form something so great. Goes to show that we should never assume something is pointless before trying it
that's base research, one of the biggest challenges we have in science is to defend it, because politicians and companies tend to think that applied research is all that matter, but they don't realize that the applied research only exists because of the base research
sure but I don't see how replicating DNA exponentially can be "seemingly useless"
@Martykun36 i meant mostly about the boiling water worms, but the method of continuously needing to add polymerase was also dismissed by some people
Be Smart has recently made a great video about this topic actually, Why Useless Knowledge Can Be So Useful
Solid reasoning to try lots of drugs.
I can't imagine being offered a job at a dna research company while just at a bakery. I can't imagine getting to keep your job after it's been automated. I can't imagine getting to pitch a new way of doing things and getting a whole team of people to explore the idea.
Welcome to the 21st century
Yes haha I've got that feeling too. But I believe those were adaptations he had to do for the benefit of story telling
Maybe it's something like that if he were a more solid character, public opinion would give a lot more credence to what he's been saying. Another thing the powerful people don't want.
Yeah, I wonder how did the dynamic get to that 😅 like "You'll also give me some Bavarian pretzels, also, do you have a PhD and want to work at a research startup?"
He was extremely smart and friends with his boss. The video overplays him doing boring work - most biology/chemistry is boring and repetitive.
Hudson Freeze is also a glycobiologist who made incredible discoveries on many diseases.
Damn, now he's an even more chill humble guy.
Also a Batman's villain... Oh wait
wow, you know about that stuff! Very nice of you to say :Hi"
Thx for bringing up glycobiology, lotta interactions in the goo-
Youre amazing @HudsonFreeze
The big difference is that the automation that “took” his job actually allowed him the paid time he needed to invent PCR because unlike any of us who will lose our jobs to automation, he wasn’t dismissed when the more efficient method came online.
yupppp
yea because he's a scientist, his value is multifarious.
I heard about a guy that outsourced all his work to some guy in China, so he could just sit and pretend to work all day.
@@HungryGhost1986 Here in the US, white workers used to do that using day laborers who they could pay very little to, because there weren't equal opportunity protections & employers could only hire white people if they wanted to.
Right? Sometimes the struggle for survival can lead to innovation, I'm sure; but probably not on the same scale as the suffering that kind of job loss would cause.
There's nothing better than a Veritasium molecular biology video on a cold winter day
real! my holiday's are now complete!
@TTPronaldo bot
Registering my presence 2:15 because I'm among the first to watch this video
Daddy 👮🏻♂️🇵🇱
Hot over here but I could say the same. (I guess😂)
the amount of title and thumbnail changes are crazyyyyy
RUclips trying to find that g-spot
the first title was: How an infinite DNA glitch saved millions
I hate how he does this now, you can never go back and watch videos because they have a different thumbnail and title and it's kind of a cheap way to get more people to watch his stuff by accidentally clicking on it thinking it's a new video
I haven't seen it as much recently (and even less after no longer being a Patreon supporter of this channel), but back in the day we'd get quick surveys about which thumbnail we'd most likely click on shortly before a new video was released. Maybe they also asked about titles too--I don't recall. But either way, I think the whole Veritasium crew puts effort into maximizing their views by analyzing the metrics and adapting quickly while a video is still new.
@@AnnaNicole.they just submit several thumbnails and youtube switches between them automatically, choosing whichever one is the best. one of the more recent features, lots of youtubers use it nowadays
Teachers: “Stay in school and don’t do drugs”
Kary Mullis: “I made PCR and the credit goes to drugs 😵💫”
A lot of great music, art, inventions etc were made because of psychedelics. Maybe the only class of "drugs" that can improve your life and help someone become a better and more enlightened person
They can also give you schizophrenia so tread lightly@@Impetuss
Psychedelics don't do cause inventiveness or creativity. An uncreative person on LSD isn't going to become creative. Jimi Hendrix was an excellent guitar player and creative person before taking any drugs. He practiced, he studied he learned, then he did drugs.
survivorship bias, nothing else. Use drugs on 100 students, get half a genius and 99 trainwrecks.
@@nerfherder4284 yeah I think anyone who watches the whole video and takes his drug talk at face value is ignoring the end. Drugs might have helped him, but just because this kook says drugs did all the heavy lifting doesnt mean they actually did.
I think the team at Cetus deserves just as much recognition as Mullis, if not more. We'd be nowhere without them, and props to the manager that recognised the chance
Nah, LSD did the heavy lifting
When they published the paper and had his name 4th and he left was the point he didn’t care about any of them, imo
sure, cetus did more than mullis, everything was already in front of him, huge support and many clever ideas outside of mullis mind
@@NokiaTablet-pl7vt LSD in the right mind correct
Thank god he didn't crash the car during his Eureka moment 💀
😂 ah that's so realistic scenario, if he was on drugs
It would have been discovered anyways, that's why they forced publication because others were working on it. Ironically them forcing publication made Mullis famous so they did him a huge favor despite being ungrateful about it. Still a fascinating history. Also that Freeze guy has such a fun name, and the fact he worked with extremophiles (high temp) and has that last name, is so funny.
