To detect diseases earlier, let's speak bacteria's secret language

You don't know them.

You don't see them.

But they're always around,

whispering,

making secret plans,

building armies with millions of soldiers.

And when they decide to attack,

they all attack at the same time.

I'm talking about bacteria.

(Laughter)

Who did you think I was talking about?

Bacteria live in communities
just like humans.

They have families,

they talk

and they plan their activities.

And just like humans,

they trick, deceive and some might
even cheat on each other.

What if I tell you that we can listen
to bacterial conversations

and translate their confidential
information into human language?

And what if I tell you that translating
bacterial conversations can save lives?

I hold a PhD in nanophysics,

and I've used nanotechnology
to develop a real-time translation tool

that can spy on bacterial communities

and give us recordings of what
bacteria are up to.

Bacteria live everywhere:

they're in the soil,

on our furniture

and inside our bodies.

In fact 90 percent of all of life's cells
in this theatre are bacterial.

Some bacteria are good for us:

they help us digest food
or produce antibiotics.

And some bacteria are bad for us:

they cause diseases and death.

To coordinate all the functions
bacteria have,

they have to be able to organize,

and they do that just like us humans --

by communicaiting.

But instead of using words,

they use signaling
molecules with each other.

When bacteria are few,

the signaling molecules just flow away.

Like the screams of a man
alone in the desert.

But when their are many bacteria,

the signaling molecules accumulate,

and the bacteria start sensing
that they're not alone.

They listen to each other.

In this way, they keep track
of how many they are

and when they're many enough
to iniate a new action.

And when the signaling molecules
have reached a certain threshold,

all the bacteria sense at once

that they need to act
with the same action.

So bacterial conversation consists
of an initiative and a reaction.

A production of a molecule
and the response to it.

In my research I focused on spying
on bacterial communities

inside the human body.

How does it work?

We have a sample from a patient.

It could be a blood or spit sample.

We shoot electrons into the sample,

the electrons will interact with any
communication molecules present,

and this interaction
will give us information

on the identity of the bacteria,

the type of communication

and how much the bacteria are talking.

But what is it like
when bacteria communicate?

Before I developed the translation tool,

my first assumption