September 14, 2010 • 25 mins
Bacterial life is one of the most hardy life forms on Earth. But the impressive talents of bacteria aren't limited to durability. Tune in to learn more about the strange bacterial ability to sense quorums and communicate with other bacteria.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. This
is Alson Adama, like the science editor at how stuff
works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb, science rider
at how stuff works dot com. Yeah. Have you ever
(00:24):
thrown a party? I have certainly helped throw some parties. Yeah.
Used to. When I first moved to Atlanta, I lived
in this house with the two other people, and it
was it was kind of a party house. Tell me
about it, Well, it was. It's interesting because it's like
in a really nice neighborhood in Atlanta. Um. And but
(00:46):
it was like the one house on the street that
it wasn't really that well kept up and didn't have
like a you know, a nice family living in it.
You know, the neighbors would cross the street when they
were walking their dogs. Yeah, it was like the it
was you know, every street has that one house, and
this was that one house. Um. And it's just because
like some dude, don't you know, the dud who owned
it was like too lazy to fix it up and
sell it. So it's like I can just rent it out,
(01:07):
like you know, by the month to these people. So
for for you. For years, it was like everybody who
lived in it, like new people who had lived in
it before, and it just continually amassed more and more
used tup aware and kitchen items in the pantry um
and none of the type of head tops. Well there
were tops in there, but you know, God bless anybody
(01:28):
who could actually line everything up and you know, reuse it.
But yeah, we'd have have parties um and and yeah,
like like we're saying, it's like parties tend to start
off with, you know, versus the people getting ready for
the party, right, and then the people who annoyingly show
up early to attend the party but don't want to
actually help you set up, so they're like they're like
one of them. Yeah, they're like asking for a drink,
(01:51):
or they're eating snacks while you're still setting up the
snacks and you're like, what are you doing? You know,
So then more people show up, and then you maybe
you start cranking the music a little right, the party
builds momentum, but it's like you know, when that first
sky or gal comes, you don't want to put everything
out right away. You don't want to put your best
or dirbs that you slaved over you don't want to
put maybe the micro brew that you're kind of keeping
for a little bit later, yeah, or be like, all right,
(02:13):
let's dance, you know, the three of us here. No, yeah,
you gotta save the good music for a little later.
When the party achieves that tipping point, yeah, that point
at which the person starts doing the worm on the floor,
you know, somebody you know retires to a corner, maybe
to to do a little closing up to one another
hook up. The guy falls off the roof. No, no, no, no, no,
(02:35):
that happened at this house. Yeah, are you serious? Some
dude like climb up on the roof and fell off
in the He was fine, because the kind of person
who crawls up on the top of the roof and
falls off during the course of a party tends to
be fine afterwards because he's probably done it before. But yeah,
that kind of thing happens, right, So today we're talking
about that seems sort of thing only in bacteria bacteria
(02:56):
party if you will party, which which sounds like, you know,
some sort of slanderous term you throw it like, you know,
your least favorite restaurant. It's a bacteria part right, So specifically,
we're talking about quorum sensing, which is how a bacteria communicate.
But first a little background. So bacteria, you guys are
going to remember just a simple, single celled organism doesn't
(03:18):
have a nucleus, lacks organ elles, you know, those tiny
specialized organs within the cellule membrane, like a mitochondria or
something like that, and your bacteria is going to be
probably round, spiral or road shaped, maybe Gram positive, maybe
Graham negative, and they're gonna fall under the domain bacteria. Yeah,
So that's kind of an overview of factoria, just in
(03:39):
case you needed to jog your memory a bit. And
it's easy to fall into the trap though thinking of
these as simple, like simple organisms in the sense that
it's kind of like they evolve to a point and
just stopped where they you know, where they kind of
like they never got out of the first grade or
second grade, but it's more like they reached the second
grade and just became like really awesome that being a
(03:59):
second grade like in ways that we typically don't give
them credit for, right, So they're pretty complex organisms and
clever organisms. Consider this story. Back in the nineteen sixties,
a couple of researchers noticed that bacteria known as Vibrio
fishery uh displayed more luminescence as the bacterial population group.
As you can imagine, it's kind of hard to glow.
(04:20):
It takes a lot of energy. So scientists determined that
the bacteria were able to preserve their energy until they realize, hey,
this is the right moment, let's make a really good glow.
There are enough of us here to really make an impression.
So a lot of times you could see that good
glow in the liquid organ of a deep sea creature,
like you know, a squid, and it was really fascinating
stuff because these bacteria were living symbiotically um with the
(04:43):
squid or whatever creature they happened to inhabit, and the
light the bioluminescent bacteria would become the light structure for
the eye. It was so interesting. So it's like if
you had like a giant monster that coded itself with
like rab kids with like little blow sticks, and then
like you get enough of them together, like one ravor
kid with a glow sticks, and that can really produce
(05:03):
a lot. But it gets a lot of them together,
except yeah, except they they get these things end up
gathering together and then they produce glow more glowing right
right right, like the Ravor kids, no doubt, Yeah, and
the giant squid um. So the point of this is
that the population reaches has to reach a sufficient size
to emanate that killer glow. Again, like the party, you
(05:25):
have to get a certain number of people together before
the party really starts kicking, as they say. Yeah, And
that's an example of quorum sensing. It's it's really just
how bacteria communicate. It's used. It's usually used to tell
other bacteria, Hey, there are enough of us here out.
Let's let's get down to the bacterial business. And there's
some other organisms capable of mimicking quorum sensing, like I
saw some research on plants and algae and insects, possibly
(05:48):
to like honey bees. I guess insects might use it
to figure out where they're going to plant their next colony.
