Our bodies are covered with bacteria. Some of it is good and some of it is bad, but scientifically speaking, we are more bacteria than we are human. The good bacteria we wear like a suit of armor. It helps to protect us from other harmful germs and cooties in our environment. It's not perfect though, and sometimes a little bit of bad bacteria makes its way onto or into our body.
Scientists have discovered an amazing trait of these small bits of "bad" bacteria. When they first invade our body, they are far to small to do any real damage, and if they tried to hurt us, our immune system would kick in and squash it easily because it is only a tiny single bacteria. But as everyone knows, we get sick from bad bacteria all the time, so they studied how the "bad" bacteria was able to survive long enough to make us sick.
What they discovered is that all bacteria have a unique language called Quorum Sensing. This language is unique enough that it can be similar to other types of bacteria language, it's totally unique to each type of bacteria so the signals won't get crossed when they communicate. Essentially, once the bad bacteria invades our body, it doesn't activate right away. It knows it's too small, so it starts to duplicate, but still remains in a "cloaked" state not attracting any attention from our body. Once it has built up sufficient numbers to have a relatively decent chance of survival, it sends out a chemical signal that only the other like bacteria can understand that essentially says "turn on now". So all at once, the entire group of that bad bacteria activates and at that size it's enough to make us sick and give our immune system a workout trying to fight it.
This chemical signal the bacteria send out is important because it is unique to each set of bacteria. Scientists hope to one day be able to treat people medically with something called Quorum Quenching, which is basically a process of disrupting that signal that the bad bacteria sends out. Why this is important is because we actually want the good bacteria to stay on our bodies. The current treatment of antibiotics kills both bad and good bacteria and leaves us unprotected while the good bacteria rebuilds. If one can disrupt only the bad bacteria so they can't "turn on" until they are large enough to attract the bodies immune system, then the body can fight the bad bacteria without our bodies getting sick and we can keep our good bacteria safe.
Scientific Minds
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http://www.ted.com/talks/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html |
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