@@joshcryer yea that was quite ironic, Dr. Freeze found the hottest form of life on this planet 😅
It’s not hard to drive on lsd lol, it’s not like drunk driving.
I was thinking the same thing 😭
I really appreciate how versatile your content is, Derek. Im a biochem major, and have watched your content for years thank you!
Pure Versatelium
Same here.
Med lab science, same with me too, even tested my own DNA for specific strings(failed to show usable results but still)
Yo
31:30 - I need to add one important caveat: His job was taken over by a machine *and they were still paying him what he needed to survive.*
He wasn't exactly discovering this stuff as he was kicked out and had to work at a bakery to survive, his needs were met while a machine was doing the bulk of his job.
That potential to create extraordinary things while one's needs are met and they have spare time is universal. As long as we invest in meeting their needs first.
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
― Stephen Jay Gould
Was about to comment very much the same thing. He doesn't discover anything if he doesn't have the free time and comfort to drive to a cabin he owns. His discovery then doesn't go anywhere unless he's still "plugged in" to his place of work, where he has access to equipment and resources to begin the first tests, and eventually convince the right people where a team starts working on it.
Was going to comment about this. People aren't worried about the fact that a machine is doing their job, they are worried about what will happen to them if they do get replaced.
Damn that quote...
Abolish Capitalism,Establish Socialism
@@verxux5432 no. my money.
Veritasium is changing this video's identity more frequently than CGP Grey, quite impressive.
Yeah, and it's annoying.
From watching objects being destroyed in slow-mo I'm finally learning new things an effective way. Derek, thank you so much.
Thank you so much! So glad to hear you enjoyed the video!
And you donated how much again? @@user-hl2yj8kp2s
@@user-hl2yj8kp2s how to get Veriasium to reply: Super Thanks 100000 Rupiah 😂
@@user-hl2yj8kp2s and thats funny because?
Yeah, Not so cool this video trying to degrade a first class scientist. Poor caracter for anyone who does that!
Hello, this is the best explanation of PCR I have seen. Having defended my PhD in molecular biology in 2006, I can attest that PCR is certainly the most used method in the labs today and have opened so many doors in knowledge and diagnosis possibilities. Thanks for this video ! Next time my friends asks about what I do, I’ll send them the link !
As someone who will likely never be in discussion for a PhD because I just don't have that kind of money OR time, the phrase "defended my PhD" _really_ makes it sound like y'all doctorates have to go through literal mortal combat to secure the degree
@@JFirecracker I presume it differs between countries, but where I live the actual defence itself is mostly a formality. Your mentor won't sign your thesis off unless it's good enough and you've worked properly. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone getting failed at the defence.
@@JFirecracker 🤣 I can see PhDs in white lab coats erasing each other's ideas on the caulk board until only one is left standing.
@@vincentroeder1366 as someone who knows that pcr is not meant for diagnosis, I disregard the video.
Original title: How The Weirdest Guy Won The Nobel Prize
Thank you. I thought I was on LSD. Was about to click on it and then refreshed. It had changed.
I wonder why it was changed
@@Waghabond they A/B test titles and thumbnails to find the best one
thank you!
@@Waghabond maybe for targeting different types of audience?
How many thumbnails should we make?
Veritasium: yes
Currently a semester away from completing my undergraduate degree in microbiology, and wow... The visuals, explanations, and connections between everything in this video is amazing. Videos like this are what make RUclips such a valuable learning resource.
Yeah the visuals were outstanding and explanatory-
🎉
College/University?
I like this story as a caution against the "lone genius" stereotype. People think of scientists as all sitting around trying to have the next brilliant insight. That is an important part of it, but most of science is collaborative. It's writing papers and attending and presenting at seminars to share your ideas effectively. A lot of it is methodical, un-flashy lab work that takes a lot of patience to track down things that went wrong. It took almost 3 years from Mullis's initial idea to a working example. A lone genius couldn't have done it all.
no he pretty much did it all...
@@NewsChannel-y4g No, he had a group of people working on it. Even if they didn't come up with the solution, they helped explore a lot of ideas that didn't end up working, which is an important part of figuring out what does work.
Like: he wouldn't have tried TAQ without knowing that the process wasn't working at high temperatures, which was found out by a whole lot of trials to get it to work. Not to discredit the breakthrough of finding polymerase that worked at high temperatures, which was an important thought, but it doesn't stand alone. Even one of the quotes in this video was from another scientist who was the one to extract TAQ polymerase once Mullis suggested it would help. Mullis did invent a lot innovative techniques, but he also had a team of people helping to test all those inventions and get them to workable technology.
The reason (western) people think that way imo is almost entirely due to two men. One who deserves the credit, and one who does not.
Thomas Edison outright suppressed any talk of others’ contribution to his inventions, as well as any talk of prior work in the field. He used his immense wealth and stature, in a time without Google or Wikipedia to prove him wrong, to sell himself as THE genius who invented lighting, phonography, and motion pictures. This was a mix of an ego thing and a marketing ploy. He wanted people to believe he was such a genius that anything his company produced must be worth buying. (Edit after posting: probably worth mentioning that on top of these reasons, claiming to have invented whole broad concepts instead of a few practical refinements that helped launch new consumer products was also a business strategy to claim extremely broad patents, to the effect of attempting to suppress competing implementations even when they did not use Edison’s companies’ fundamental designs).