Interesting anyway, So the name, as you guys can imagine,
comes from quorum or just them and already of people
from some particular group that you need to achieve for
like a vote or a political action to occur. Yeah,
Like you're always hearing it down the news, like, oh,
they have to get a quorum, and they have to
(06:08):
form a quorum on a particular talk topic before you know,
this legislation can pass or this rule can you know,
be passed up in accompanying, etcetera. Yeah, example, how stuff
works dot Com couldn't pass that sweet new motion for
a four day work week because a quorum wasn't achieved.
I miss, I didn't get the email on that. Neither
did I if only it had gone out. I don't
(06:30):
know a four day work because then then you're just
gonna have like ten day workdays, right, work? Yeah, ten
day workdays? Whatever? What am I talking? Ten hour workdays? Right? Gotcha? Um?
I guess, I guess you could bump it up. What
did the French people do? Oh? Well, that's a whole
another issue. But so let's talk about coreum sensing. Let's
talk about how bacteria reached that critical capacity to communicate.
(06:54):
So the mechanism here that you're really going to want
to concentrate on is auto inducers. Bacteria produced, they give
off these auto inducers and there they function is signaling molecules,
kind of like pheromones. So the concentration of autoinducers in
any given area is going to correspond with the size
of the bacterial population, like to bring this to a party.
You know how when people come to a party, they
(07:15):
never stick with this one cup for their beverage. They
end up with like leaving several around, like laying on
coffee tables and bookshelves. I see so number of cups
laying around as a indicator of how good the party is, right,
Like if you have two cups lying around, that means
you have fifty people there, right. So similarly, of course,
a high concentration of auto inducers is going to tell
(07:36):
you that a lot of bacteria present. So once you
get enough bacteria coming to the party, they're going to
start producing the molecules that are so toxic to their hosts.
They may even form a biofilm, which is just a
massive group of bacteria that may form a coating like
on a mossy rock you were talking about in a
dog bowl. Yeah, more if you feel like a film
on your teeth, uh yeah, or a medical device. They're
(07:57):
pretty common on medical devices like a catheter, prosthetic device,
or heart implant valve. So this is the tipping point, right,
This is kind of like when the party gets off
the chain as they say, you know when the guy
falls off that you're so full of these party expressions. Um,
but yeah, that this is when, this is when things
start happening and and and that's the issue here, right,
(08:19):
is is what happens when the when the bacteria actually
form a quorum and start doing the sometimes dangerous things
that bacteria do. Right, So this would be when they
they mobile us they decided to start infecting the host
generally speaking, right, Yeah, that that being the prime thing
that we're interested in, like the dangerous stuff. So just
to remind you, a quorum seuching drug would stop the communication,
(08:42):
whereas a regular antibiotic kills bacteria, it stops the targeted
bacteria from growing and then of course allowing the development
of resistant mutan bacteria. Yeah. It basically we're talking about
cutting off the communication, like they'll be however many bacteria.
However many bacteria get in a room, but they don't
know all the other guys are really there. There's not
enough communication to get the party started. You know. It's
(09:05):
kind of like if you feel he's trying to have
a party with a bunch of lane people, you know,
and they're just they're not they're gonna understanding around. My
husband has a name for this. He calls it a
lights on sit down party, lights on sit down part,
which I think is pretty apropos Well, if they're board games,
you know sometimes that you know, sometimes just you know,
scrabble is a good level of off the chain, you know, yeah, indeed, right,
(09:26):
especially if you allow like creative spelling, you know, then
it's whoa, and here's something else. Bacteria don't just communicate
with their own kind, right, They don't just communicate with
the people at the party. They may have receptors for
species specific auto inducers as well as receptors for signals
and up by all other kinds of bacteria. So there,
so there could be like party crashers and the bacteria
(09:48):
community indeed, indeed, right, So this would indicate, you know,
in the case of our bioluminescent ones, that not just
the bioluminescent ones are are communicating, but you know, they
may be communicating with other bacteria that are just floating
in the sea water chatting it up. So why does
it matter? Why do we care if bacteria are communicating? Well,
(10:10):
it really never hurts to have new tricks up our
sleep when we're dealing with bacteria, and and and again
that's the key thing here is that when bacteria form
a quorum, a lot of times you're gonna do something
deadly or at least unhealthy to the host. Right, So
let's take it in the hospital. Um, there's a there's
a pretty common bacteria called Pseudomonas aruginosa. You're smiling because
(10:36):
you want to make a food joke about how that's
now I did that, lad, I did that last week. Uh.
Simon is a gram negative bacteria behind an infection that
strikes and often kills people with cystic fibrosis and other
immunocompromised people. This is going to be like people AIDS patients,
or maybe people are seeming chemotherapy or people with burns,
(10:57):
and it's again it's really common in hospitals, but it
doesn't affect healthy people. So a couple of scientists from
the University at Buffalo were able to inhibit the master
regulatory gene behind coreum sensing. So that's effectively how we
are stopping bacteria from communicating, by the way, is by
regulating gene expression to get into the actual mechanics of it.
(11:19):
And so these these scientists were able to do that,
and it's pretty cool when you consider that a lot
of strains of P. Aruginosa are resistant to antibiotics. So again,
it kind of comes back to having more than one
way to skin the cat, or stop the bacteria from
chatting with one another in this case and mobilize. Yeah,
and another thing that this is the thing that I
thought was really cool is um as an idea that's
(11:40):
been put forth by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine,
and that's that these could be basically quote everlasting antibiotics.
And basically the principle here is, you know, we've all
heard of like antibiotic resistant drugs and like antibotic resistant bacteria, illnesses,
et cetera. You know, the idea is that by creating
like pulling out antibiotics, were pushing against them, and then
(12:03):
they're gonna push back, they're gonna, you know, they're gonna
evolve a resistance to something and suddenly you have to
change your you know, it's you have to change your
offense to meet their defense. But if you're if you
by creating like a quorum sensing drug according sensing drum
draw antiquorum sensing drug. You are You're you're messing with
their communication. You know, you're you're not um, you're not
(12:26):
really pushing them, You're just sort of breaking them up, right,
You're not sparking resistance. Yeah, and so they found that
like in like twenty six successive generations of different bacterial species, uh,
that generation was still as sensitive as the first one was. Yeah,
they're not like learning to the fight back against it,
which is awesome because then it could conceivably last forever.
