To Solve Old Problems, Study New Species | Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado

Nature is wonderfully abundant, diverse and mysterious – but biological research today tends to focus on only seven species, including rats, chickens, fruit flies and us. We’re studying an astonishingly narrow sliver of life, says biologist Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, and hoping it’ll be enough to solve the oldest, most challenging problems in science, like cancer. In this visually captivating talk, Alvarado calls on us to interrogate the unknown and shows us the remarkable discoveries that surface when we do. For the Spanish transcript, click where it says “View interactive transcript” just beneath the subtitles button I described above. You should see a drop down menu on the left side of the page, and selecting Spanish from that list will translate the interactive transcript.