Albert Einstein, on the other hand, was legitimately the first person to consider gravity as a movement or structural modification of space itself, as well as the first to propose relativity as a consequence of a fixed, perspective-independent speed of causality (which we call the speed of light). The way he chose to look at theoretical physics changed the world forever in almost every conceivable way. He deserves the massive credit he is given.
These two men lived *around* the same time, and their careers essentially created the modern image of the “lone genius” scientist we know in western pop culture.
this guy is similar to another guy, in the field of computer science. "The Art of UNIX Programming" is a well-known and influential book, but the author Eric S. Raymond has gone on to reveal himself to be a deranged right-wing crackpot who constantly rants about how "black people have lower iq and commit more crimes" . If he knew how many minorities are involved with the community software projects he's banned from, he would wonder why he's banned less. white men are welcome in computer science, as long as they keep their racist blathering to themselves and don't force others to read it.
I just wish we had celeb culture around scientists, not some heckin influencers or actors.
20:06 the working with boiling water, hudson freeze !, how ironic
Makes sense. He’s the only one that could stand those temperatures
He must've been used to irony. Since the Hudson never Freezes.
In addition, Hudson Freeze is one of the best names I've ever heard😂
lmao just said almost the same thing, Dr. Freeze found the hottest form of life on this planet 😅
@@iamnotdarshan i'm just glad that as far as we know, he doesn't have a wife who's in coma because of a corporate accident...
Please do a series on how the transistor was discovered. The point contact transistor, the junction transistor, zone refining and all the small steps required for it to be useful and how Bell Laboratories did it in those years. It fits so well into this format!
The old Bell Labs produced several Nobel Prize winners.
i think he already did or that curious droid channel did that
I used PCR (and other techniques) to show that horses in Australia were often infected with a then mysterious virus, Equine Rhinitis B (ERBV). It was kinda tricky because we only knew the RNA sequence of just one single virus isolated from a sick horse in Switzerland, 1971. Those ssRNA viruses mutate like crazy, making it difficult to design PCR primers that amplify viral RNA (converted into DNA using reverse transcriptase from a retrovirus) but not all the other junk that is up a horse's snotty nose, including horse DNA.
Have you Published yet?
That’s really cool! Good job!
The ssRNA is more prone to mutation and I can see how it can get kind of annoying to work with. Very interesting discovery indeed.
Is there no BP sequence unique to that virus that if mutations occur in would result in inactive virus? This would mean that replicate DNA would be from that specific virus that is active in the animal.
Thank you for your work.
Took drugs, kind of a jerk, comic relief, and still won a nobel prize? I still have hope!!
Ignore the top person he wants attention
Top guy is an attention addict with no life. Don't engage.
😂 Yeah, there's hope for all of us!
Im ngl psychedelic's can be incredibly helpful, I had trouble understanding why it was so hard for me to maintain long term friendships in HS, got blazed in college and just slowly realized I was kind of a ahole with no filter. Became self aware and started crushing it in college.
and got a phd
Amazing video that needs to be shared more
Wow, thank you so much! Glad to hear you enjoyed the video!
can i get 5 euro donation as well? thank you
@@veritasium Veritasium seem to believe that Creativity can not be Automated, therefore would always be done by humans if they are given time and the resources to explore domains of knowledge. The truth is, on the spectrum between fully biological to fully synthetic beings, Automation will make the humans obsolete...or designate the humans as just another animal-species in the Ecosystems and the Biomes our overlords wish to maintain.
@@veritasium Veritasium seem to believe that Creativity can not be Automated, therefore would always be done by humans if they are given time and the resources to explore domains of knowledge. The truth is, on the spectrum between fully biological to fully synthetic beings, Automation will make the humans obsolete...or designate the humans as just another animal-species in the Ecosystems and the Biomes our overlords wish to maintain.
Would be easier to share if not for the constant title change
Original title: How The Weirdest Guy Won The Nobel Prize
Second Title: Infinite DNA Glitch
Third title: How One Man Exposed Your DNA
Current title: The Simple Trick That Rules Biology
I still like the guy that won a Nobel partly by drinking a beaker of H. Pylori to prove that stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria, not stress. He later also found a link between the *absence* of H. Pylori (and other gut bacteria) and increased rates of allergies.
This is a villain origin story
Sounds like it would make a good subject for another Veritasium video
yep a microbe present in 100% of mammals eradicated in 90% of humans after birth. what could possibly go wrong.
did they completely eliminate stress as a factor; it's an old story but until you are a victim of a stressful situation (maybe leading to loss of sleep, lower immune system...) you may not value its impact. the same goes with hiv, and coronovirus. not everyone that caught them viruses developed symptoms/disease.
@@carlosgaspar8447 you missed the point entirely. the diseases you point to have somehow not been isolated and no isolated in solution is not isolated. the common thread is fraudchi
31:52 Problem is it's not an abundance of jobs that keeps people occupied with tedious tasks, it's the need to get paid. If Kary Mullis was working at a large medical tech company today he would have been layed off as soon as the probe generating machine rolled in the door, and without access to company resources for months on end he would have never developed PCR.