(12:47):
It could be like a permanent cure. I mean, I
feel like everlasting is a little optimistic when it comes
to an organisms as long lasting and as adaptable as
a bacteria have have proven to be. But still it's
an intriguing concept. It's a little boastful. But then again,
if you want, you know, you want to get picked
up by the media, and you want to you know,
if you study funded to say everlasting treatment for this,
(13:09):
and like whoa, I'll fund that. There are doctors using
quorum sensing or rather anti worm sensing drugs to fight
bacterial infections. Now that's probably what you guys are wondering. Yeah,
not really, You're right, not so much, except possibly in
some like traditional medicine practices. Um, there's an interesting article. Um,
(13:32):
what publication was that in, Well, it wasn't in a publication.
It was a clinical trial. The clinical trial website you
can check out all the clinical trials they've got going
on for for different things in the United States. And
there's a two thousand eight study that was investigating a
zithromycin as a potential drug and they were using it
(13:52):
to battle again Pseudomonas arugonosa ventilator associated pneumonia. And the
study did, in fact me to phase tube. It was
terminated because of financial issues, so we never got a
chance to see how this was going to turn out. Yeah,
the article I was thinking of was actually in Gizmodo,
and it was about John mccafee, he of the Security computer. Yeah,
(14:14):
so apparently he was like, I've learned how to tackle um,
you know, computer viruses, I'm going to go after the
real thing. And he's down in Belize, like checking in
with like like traditional um like herbal practices and seeing
and U and looking into the possibility of like quorm
sensing um antiquorm sensing drug potential in those uh you know,
(14:35):
those those herbal remedies. So it's pretty cool. Yeah, pretty interesting. Yeah,
interesting to read that. I thought that the author Juel
Johnson had to had a good take on in It's
all there to bring a little bit of skepticism to
to this, especially since Bailes doesn't necessarily have the vetting
system that we do for do drugs. Yeah, so they
(14:58):
were looking to uh in us the help of quorum
sensing for um all sorts of stuff like ear infections
and ulcers, biofilms on your teeth. I think they're looking
into a health wash, which would be handy. I don't
know what the dental Headgennis would you. I don't know
how they would feel about that, because what would they
do if we didn't have biofilms on our teeth anymore? Oh,
I think we'd still figure out a way to mess
(15:19):
up our teeth pretty bad. Have confidence in our junk
food eating ability. Okay, Well, so, apart from what they're
doing in Bailie's, there are some issues with developing these
kind of drugs elsewhere, and some of the issues have
concerned the molecules being toxic to humans. According to a
related Scientific American article I was reading. In addition, they've
(15:42):
been having some troubles developing disruptors that work against many
different species of bacteria. Yeah, like they'll only it'll only
be good to cut off like one type of bacterious communication,
right right, Yeah, which might be good in the case
of a bacteria that's a prevalent, like the aforementioned Pseudomonis organosa,
but it prevents you from having like a general sort
(16:02):
of antiquorum cure all right. Also, some of these have
like there's some issues with the shelf life, like getting
it to where you could actually like get it out
there and stores and have it like be an ode
for the counter thing and not a you know, harvested
on the site type of deal. And there's also a
really interesting study that came out of the University of Edinburgh,
and a couple of biologists there were saying, we'll hold
on a second here, like we were saying before, bacteria
(16:26):
that's simple. In fact, they may not even communicate in
the same way within a particular population. Yeah. And another
interesting fact comes from some research from the University of Edinburgh,
and that's that bacteria, like humans. As with humans, some
of them are better communicators than others. So if you
end up if you were able to encourage more of
(16:48):
the poor communicating um bacteria. This is actually beneficial. Yeah,
this is beneficial because then the other guys can't get
a word in edgewise and really get going with their
with their quorum. It's kind of like if you didn't
want your part need to get off the hook. So
you like you invited mostly agoraphobic. Uh, you know people
that are just going to stand there, you know, looking
into their drinks. A lot of social anxiety. Yeah, so
(17:10):
that's so that's that's pretty cool in another way that
you could sort of you know, use this for your
to your benefit. Yeah. So that about it wraps it
up on talking to bacteria or bacteria talking with each other. Yeah.
I was really surprised by it, um, because you just
don't think of all, right, I don't think of bacteria
speaking to each other, you know, or in any way communicating.
(17:31):
It just I tend to without thinking about it, you know,
view them as this very simple organism that kind of
works like like a very simple machine, you know. Yeah,
not the case. They have proved us wrong once again.
So if you guys want to send us any of
your thoughts on bacteria or bacteria communicating or just tell
us how much of a good communicator you are. Send
us an email science stuff at how Separate dot com.
(17:52):
I have to admit when you first mentioned quorum sensing
drugs to me, I thought it was something like out
of Dune or like some sci fi novel where there's
like a crazy sci fi drug. No. No, not like
the case. Um, hey, do you want to do listener mail? Yeah?
We actually got some awesome listener mail in just today,
(18:13):
not only male but package Yes, our very first factor,
which is super exciting from Australia. Yeah. I was worried
at first because one of the reasons we received some
of our fan mail from Australia is because we made
some comments about there being a lot of venomous creatures there,
and then people were some people were like, it's not
really that bad. It's like, you know, so there's kind
of a dialogue back and forth, and then there's a
(18:34):
comment on a comment. Do you remember that? That's very exciting?
