TED talk - How bacteria communicate - Bonnie Bassler

Are there any bad TED talks? I haven't encountered any so far. In this one Bonnie Bassler, professor of molecular biology at Princeton, explains how bacteria communicate with one another.

She begins with bioluminescence, and why it only occurs after bacteria have multiplied to a critical mass/concentration. She then extends the concept to virulence in human infections; the bacteria actually control their pathogenicity. Fascinating.

Equally fascinating is the closing concept that multicellular creatures (humans, etc) evolved [or were created, depending on your cosmic view] using an extension of the same principle of quorum sensing that bacteria use to distinguish "self" from "other."

This video is 19 minutes long - very long in the short-attention-span world of websurfing, but worthwhile if you want to be impressed by how the world works, and by how the principles elucidated in this talk might be used to overcome antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

If you watch and enjoy this talk, try one of these that I blogged earlier:

• The face of Leonardo DaVinci
• Fertility, longevity, and income (see sublink near the end)
• Training crows to help mankind
• Close-up card tricks
  

I hope you weren't planning on getting any work done today...