I so hoped I didn’t have to make this comment myself
yeah I thought the ending seemed quite sneaky
So people really arent against automation or AI, just against capitalism
@@Mendychannel Well there are other issues with AI today, such as it being trained on people's works without them giving consent, hallucinating false info, or in some cases (like United Healthcare's recent AI controversy) having very high error rates. But the biggest one for most people comes down to capitalism.
Mendy there are a few other big issues with generative AI models today. They're trained on people's work without their consent, they can hallucinate false information, and in some specialized cases (such as United Healthcare's claims AI) have crazy high error rates. But the biggest one for most people comes down to capitalism, yeah.
0:45 You are NOT the father🔥🔥🔥
Lol....he literally hit a backflip😂
😂😂😂😂😂
Bro was happy to dodge child support ☠️
💀
I would also backflip hearing that
How many times has Derek changed the thumbnail and the title of this video lmao??
Several times. It's extremely annoying.
20:56 “I still get goosebumps” - the man ain’t lying, I can see the hair on his arms pricking up!
31:58 Automation allowed the invention to exist, but only because the company kept paying him to work on the idea. I feel like that spirit doesn’t exist anymore. Today they would just lay him off when they got a machine that could do his job.
I am conflicted. I understand that keeping him on board is what gave us this advancement, but what does it say of Cetus that they kept a serial sexual harasser on board when his role at the company became obsolete?
Yeah we should definitely let people that are obnoxious, womanizing, and who have fist fights to keep getting paid to do nothing all day. He said two other companies were catching up so PCR was coming one way or another
Plus, not everyone CAN come up with new ideas when their jobs get taken over by automation. There's no company out there that would willingly keep dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands of people just hanging around, brainstorming ideas when their jobs get automated or replaced with AI on the off chance that one of them creates lighting in a bottle. Not when the whole point of them switching to automation and AI is that it'll save them money in the long term, *specifically because they can let go of expensive human workers*.
Automation will layoff the low ranking employee but you are not going to layoff the person doing a job that required a PHD to do. Especially one that understands your specialized process. The specific situation in this video would happen today.
@@swimmerboy172 No it wouldn't, lmao. The moment you become redundant, you become unemployed.
As an undergraduate research associate, I often take technologies like PCR for granted. I’m guilty of viewing it merely as a tool for obtaining data, without fully appreciating the underlying principles behind it. Excellent video!
Garlic
Best resume of how PCR techniques evolved I ever heard/saw. Including my university education since 1988, when I attended a molecular biology course at London University College as a student.
Are you restarted? I didn't get a history lesson in physics I learned how to do physics. You are acting like this is a missing thing in education and it isn't, you aren't bright but you watch veritasium and listen and believe everything that comes out of his mouth so of course you aren't bright.
The title has been recombined more than my DNA
We actually have to study about PCR in our school curriculum (it covers a pretty huge part of it actually) and Oh My God dude, all the explanations by every teacher inside and outside the school campus flew over my head
but this...
I never would've though that PCR had that much of history and had made such a huge impact on healthcare and forensics and it wasn't even briefly mentioned by the teachers.
If this 30 minute video was shown in our class I guarantee you that everybody will pass the exams. Because it felt like a movie rather than a "who'll drop their head first and get kicked out of the class game."
This is what RUclips should be for.
I legit just saw the thumbnail and title and I was like “It’s the PCR dude!”
I had a lab report on PCR and ended up doing some research for citations and whatnot. Even after more than a decade later it’s easy to remember how much of a brilliant wackadoo he was. My BS BioChem may as well have been basketweaving for as much as I used it professionally, but I still learned so much and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
No no no. During class, they inject you with many pieces of informations. However, not-so-good teacher often fail at linking all those informations. This video helps you connect all those floating around information in your head. Both classes and this video are important.
Yep, the way they present information in any topic is very dry and boring.
I too "studied" this recently at school for exams but had no idea how or why it works
In school, they mostly explain theory, while understanding neither why it's there in the first place nor its practical implications, and not even making an attempt to relay that information, while those are in fact perhaps the most crucial things when it comes to actually understanding the theory.
People aren't made to understand dry theory, we just aren't constructed to do that. People are made, however, to understand _stories._ And it is through storytelling that you will achieve greatest results in explaining any theory.
In telling about why it is the way it came to be, instead "well we've done some experiments and we believe that we're correct, don't ask what the experiments are or who performed them or god forbid paper titles, 'cause I don't know any of that".
"You are not the father"
- Backflips
An entire career made on that lol. well that and guess which of these women is not a woman 😅
31:20 That only works if people keep their jobs after most of their work is automated, instead of being laid off, or their coworkers are laid off and the non-automated work is piled onto the minimum possible number of employees, so they're left working just as hard if not harder.
Which, unfortunately, is what usually happens.
Unfortunately I fear this omission is intentional. Our gracious host has a history of siding with and defending big tech.
Not to mention, companies seem to increasingly only care about the bottom line these days.