So I went first, I'm like, oh my goodness, like
somebody's like mailed as a snake or a scorpion or something,
you know. Um, But as it turned out not, it's
actually two adorable little pretreated creatures. I got a Rodicent
bridge back with a bandanna, which is so cute. Dogs
your favorite animal. And I received a Lambergeyer, which is uh,
(18:57):
you know, the big majestic looking bird that's in the
Life series that drops bones from a great height and
then goes down and each the shattered remains. So they're
really cute. And they came with a letter. Yeah they
do the letter. Hi, Allison and Robert, good day from Australia.
UM for hosting such an awesome podcast that makes my
(19:18):
commute so much more bearable. I need to do some presents.
Here's a Rhodesian ridge back for Allison and a lambur
guy for Robert. If they behave perhaps they might you
might allow them to play with Katie's narwhale and Sarah's
awful lot that those guys. Thank you for a great
show and keep up the fantastic work. Best CC, Melbourne, Australia. PS.
(19:40):
How about a podcast on the Higgs Boson We might
find it soon? Excellent, Thank you very much. These are
really super cute. Yeah, we took up took a photograph
of and I'll see if I can't throw that up
on the Facebook and the lamber guy is going to
go up on the shelf next to Gamera. Hey. So yeah,
we've received a lot of of a really good listener
(20:01):
email lately, so we're going to go through some of
them today and we're pretty psyched that you guys are
written in. First up is Abdullah s and he wrote
in with his very first email to an HSW podcast,
and we are honored. So here's what he had to say.
He wanted to give us a little info on how
to pronounce the Burgh Khalifa, the tallest tower that we
mentioned in our Space Elevator podcast. Remember talking about that, Yeah, yeah,
(20:21):
this is the one in Space Elevators. Yes, yes, this
was the one in Space Elevators. Indeed, Robert Um. So
he told us the correct pronunciation and he then he
was talking about how the tower was named and burge
actually means tower and Khalifa is the name of the
current president and it literally translates to tower of Khalifa.
(20:43):
So thanks, Abdullah, appreciate the info. We have a ton
of emails from lefties or lefty wanna bees, shall I say?
A lot of people wrote in to talk about this
whole left handed guitarist thing that we got to in
our podcast, we received some I think they're some left
you want to be. I'm just going to put that
out there. That's because you're righty. Yeah, but I don't
(21:04):
want to be a lefty. Well you should, because we're awesome.
So after our podcast on lefties, a couple of guys
wrote in to tell us that lefties are the only
ones in the right minds. Yes, indeed we are, and
to tell us to your take on left hand guitarists.
So here's what listener Jake had to say. Although right handed,
I do know that if you're lefty guitarist, you have
to use your left hand to strump and right hand
(21:25):
to hold down the courts. So lefties hold the guitar
upside down. Jake also told us that Paul McCartney, the
famous Beetles star, is a lefty and he had trouble
learning guitar until he looked at another lefty guitarist and
saw the strings strong upside down. That's pretty interesting. So
even more, this turned out to help Paul McCartney when
(21:47):
he met John Lennon, because it meant that they could
sit across from each other and see a mirror image
and learned songs that way. It's pretty interesting. Andrew wrote
in something along the same lens. He also brought up
Phil Collins, and he was saying that there are no
other left handed instruments that he could think of other
than the southpaw guitars. And I really do think you
(22:07):
might have just wanted to bring up Phil Collins. Wait,
I thought Phil Collins played the drums. Well, so Phil
Collins plays the drums. But he was saying that drummers
um set up their drump kit in a mirror image
of the usual way, so a special lefty way if
you will. Yeah. William wrote in to tell us that
aside from left handed guitars, um firearms are something that
are left handed designed. And this is pretty critical because
(22:29):
when you consider a firearm, if you have a lefty
using a firearm designed for righty, then you can wind
up with shells being ejected. Oh yeah, man, I never
thought of that. Yeah, you don't want to have shells
ejecting in your face every time you fire the gun.
That's design for Yeah, William tells us you definitely don't
want this in a firefight. So I totally trust William
(22:49):
on that. Garrett is now frightened of his left handed
girlfriend should she ever decide to fight him. Yeah, she's
got the advantage. And Jim from New Jersey's fledged fencing
career may have been cut short due to some tricky
lefties in his college phizzed class. Yeah, you know, I
took a fencing in college and yeah, were you any good?
(23:12):
I don't think I went up against Jim because I
went to an old girls school, but I might have
been okay. Yeah, And Val, our friendly neighborhood maker of
prosthetic devices, brot in again to talk about her left handedness,
and she was mentioning um the whole care car thing
from Scottish history. Apparently there's a clan called the care
(23:34):
Clan or car Clan, depending on how you want to
spell it k E R R R c A R
and they're known for being left handed, so much so
that the care castle Um built its spiral staircases backwards
so that they could have that fighting advantage that we
were talking about the robber and I we're mentioning and
Val asked where some of my family was from, and yeah,
we do have a little Scottish in them, so I
don't know whether it's care car, but so wow, some
(23:57):
of your ancestors may have built a crazy staircase designed
to fight on. Maybe that explains when my dad always
wears a kilt, does he? Oh yeah, yeah, sorry dad.
And on an unrelated note, Richard wrote in to tell
us that he's fit, he's small, and the mosquitoes love him,
but he wasn't sure why. I think it may be
(24:17):
because you're irresistible, Richard, So thanks for that. You guys
have any what we're gonna say? I was gonna say
at the point, we received a lot of comments about
left lefties and guitars and all, but but nobody was
able to really answer the like, how do how do
lefties use guitar teaching as a seduction tool? You know? Yeah,
We're gonna leave that one outstanding for you guys, So
sind us the answer. We're looking for it. Science stuff
(24:39):
at hustak dot com or hook up with us on Facebook. Yeah.
On Facebook we're stuff in the science lab and on
Twitter we're lab stuff. So check us out. All right,
that's all I got, Thanks for listening, guys for more
(24:59):
on this and thou sins of other topics because it
how stuff works dot com? Want more how stuff Works.
Check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page.
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. This
is Alson Adama, like the science editor at how stuff
works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb, science rider
at how stuff works dot com. Yeah. Have you ever
(00:24):
thrown a party? I have certainly helped throw some parties. Yeah.
Used to. When I first moved to Atlanta, I lived
in this house with the two other people, and it
was it was kind of a party house. Tell me
about it, Well, it was. It's interesting because it's like
in a really nice neighborhood in Atlanta. Um. And but
(00:46):
it was like the one house on the street that
it wasn't really that well kept up and didn't have
like a you know, a nice family living in it.
You know, the neighbors would cross the street when they
were walking their dogs. Yeah, it was like the it
was you know, every street has that one house, and
this was that one house. Um. And it's just because
like some dude, don't you know, the dud who owned
it was like too lazy to fix it up and
sell it. So it's like I can just rent it out,
(01:07):
like you know, by the month to these people. So
for for you. For years, it was like everybody who
lived in it, like new people who had lived in
it before, and it just continually amassed more and more
used tup aware and kitchen items in the pantry um
and none of the type of head tops. Well there
were tops in there, but you know, God bless anybody
(01:28):
who could actually line everything up and you know, reuse it.
But yeah, we'd have have parties um and and yeah,
like like we're saying, it's like parties tend to start
off with, you know, versus the people getting ready for
the party, right, and then the people who annoyingly show
up early to attend the party but don't want to
actually help you set up, so they're like they're like
one of them. Yeah, they're like asking for a drink,
(01:51):
or they're eating snacks while you're still setting up the
snacks and you're like, what are you doing? You know,
So then more people show up, and then you maybe
you start cranking the music a little right, the party
builds momentum, but it's like you know, when that first
sky or gal comes, you don't want to put everything
out right away. You don't want to put your best
or dirbs that you slaved over you don't want to
put maybe the micro brew that you're kind of keeping
for a little bit later, yeah, or be like, all right,
(02:13):
let's dance, you know, the three of us here. No, yeah,
you gotta save the good music for a little later.
When the party achieves that tipping point, yeah, that point
at which the person starts doing the worm on the floor,
you know, somebody you know retires to a corner, maybe
to to do a little closing up to one another
hook up. The guy falls off the roof. No, no, no, no, no,
(02:35):
that happened at this house. Yeah, are you serious? Some
dude like climb up on the roof and fell off
in the He was fine, because the kind of person
who crawls up on the top of the roof and
falls off during the course of a party tends to
be fine afterwards because he's probably done it before. But yeah,
that kind of thing happens, right, So today we're talking
about that seems sort of thing only in bacteria bacteria
(02:56):
party if you will party, which which sounds like, you know,
some sort of slanderous term you throw it like, you know,
your least favorite restaurant. It's a bacteria part right, So specifically,
we're talking about quorum sensing, which is how a bacteria communicate.
But first a little background. So bacteria, you guys are
going to remember just a simple, single celled organism doesn't
(03:18):
have a nucleus, lacks organ elles, you know, those tiny
specialized organs within the cellule membrane, like a mitochondria or
something like that, and your bacteria is going to be
probably round, spiral or road shaped, maybe Gram positive, maybe
Graham negative, and they're gonna fall under the domain bacteria. Yeah,
So that's kind of an overview of factoria, just in
(03:39):
case you needed to jog your memory a bit. And
it's easy to fall into the trap though thinking of
these as simple, like simple organisms in the sense that
it's kind of like they evolve to a point and
just stopped where they you know, where they kind of
like they never got out of the first grade or
second grade, but it's more like they reached the second
grade and just became like really awesome that being a
(03:59):
second grade like in ways that we typically don't give
them credit for, right, So they're pretty complex organisms and
clever organisms. Consider this story. Back in the nineteen sixties,
a couple of researchers noticed that bacteria known as Vibrio
fishery uh displayed more luminescence as the bacterial population group.
As you can imagine, it's kind of hard to glow.
(04:20):
It takes a lot of energy. So scientists determined that
the bacteria were able to preserve their energy until they realize, hey,
this is the right moment, let's make a really good glow.
There are enough of us here to really make an impression.
So a lot of times you could see that good
glow in the liquid organ of a deep sea creature,
like you know, a squid, and it was really fascinating
stuff because these bacteria were living symbiotically um with the
(04:43):
squid or whatever creature they happened to inhabit, and the
light the bioluminescent bacteria would become the light structure for
the eye. It was so interesting. So it's like if
you had like a giant monster that coded itself with
like rab kids with like little blow sticks, and then
like you get enough of them together, like one ravor
kid with a glow sticks, and that can really produce
(05:03):
a lot. But it gets a lot of them together,
except yeah, except they they get these things end up
gathering together and then they produce glow more glowing right
right right, like the Ravor kids, no doubt, Yeah, and
the giant squid um. So the point of this is
that the population reaches has to reach a sufficient size
to emanate that killer glow. Again, like the party, you
(05:25):
have to get a certain number of people together before
the party really starts kicking, as they say. Yeah, And
that's an example of quorum sensing. It's it's really just
how bacteria communicate. It's used. It's usually used to tell
other bacteria, Hey, there are enough of us here out.
Let's let's get down to the bacterial business. And there's
some other organisms capable of mimicking quorum sensing, like I
saw some research on plants and algae and insects, possibly
(05:48):
to like honey bees. I guess insects might use it
to figure out where they're going to plant their next colony.
Interesting anyway, So the name, as you guys can imagine,
comes from quorum or just them and already of people
from some particular group that you need to achieve for
like a vote or a political action to occur. Yeah,
Like you're always hearing it down the news, like, oh,
they have to get a quorum, and they have to
(06:08):
form a quorum on a particular talk topic before you know,
this legislation can pass or this rule can you know,
be passed up in accompanying, etcetera. Yeah, example, how stuff
works dot Com couldn't pass that sweet new motion for
a four day work week because a quorum wasn't achieved.