Why keep a bunch of people on and spend money on risky R&D, with no guarantee of success, when they could just immediately save money by let everyone go plus continuing to rake in the cash now that everything is automated.
It”s not like all the newly unemployed people would be able to afford new products anyways (you know, on account of not having jobs anymore and all) 😝
The difference is, mullis wasn't hired because that mundane work needed to be done, he was hired because he has a PhD. Once the mundane work was done automatically, he could focus more on specialized work such as PCR.
So people who's job is only to do mundane work, will get laid off. But people who are only limited by the mundane work will thrive. The second part is the point he is making.
@@JazzyFizzleDrummers This isn't a "big tech" problem. This is a fundamental feature of capitalism, but yea Veritasium as an entity is pretty defensive of capitalism as a whole.
@@skanderbeg152yeah, sure. That's not happening, buddy. All the boss sees is almost all you did is now done by a machine.
Thanks!
Thank you!
I work in a molecular biology lab where PCR and sequencing are every day activities. It’s never lost on me how incredible the fundamental science behind it all is, and how brilliant the people who developed it all are. Although at times it really does just feel like transferring small volumes of liquid around!
Sounds like you need to add some LSD into that mundane, repetitive task. Who knows, maybe you'll change the world!
Dont encourage him xD
gotta say veritasium has been going crazy with uploads, some of the most consistent high quality releases i've seen in a long time from any science pub channel
Fascinating story, but the takeaway at the end really sounded weird to me...
Yes, automation gave Mullis the opportunity to come up with PCR. But it's not because the automation "opened his mind". It's because he gained free time!
Thus, I think we should not glorify recent AI advances for "potentially opening our minds". Instead we should ask: Why isn't all this AI stuff (or any other automation progress, for that matter) resulting in us working lower hours?
Yeah, a 32 hr work week would have helped. Yet in reality someone has to load the machine and push the button, realistically today he would be fired and replaced with a much less skilled "button pusher" who may invent a better way to label everyone's lunch in the fridge, but not new DNA techniques.
Yeah, It's really disingenuous to think that people being laid off in favor of AI is the same as having more free time to innovate.
People aren't using AI cause it's better, it's because they don't want to pay salaries.
@@_Ve_98 same goes for automation
@@nerfherder4284 "a better way to label everyone's lunch in the fridge"
Yeah I agree the bit about automation was kinda random. But I have a strong feeling Derek is going to make an automation video soon. I know he's done a few before but as the horizon comes closer it is going to be more and more real. Also automation didn't make Mullis an open minded guy, he thought he was abducted and denied HIV and climate change (the former you could accept due to the culture of that time, the latter is undeniable physics that anyone with a half a brain could know is real).
The graphics in this are amazing. Showing more detail when zoomed in and then zooming out to show the classic diagrams. It really connected my understanding of what these diagrams represented in a tangible way.
I think it's noteworthy how much smoother things would have gone for Mullis if he'd been more of a team player. His initial idea for PCR barely took off because he had made too many enemies. His colleagues wrote the initial manuscript with him as a minor author because he'd established himself as unreliable.
We like the story of the lone and misanthropic scientist, but in reality scientific advancements are only slowed by people not working together. If you look at journal repositories you often find the most prolific and impactful authors are those that are kind and personable, but those same people fall out of the public consciousness because they don't provide the conflict for a story
Or the more rational extrapolation is that "science" nearly ignored a genius with a revolutionary breakthrough because it was too much of a little click that wouldn't consider ideas from people that didn't conform to their social rules. Imagine how many other revolutionary ideas have been shelved and mocked because the in group of scientists didn't bless the rebel genius
Moral of story: LSD good
If he was more of a team player, you might have accepted that it was just a feverish dream. That people were right, it was too simple for anyone to not try it. And he would have given up after he met some difficulties...
History would have been quite different...it was a unique blend of genius, hard headedness and circumstances that led to PCR.
There is usually a price to pay for being a genius
smart people are as prone to flaws as everyone else
we shouldn't think of them as gods or superior beings
they're just people, like anyone else
and this story is just one of many others that prove this
It's Latif! What a great collaboration! Nasser's enthusiasm for science history is the best part of Radiolab, so him showing up here is a happy surprise!
He was the best part of the episode. His excitement is contagious and makes me want to see more of him.
I have the opposite reaction. Latif is the reason I quit listening to Radiolab - and it was by far my favorite podcast. Robert leaving was a huge blow (his perspectives were brilliant) and then Jad left. I continued to listen to my favorite podcast, but Latif's Scoobydoobiness became really annoying, it rubs me the wrong way. Sorry Latif.
0:44 Editor went all out 😂
Yup, Editor was on LSD to immerse deeper into the matter /s
Should have an EPILEPSY WARNING THOUGH. Honesty, I was eye-bulging at the first 30 seconds, then my poor extra dilated eyes get bombarded... tsk tsk editor. Also, it is actually EPILEPTIC, so there's that...