I miss, I didn't get the email on that. Neither
did I if only it had gone out. I don't
(06:30):
know a four day work because then then you're just
gonna have like ten day workdays, right, work? Yeah, ten
day workdays? Whatever? What am I talking? Ten hour workdays? Right? Gotcha? Um?
I guess, I guess you could bump it up. What
did the French people do? Oh? Well, that's a whole
another issue. But so let's talk about coreum sensing. Let's
talk about how bacteria reached that critical capacity to communicate.
(06:54):
So the mechanism here that you're really going to want
to concentrate on is auto inducers. Bacteria produced, they give
off these auto inducers and there they function is signaling molecules,
kind of like pheromones. So the concentration of autoinducers in
any given area is going to correspond with the size
of the bacterial population, like to bring this to a party.
You know how when people come to a party, they
(07:15):
never stick with this one cup for their beverage. They
end up with like leaving several around, like laying on
coffee tables and bookshelves. I see so number of cups
laying around as a indicator of how good the party is, right,
Like if you have two cups lying around, that means
you have fifty people there, right. So similarly, of course,
a high concentration of auto inducers is going to tell
(07:36):
you that a lot of bacteria present. So once you
get enough bacteria coming to the party, they're going to
start producing the molecules that are so toxic to their hosts.
They may even form a biofilm, which is just a
massive group of bacteria that may form a coating like
on a mossy rock you were talking about in a
dog bowl. Yeah, more if you feel like a film
on your teeth, uh yeah, or a medical device. They're
(07:57):
pretty common on medical devices like a catheter, prosthetic device,
or heart implant valve. So this is the tipping point, right,
This is kind of like when the party gets off
the chain as they say, you know when the guy
falls off that you're so full of these party expressions. Um,
but yeah, that this is when, this is when things
start happening and and and that's the issue here, right,
(08:19):
is is what happens when the when the bacteria actually
form a quorum and start doing the sometimes dangerous things
that bacteria do. Right, So this would be when they
they mobile us they decided to start infecting the host
generally speaking, right, Yeah, that that being the prime thing
that we're interested in, like the dangerous stuff. So just
to remind you, a quorum seuching drug would stop the communication,
(08:42):
whereas a regular antibiotic kills bacteria, it stops the targeted
bacteria from growing and then of course allowing the development
of resistant mutan bacteria. Yeah. It basically we're talking about
cutting off the communication, like they'll be however many bacteria.
However many bacteria get in a room, but they don't
know all the other guys are really there. There's not
enough communication to get the party started. You know. It's
(09:05):
kind of like if you feel he's trying to have
a party with a bunch of lane people, you know,
and they're just they're not they're gonna understanding around. My
husband has a name for this. He calls it a
lights on sit down party, lights on sit down part,
which I think is pretty apropos Well, if they're board games,
you know sometimes that you know, sometimes just you know,
scrabble is a good level of off the chain, you know, yeah, indeed, right,
(09:26):
especially if you allow like creative spelling, you know, then
it's whoa, and here's something else. Bacteria don't just communicate
with their own kind, right, They don't just communicate with
the people at the party. They may have receptors for
species specific auto inducers as well as receptors for signals
and up by all other kinds of bacteria. So there,
so there could be like party crashers and the bacteria
(09:48):
community indeed, indeed, right, So this would indicate, you know,
in the case of our bioluminescent ones, that not just
the bioluminescent ones are are communicating, but you know, they
may be communicating with other bacteria that are just floating
in the sea water chatting it up. So why does
it matter? Why do we care if bacteria are communicating? Well,
(10:10):
it really never hurts to have new tricks up our
sleep when we're dealing with bacteria, and and and again
that's the key thing here is that when bacteria form
a quorum, a lot of times you're gonna do something
deadly or at least unhealthy to the host. Right, So
let's take it in the hospital. Um, there's a there's
a pretty common bacteria called Pseudomonas aruginosa. You're smiling because
(10:36):
you want to make a food joke about how that's
now I did that, lad, I did that last week. Uh.
Simon is a gram negative bacteria behind an infection that
strikes and often kills people with cystic fibrosis and other
immunocompromised people. This is going to be like people AIDS patients,
or maybe people are seeming chemotherapy or people with burns,
(10:57):
and it's again it's really common in hospitals, but it
doesn't affect healthy people. So a couple of scientists from
the University at Buffalo were able to inhibit the master
regulatory gene behind coreum sensing. So that's effectively how we
are stopping bacteria from communicating, by the way, is by
regulating gene expression to get into the actual mechanics of it.
(11:19):
And so these these scientists were able to do that,
and it's pretty cool when you consider that a lot
of strains of P. Aruginosa are resistant to antibiotics. So again,
it kind of comes back to having more than one
way to skin the cat, or stop the bacteria from
chatting with one another in this case and mobilize. Yeah,
and another thing that this is the thing that I
thought was really cool is um as an idea that's
(11:40):
been put forth by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine,
and that's that these could be basically quote everlasting antibiotics.
And basically the principle here is, you know, we've all
heard of like antibiotic resistant drugs and like antibotic resistant bacteria, illnesses,
et cetera. You know, the idea is that by creating
like pulling out antibiotics, were pushing against them, and then
(12:03):
they're gonna push back, they're gonna, you know, they're gonna
evolve a resistance to something and suddenly you have to
change your you know, it's you have to change your
offense to meet their defense. But if you're if you
by creating like a quorum sensing drug according sensing drum
draw antiquorum sensing drug. You are You're you're messing with
their communication. You know, you're you're not um, you're not
(12:26):
really pushing them, You're just sort of breaking them up, right,
You're not sparking resistance. Yeah, and so they found that
like in like twenty six successive generations of different bacterial species, uh,
that generation was still as sensitive as the first one was. Yeah,
they're not like learning to the fight back against it,
which is awesome because then it could conceivably last forever.
(12:47):
It could be like a permanent cure. I mean, I
feel like everlasting is a little optimistic when it comes
to an organisms as long lasting and as adaptable as
a bacteria have have proven to be. But still it's
an intriguing concept. It's a little boastful. But then again,
if you want, you know, you want to get picked
up by the media, and you want to you know,
if you study funded to say everlasting treatment for this,
(13:09):
and like whoa, I'll fund that. There are doctors using
quorum sensing or rather anti worm sensing drugs to fight
bacterial infections. Now that's probably what you guys are wondering. Yeah,
not really, You're right, not so much, except possibly in
some like traditional medicine practices. Um, there's an interesting article. Um,
(13:32):
what publication was that in, Well, it wasn't in a publication.
It was a clinical trial. The clinical trial website you
can check out all the clinical trials they've got going
on for for different things in the United States. And
there's a two thousand eight study that was investigating a
zithromycin as a potential drug and they were using it
(13:52):
to battle again Pseudomonas arugonosa ventilator associated pneumonia. And the
study did, in fact me to phase tube. It was
terminated because of financial issues, so we never got a
chance to see how this was going to turn out. Yeah,
the article I was thinking of was actually in Gizmodo,
and it was about John mccafee, he of the Security computer. Yeah,
(14:14):
so apparently he was like, I've learned how to tackle um,
you know, computer viruses, I'm going to go after the
real thing. And he's down in Belize, like checking in
with like like traditional um like herbal practices and seeing
and U and looking into the possibility of like quorm
sensing um antiquorm sensing drug potential in those uh you know,
(14:35):
those those herbal remedies. So it's pretty cool. Yeah, pretty interesting. Yeah,
interesting to read that. I thought that the author Juel
Johnson had to had a good take on in It's
all there to bring a little bit of skepticism to
to this, especially since Bailes doesn't necessarily have the vetting
system that we do for do drugs. Yeah, so they
(14:58):
were looking to uh in us the help of quorum
sensing for um all sorts of stuff like ear infections
and ulcers, biofilms on your teeth. I think they're looking
into a health wash, which would be handy. I don't
know what the dental Headgennis would you. I don't know
how they would feel about that, because what would they
do if we didn't have biofilms on our teeth anymore? Oh,
I think we'd still figure out a way to mess
(15:19):
up our teeth pretty bad. Have confidence in our junk
food eating ability. Okay, Well, so, apart from what they're
doing in Bailie's, there are some issues with developing these
kind of drugs elsewhere, and some of the issues have
concerned the molecules being toxic to humans. According to a
related Scientific American article I was reading. In addition, they've
(15:42):
been having some troubles developing disruptors that work against many
different species of bacteria. Yeah, like they'll only it'll only
be good to cut off like one type of bacterious communication,
right right, Yeah, which might be good in the case
of a bacteria that's a prevalent, like the aforementioned Pseudomonis organosa,
but it prevents you from having like a general sort
(16:02):
of antiquorum cure all right. Also, some of these have
like there's some issues with the shelf life, like getting
it to where you could actually like get it out
there and stores and have it like be an ode
for the counter thing and not a you know, harvested
on the site type of deal. And there's also a
really interesting study that came out of the University of Edinburgh,
and a couple of biologists there were saying, we'll hold
on a second here, like we were saying before, bacteria
(16:26):
that's simple. In fact, they may not even communicate in
the same way within a particular population. Yeah. And another
interesting fact comes from some research from the University of Edinburgh,
and that's that bacteria, like humans. As with humans, some
of them are better communicators than others. So if you
end up if you were able to encourage more of
(16:48):
the poor communicating um bacteria. This is actually beneficial. Yeah,
this is beneficial because then the other guys can't get
a word in edgewise and really get going with their
with their quorum. It's kind of like if you didn't
want your part need to get off the hook. So
you like you invited mostly agoraphobic. Uh, you know people
that are just going to stand there, you know, looking
into their drinks. A lot of social anxiety. Yeah, so
(17:10):
that's so that's that's pretty cool in another way that
you could sort of you know, use this for your
to your benefit. Yeah. So that about it wraps it
up on talking to bacteria or bacteria talking with each other. Yeah.
I was really surprised by it, um, because you just
don't think of all, right, I don't think of bacteria
speaking to each other, you know, or in any way communicating.
(17:31):
It just I tend to without thinking about it, you know,
view them as this very simple organism that kind of
works like like a very simple machine, you know. Yeah,
not the case. They have proved us wrong once again.
So if you guys want to send us any of
your thoughts on bacteria or bacteria communicating or just tell
us how much of a good communicator you are. Send
us an email science stuff at how Separate dot com.
(17:52):
I have to admit when you first mentioned quorum sensing
drugs to me, I thought it was something like out
of Dune or like some sci fi novel where there's
like a crazy sci fi drug. No. No, not like
the case. Um, hey, do you want to do listener mail? Yeah?
We actually got some awesome listener mail in just today,
(18:13):
not only male but package Yes, our very first factor,
which is super exciting from Australia. Yeah. I was worried
at first because one of the reasons we received some
of our fan mail from Australia is because we made
some comments about there being a lot of venomous creatures there,
and then people were some people were like, it's not
really that bad. It's like, you know, so there's kind
of a dialogue back and forth, and then there's a
(18:34):
comment on a comment. Do you remember that? That's very exciting?