@@chingscott00ur a bot😂
yOU ARE NOT THE FATHER
333 👍
0:14 “Most of it is yours, some of it is mine.” - bacteria
"Most of it is yours, some of it is mine." Would have been a scary sentence to hear from Derek
@@fatalserenity9917 or any kind of serial killer/psychopath
@@fatalserenity9917 this is where my mind went, blushed for a moment
@@fatalserenity9917imagine if Michael vsauce say that 💀
*Genius bro*
As someone whose career (and many citations) has been largely thanks to these early discoveries getting pieced together just at the right moment to break open the doors to DNA exploration, I appreciate the Mullis story as an illustration of how diverse "scientists" really are. Not all are super-geeks or model citizens, and certainly only a rare few are perfect role models. You can be any kind of person (good or terrible) and still contribute as long as you follow your curiosities. Great video!
I know a guy like this - he's pretty deep into the authism spectrum, and by no means, nothing bad about people that are in that spectrum, I am my self, but there are different levels. A nurse I knew told me a story. She had been working in intensive care where people arrive with the most horrific issues, like gun shots, traffic accidents and so forth and she told me there were doctors working there that were outright aholes, unable to communicate with people around them, just like this one portraited, but to the task of patching someone up, they were right on the task, 24 hours straight and quite ofte succeded. Sometimes, being nice and handsome, isn't needed, if that isn't your job…
Indeed he does sound like being on the spectrum. And curiously surprisingly many doctors fall in that group you describe. But work places are slowly waking up to how much of a negative impact a single person can be to the whole work force and usually their input is not unique and irreplaceable.
House?
@@Yupppi I'm not so sure - according to this nurse, the doctors in question were priceless when it came to doing the job, it was just all the rest that was bad :P
I wish I was an authistic savant, probably would have written a lot of great books by now.
@@Yupppi He absolutely doesn't. He sounds more like he might have Antisocial Personality Disorder.
I love RUclips because of channels like these !!
Thank You Derek 🙏🏻
Probably one of your best documentaries, Derek. Thank you for your hard work. I hope you’re getting rest with the family during the holiday season.
Hudson Freeze is every bit as cool as I had imagined from his name.
You really make some of the best science videos on RUclips. Great stuff!
Their is no comparison on Veritasium explaining complex topic in most simplest manner from scratch
That’s how intellectuals should be. Bringing complex and complicated ideas into simple explanations. He’s a role model I look up too.
Whose?
Well, Grant Sanderson is no slouch. 🙂 Love em both.
Wikipedia tells the story more prosaically and with less click bait.
I spent two weeks studying this in my Bio classroom last year and this video explained everything I had learned in 30 minutes. A very good job done with a very exciting topic.
yea, "molecular basis of inheritance" right?
It’s almost poetic-a scientist studying bacteria in extreme heat is named Freeze. You couldn’t make this up!
The beauty of science is how random ideas, seemingly unrelated, can collide and spark groundbreaking discoveries. It’s a reminder that no effort is ever truly wasted. And going from a bakery to a cutting-edge DNA lab? Then pitching an idea bold enough to inspire an entire team? That’s a once-in-a-lifetime leap.
The video romanticises the story. Read the Wikipedia page about Mullis. He'd had a couple of fellowships after his PHd, but took time away from academia to manage a bakery. He was tempted back with another fellowship and then given a top job in the research dept of Cetus. He didn't just pitch an idea to the team. He was the captain of the team. Cetus paid him a bonus of 10,000 when he invented PCR. The company later sold the patent for 300 million. And then he went mad.
The thumbnail optimization is driving me crazy
Fascinating story. Judging by how it took the team months, it really shows how much effort is required to iron out the details when going from idea conceptualization to commercialization.
and this is lightning fast too. Few other technologies went from the stone age to common use in as short a time.
I am a Veritasium follower since 2019 when I was a high school student. This channel has contributed immensely in fueling my curiosity towards science. Now I am a masters student and works with pcr almost daily. I feel very exited and somewhat blessed when Derek makes videos which are related to my study. Thankyou Derek. This channel feels home ❤
I too have been following Veritasium but since 2013 (my first RUclips subscription)
Hope you see this comment in 20 years to look back on
@veritasium
My wife has a masters in micro biology (doesn't work in that field any more), so I have to watch these videos alone. She can't watch them because they just reminder her of school and former work and she hates it. But I am an ignoramus in a non-stem field and I find this incredible and fun to watch! Thanks Derek!
I have this phenomenon between my wife and anything dental related. She's a dentist and hates the job and school she went through to get there. Most health science videos are a no-go if she's around.
Wow and this explains our health care from doctors. Just another job and no one cares more about your health than you do
why this sudden hate for the field she dedicated most of her early life to achieve. A masters is hard to achieve. Did something happen?
"Never let your schooling interfere with your education." ~ Mark Twain
Is there something more going on? Or did she just not love that subject, I assumed she’d have to obsess over it to have a masters in it
Geez this is so well explained with interesting history, has to be one of the best Veritasium vids yet
I did PCR all the time in our high school bio lab! Happy to see Veritasium did a video on it. Our bio teacher would love this.
But to become the unstable genius you need to be doing LSD in the bio lab
Weird, when my friend started taking LSD all he got was schizophrenia
But of course, that isn't the story that gets spread. The story that gets spread is the insinuation that recreational drug use is the key to inventiveness.
For real, drug and alcohol induced psychosis is real. Even as (relatively) safe as it is to smoke Marijuana after the age of 25, most people still don't realize that if you have a history of mental illness in your family and feel off when you smoke, you gamble with a VERY high risk of drug induced psychosis. So many people ruin their minds and lives because they're told to "smoke through it" or that they're "conquering demons/ego." I wish people would actually read the studies and realize the full extent of the pros and cons.
You have to be a genius from the beginning. If morons take drugs they just get even more moronic. ;-)
@@nannyg666 Yeah, even though success is typically associated with years of hard work, and use of recreational drugs is associated with less-desirable outcomes, it's more entertaining to focus on the outliers. It's kind of like survivor bias.
Yeah my sister is completely ruined due to taking drugs like LSD
07:09 and how do they create probes?
Chemical synthesis
Basically you bind your staring nucleotide via it's 3’-hydroxyl group to a support, the nucleotides are capped (with dimethoxytrityl) so your don't just get a string of the same one.
You do an acid wash to remove the cap, flush your next 3' capped nucleotides with 5' phosphoramidite groups, they form a phosphite triester bond with the anchored nucleotide, then you just repeat with each nucleotide you need.
Chemical synthesis
Chemical synthesis
Chemical synthesis
Amazing video! I watch all your videos, but this was one of those that shine out. Thanks!
DNA is the pinnacle of Biology and Medicine. I'm so glad we are getting a full veritasium video on this topic!
As an undergraduate researcher, I have been studying PCR (first encounter in high school) and now trying it out for myself in college. This video gave me goosebumps because the entire concept of it is just so simple yet freaking ingenious.
My professor always says that every research counts no matter how small and this is probably the best example I could have found.
As someone who spent my genetics thesis doing PCR and gel electrophoresis over and over and over again every day, this is such a great video to explain this amazing literal life hack
Your content is always excellent, Derek, but this one is outstanding! Hands down, the best explanation of the PCR I have ever come across - not to mention the engaging historical context. Please keep up this good work - there are very many of us who appreciate it greatly! 😀
Amazing video ! As a PhD student I use PCR at least multiple times a week, and didn’t know about the crazy story of its discovery. Thank you for this well-narrated story
I'd like to know how CRISPR works and if it uses any of the same mechanisms.
@@nerfherder4284 I wouldn't say CRISPR uses the same mechanics as PCR.
CRISPR essentially uses a protein (Cas9) that cuts DNA wherever you want it, guided by a chain molecule similar to DNA called RNA. This mechanism is used by bacteria to combat viral DNA being streamed into their cells, by cutting it in specific areas.
Scientists can use this mechanism to perform cuts in DNA, but consequently, also many other things.
Since cells sometimes attempt to fix cuts in DNA using free DNA in the cell, scientists can perform cuts on the cell's DNA in the presence of genes they want the cell to express. This way, the cell may insert the gene, making a genetic modification.
Alternatively, scientists can use a modified Cas9 that doesn't cut DNA but still moves to the specific area in the cell using the RNA molecule, with added addons like inhibitor/activator, allowing the scientists to express/inhibit genes for their studies.
Hope this helps!
It's honestly incredible to think that we live in such a world where PCR and CRISPR exist...
@@nerfherder4284 Crispr-cas9 is more similar to the restriction enzymes that he spoke on early in the video. Basically cuts both strands of DNA at a specific site and with that open site you can add in a gene or not.
@@nerfherder4284 Crispr uses guide rnas (short pieces of rna that bind to specific restriction enzymes like cas9) to guide those restriction enzymes to a specific target dna they also bind to. There those restriction enzymes can "cut" the target dna. This cut needs to be repaired by the cell which often leads to small pieces of dna missing at the break point. You can also use another repair mechanism used by cells to insert fragments of dna into the breaking point.
Those techniques allow biologists to "knock out" certain genes(make them stop working) and to add just about any piece of dna into specific places that can be controlled via specific guide rnas ("knock in").
Kary is the biggest example of both the advantages and dangers of having a very open mind. You're able to come up with and consider way more ideas, some of which might be groundbreaking and society changing but most of which will be weird, bad or outright terrible.
Drugs can open your mind up but more openess isn't usually a good thing.
All major scientific breakthroughs come from entertaining very strange ideas rejected by most, defying consensus to chase where evidence seems to point. Both ends of the intelligence spectrum do this, but geniuses are occasionally right. It's the process of examining and filtering those ideas that matters.
I much prefer these types of educatioal and animation videos compared to "Producer goes to this place" type of videos.
Me too
Yeah me too, imo they r cringe
Soo true mate!!
I think both are cool
Yesss
The quality of your videos nowadays are so impressive.
Huge leap from the past, well done Veritasium.. highly captivating to watch.
As a medical technologist/medical laboratory scientist, I appreciate this story/history of one of the most important things we do at work. ❤❤
Another fantastic piece. With probably the best production values on RUclips certainly on this type of topic. I'd have loved to have had access to these videos when I was at school. The closest we had to anything like this was the Christmas lectures.