So I went first, I'm like, oh my goodness, like
somebody's like mailed as a snake or a scorpion or something,
you know. Um, But as it turned out not, it's
actually two adorable little pretreated creatures. I got a Rodicent
bridge back with a bandanna, which is so cute. Dogs
your favorite animal. And I received a Lambergeyer, which is uh,
(18:57):
you know, the big majestic looking bird that's in the
Life series that drops bones from a great height and
then goes down and each the shattered remains. So they're
really cute. And they came with a letter. Yeah they
do the letter. Hi, Allison and Robert, good day from Australia.
UM for hosting such an awesome podcast that makes my
(19:18):
commute so much more bearable. I need to do some presents.
Here's a Rhodesian ridge back for Allison and a lambur
guy for Robert. If they behave perhaps they might you
might allow them to play with Katie's narwhale and Sarah's
awful lot that those guys. Thank you for a great
show and keep up the fantastic work. Best CC, Melbourne, Australia. PS.
(19:40):
How about a podcast on the Higgs Boson We might
find it soon? Excellent, Thank you very much. These are
really super cute. Yeah, we took up took a photograph
of and I'll see if I can't throw that up
on the Facebook and the lamber guy is going to
go up on the shelf next to Gamera. Hey. So yeah,
we've received a lot of of a really good listener
(20:01):
email lately, so we're going to go through some of
them today and we're pretty psyched that you guys are
written in. First up is Abdullah s and he wrote
in with his very first email to an HSW podcast,
and we are honored. So here's what he had to say.
He wanted to give us a little info on how
to pronounce the Burgh Khalifa, the tallest tower that we
mentioned in our Space Elevator podcast. Remember talking about that, Yeah, yeah,
(20:21):
this is the one in Space Elevators. Yes, yes, this
was the one in Space Elevators. Indeed, Robert Um. So
he told us the correct pronunciation and he then he
was talking about how the tower was named and burge
actually means tower and Khalifa is the name of the
current president and it literally translates to tower of Khalifa.
(20:43):
So thanks, Abdullah, appreciate the info. We have a ton
of emails from lefties or lefty wanna bees, shall I say?
A lot of people wrote in to talk about this
whole left handed guitarist thing that we got to in
our podcast, we received some I think they're some left
you want to be. I'm just going to put that
out there. That's because you're righty. Yeah, but I don't
(21:04):
want to be a lefty. Well you should, because we're awesome.
So after our podcast on lefties, a couple of guys
wrote in to tell us that lefties are the only
ones in the right minds. Yes, indeed we are, and
to tell us to your take on left hand guitarists.
So here's what listener Jake had to say. Although right handed,
I do know that if you're lefty guitarist, you have
to use your left hand to strump and right hand
(21:25):
to hold down the courts. So lefties hold the guitar
upside down. Jake also told us that Paul McCartney, the
famous Beetles star, is a lefty and he had trouble
learning guitar until he looked at another lefty guitarist and
saw the strings strong upside down. That's pretty interesting. So
even more, this turned out to help Paul McCartney when
(21:47):
he met John Lennon, because it meant that they could
sit across from each other and see a mirror image
and learned songs that way. It's pretty interesting. Andrew wrote
in something along the same lens. He also brought up
Phil Collins, and he was saying that there are no
other left handed instruments that he could think of other
than the southpaw guitars. And I really do think you
(22:07):
might have just wanted to bring up Phil Collins. Wait,
I thought Phil Collins played the drums. Well, so Phil
Collins plays the drums. But he was saying that drummers
um set up their drump kit in a mirror image
of the usual way, so a special lefty way if
you will. Yeah. William wrote in to tell us that
aside from left handed guitars, um firearms are something that
are left handed designed. And this is pretty critical because
(22:29):
when you consider a firearm, if you have a lefty
using a firearm designed for righty, then you can wind
up with shells being ejected. Oh yeah, man, I never
thought of that. Yeah, you don't want to have shells
ejecting in your face every time you fire the gun.
That's design for Yeah, William tells us you definitely don't
want this in a firefight. So I totally trust William
(22:49):
on that. Garrett is now frightened of his left handed
girlfriend should she ever decide to fight him. Yeah, she's
got the advantage. And Jim from New Jersey's fledged fencing
career may have been cut short due to some tricky
lefties in his college phizzed class. Yeah, you know, I
took a fencing in college and yeah, were you any good?
(23:12):
I don't think I went up against Jim because I
went to an old girls school, but I might have
been okay. Yeah, And Val, our friendly neighborhood maker of
prosthetic devices, brot in again to talk about her left handedness,
and she was mentioning um the whole care car thing
from Scottish history. Apparently there's a clan called the care
(23:34):
Clan or car Clan, depending on how you want to
spell it k E R R R c A R
and they're known for being left handed, so much so
that the care castle Um built its spiral staircases backwards
so that they could have that fighting advantage that we
were talking about the robber and I we're mentioning and
Val asked where some of my family was from, and yeah,
we do have a little Scottish in them, so I
don't know whether it's care car, but so wow, some
(23:57):
of your ancestors may have built a crazy staircase designed
to fight on. Maybe that explains when my dad always
wears a kilt, does he? Oh yeah, yeah, sorry dad.
And on an unrelated note, Richard wrote in to tell
us that he's fit, he's small, and the mosquitoes love him,
but he wasn't sure why. I think it may be
(24:17):
because you're irresistible, Richard, So thanks for that. You guys
have any what we're gonna say? I was gonna say
at the point, we received a lot of comments about
left lefties and guitars and all, but but nobody was
able to really answer the like, how do how do
lefties use guitar teaching as a seduction tool? You know? Yeah,
We're gonna leave that one outstanding for you guys, So
sind us the answer. We're looking for it. Science stuff
(24:39):
at hustak dot com or hook up with us on Facebook. Yeah.
On Facebook we're stuff in the science lab and on
Twitter we're lab stuff. So check us out. All right,
that's all I got, Thanks for listening, guys for more
(24:59):
on this and thou sins of other topics because it
how stuff works dot com? Want more how stuff Works.
Check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page.
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