23:35...got goosebumps seeing that
You know who else is a great story teller Derek. Man ..in this world of "shorts" form content you post this masterpiece of a video. Absolutely awesome work 👍
Dude. Veritasium and Radiolab?! 🤯 Thank you Derek and Jad!
Isn’t that Latif Nasser?
lol yeah you’re right. Wrong host. Thanks Latif! 😂
Isn’t it incredible how chance and persistence shape the biggest breakthroughs? From a bakery job to pioneering DNA research, this story is a testament to following unexpected paths. And who would’ve thought that bacteria thriving in boiling heat could hold the key to solving such complex problems? Science really thrives on the unexpected twists.
It is fundamental to remember that all of this was only possible because he had access to education in the first place, social connections and money to adress all his basic needs (and a cabin in the woods) while also having free time from work.
Chance is by far the most important factor in a society divided by classes.
Unfortunately its very hard to win a nobel prize while trying to just eat something.
It makes one wonder why we should automatically dismiss his positions on A1DS and AGW, and why he died under unclear circumstances right before C0V1D.
@@WaffleStaffel A much more accomplished and influential scientist, Linus Pauling, won two Nobels and yet in his later years promoted large-dose vitamin C as a cancer cure and cold preventative. Both claims are not supported by scientific evidence.
Being successful in one field is no guarantee of credibility in another area. Being a celebrity doesn't make a person wise (RFK jr).
He believed in astrology. I think he simply lost his mind, like a few other Nobel prizewinners.
@@AutPen38 You'd think, the way he's presented by this dude without a sense of shame. Have you ever actually listened to/read any of his positions on the issues mentioned in this video? He would definitely have had something to say about how the PCR was used to justify extra-constitutional behavior by the authorities over the last 4 years, had he lived...
I like the way Veritasium explains any topic like a film
like a story
the video quality has just gotten so dang good. keep it up guys!
I’ve been running multiple qPCR experiments every week for the last few months and I never knew the origins of Taq Polymerase. So cool!
Listening to Veritasium is like listening to a meditation coach something about his tone and delivery is just calming 😌
6:46 “Heat it up to over 90 degrees”
My 6th grade science teacher: 90 degrees what? Fahrenheit? Celsius? Angles to your stupidity?
celsius since the problem was that boiling water destroys the proteins or whatever those were called and we know that water boils at roughly 100 degrees celsius
23:30 it actually shows the thermometer graded in Celsius
It is always celsius
Kelvin😂
@@aisac21 its a joke.chillout.everyone here saw the animated scale
Your videos and content has got so so much better ,I think this version of Veritasium is presenting science like a movie ,all the information is placed so carefully i wont ever forget names of the scientist you mentioned although they were in my textbooks i never paid attention until you dropped this ,Amazing work dude
0:45 "YOU ARE NOT THE FATHER" *proceeds to backflip for some reason*
" culture "
@@michiganlineman357 child support
“Some reason,” more like he doesn’t have to pay child support anymore to a woman he hates that cheated on him.
Good tv
I reaaaaaaally need more videos like this explaining a concept like reading DNA step by step of how it's actually done
Machine: Takes over his job
Kary Mullis: "Two steps ahead, I am always"
I’ll have to say, this video is exactly what I remember enjoying about high school IBHL bio, nice work!
Thanks Veritasium for this video on DNA testing. Really enlightening to understand some of the basics of our Blood Tests.
Bro changes the thumbnail every 5 minutes like he thinks we're stupid or something.
That first thumbnail was insane
i took a biotechnology course last term and this video made me so happy because i understand everything
Who's here when the thumbnail was still "guy on drugs discovered DNA"?
At 30:00, the orator states "Does HIV cause AIDS. How does a virus cause a syndrome?" The definition of a syndrome is a group of symptoms associated with a condition. When a person has a cold, certain symptoms are expected. We know that colds are caused by a virus. He answered his question: Yes, a virus can cause a syndrome.
Colds aren't always causes by viruses
Sometimes you just get run down because you're overworking or your lacking nutrients and your body also decides to detox or get rid of crap, that's why you sweat, vomit, and get a runny nose. Your body doesn't just get sick in response to viruses.
You are arguing with a fool, don't waste your breath.
@@althepsyphros3314a cold is caused by a Rhinovirus. You are more likely to get infected with a virus when you are "run down". Being "run down" isn't a cold.
I thought it a ridiculous thing to say!
@@althepsyphros3314 any source on this? You constantly have a lot of opportunistic viruses/bacterias in your body which can cause that.
How many times are you going to change the title and thumbnail lmao
I think that is the new meta: fiddle with the thumbnail and title to see what the algorithm likes.
been telling my friends about Kary for years! thanks for this video
21:06 “I still get goosebumps, man” dang the emotion in that!!
I knew PCR stood for 'polymerase chain reaction', but what the hell was that? Thank you for describing, in detail, what 'that' was, and how it was achieved, and how a heat loving bacteria and a weird scientist made it possible. Without you I would never have taken the time and effort to really get the details. So, a big "Thank You" for your hard work creating these videos, which elucidate so many things in our world. You might be a superhero, and maybe should have a cape!