this Ted talk Features researcher and entrepreneur Fatima El Zara Al Attract CI, recorded live at Ted X R. Who's 2018 Ted talks daily is supported by Progressive Progressive. Has you covered when it comes to car insurance, starting with built in savings like discounts for being a safe driver. You can also see when you start your quote online or have multiple vehicles on your policy. In fact, drivers who switch and save with progressive save $796 on average started quote online and see all the discounts for yourself. Visit progressive dot com today. National Average annual car insurance savings by new customers surveyed who saved with progressive in 2019 discounts vary and are not available in all states and situations.

You don't know them. You don't see them, but they're always around with spring making secret plans, building armies with millions off soldiers and when they decide so it's back. They all attacked at the same time. I'm talking about back to you. Who did you think I was talking about? Bacteria living communities, just like humans. They have families, they talk and they plan their activities and just like humans, they tricked, deceived, 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 to human language? And what if I tell you the translating material conversations can save lives? I hold a PhD in metaphysics,

and I've used nanotechnology to develop a real time translation tool that can spy and bacterial communities and give us recordings of what bacteria are up to. Bacterial everywhere they're in the soil on our furniture, China inside our bodies, in fact, 90% off. All the life cells in this theater are bacterial. Some bacteria are good for us. They help us digest food or produce antibiotics. And some bacteria are better for us because 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 communicating. But instead of using words, they use signalling molecules to communicate with each other. When bacteria are few, the signalling molecules just flow away like the screams of a man alone in the desert. But when there are many bacteria,

the signalling molecules accumulate and the bacteria start sensing that they're not alone, they listened to each other in this way. They keep track of how many they are and when they are many enough to initiate a new action. And when the signalling 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 the reaction a production of a molecule and the response to it in my research 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 insurrection 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 one back to you? Communicate. Before I developed this translation of the translation tool,

my first assumption was that bacteria would have a primitive language like infants that haven't developed words and sentences. Yet when they laugh, they're happy when they cry their set simple as that But bacteria turned out to be nowhere as primitive as I thought they would be. A molecule is not just a molecule. It can mean different things, depending on the context. Just like the crying of babies can mean different things. Sometimes the baby is hungry. Sometimes it's wet. Sometimes it's hurt or afraid. Parents know how to decode those cries. And to be a real translation tool, it had to be able to decode the signalling molecules and translate the and translate them, depending on the context. And who knows, maybe Google translate will adapt.

The sooner Let me give you an example. I've brought some bacterial date so they can be a bit treaty to understand that you're not trained. But try to take a look. Here's a heavy bacterial family that has infected a patient. Let's call them the months ago. You family they share resource is they reproduce and they grow. One day they get a new neighbor material, family capsule it Everything is fine as long as they're working together. But then something unplanned happens. Romeo from Montague has a relationship with Gillette from Capitol it and yes, they share genetic material. Now this Dean transfer can be dangerous to the months ago. Use that have the ambition to be the only family and the patient they have infected. And sharing jeans contributes to the capital. It's developing resistance to antibiotics. So the months ago start talking and certainly to get rid of this other family by releasing this molecule and with subtitles.

Let's coordinate an attack, and then everybody at once respond by releasing a poison that will kill the other family, the capital. It's responds by calling for a counterattack, and they have a bevel. This is a video of really bacteria dueling with sword like organelles, where they try to kill each other by literally stepping and rupturing each other. Whoever family wins, this battle becomes the dominant bacteria. So when I can do is to the tech material conversations that leads to different collective behaviors like the fighting just saw. And what I did was to spy on bacterial communities inside the human body. In patients at a hospital, I followed 62 patients in an experiment where I tested the patient samples for one particular infection without knowing the results of the traditional diagnostic test. Now in material diagnostics, a sample is smeared out on a plate, and if the bacteria grow within five days,

the patient is diagnosed as infected. When I finished the study and I compared the tool results to the traditional diagnostic test and the validation test, I was shocked. It was far more astonishing than I had ever anticipated. But before I tell you what the tool revealed, I would like to tell me about a specific patient. I followed a young girl. She had cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that made her long susceptible to bacterial infections. This girl wasn't a part of the clinical trial. I followed her because I knew from her medical record that she had never had an infection before. Once a month, this girl went to the hospital to cough up a sputum sample that she spit in a cup. This sample was transferred for bacterial analysis at the central laboratory so the doctors could act quickly if they discovered an infection. And it allowed me to test my device on her symbols as well. The 1st 2 months,

I measured on her samples. There was nothing but the third month I discovered some bacterial cheddar in her symbol the bacteria were coordinating to damage her lung tissue, but that but the traditional diagnostics showed no bacteria at all. I measured again the next months, and I could see that the bacterial conversations became even more aggressive. Still, the traditional diagnostics showed nothing. My study ended, but half a year later I followed up on her status to see if the bacteria only I knew about had disappeared. Without medical intervention. They hadn't, but the girl was now diagnosed with a severe infection off deadly bacteria. It was the very same bacteria, my tool discovered earlier. And despite aggressive antibiotic treatment, it was impossible to eradicate the infection doctor's theme that she would not survive her twenties.

When I measured on this girl's samples, my tool was still in the initial stage. I didn't even know if my method worked at all there for a head in agreement with the doctors not to tell them what my tool revealed in order not to compromise their treatment. So when I saw these results that weren't even validated, I didn't dare to tell, because treating a patient without an actual infection also has negative consequences for the patient. But now we know better. And there are many young boys and girls that still can be saved because unfortunately, this scenario happens. Very often, patients get infected the back three or somehow don't show on the traditional diagnostic test. And suddenly the infection breaks out in the patient with severe symptoms, and at that point, it's already too late. The surprising that result of the 62 patients I followed was that my device could bacterial conversations and more than half of the patient samples that were diagnosed as negative by traditional methods. In other words,

more than half of these patient went home thinking they were free from infection, although they actually carried dangerous bacteria. Inside these wrongly diagnosed patients, bacteria were coordinating a synchronized attack. They were whispering to each other what I call whispering. But Syria are bacteria the traditional methods cannot diagnose. So far, it's only the translation tool that can catch those whispers. I believe that the time frame in which bacteria are still whispering is a window of opportunity for targeted treatment. If the girl had been treated during this window of opportunity, it might have been possible to kill the bacteria in their initial stage before the infection got out of hand. What I experienced with this young girl made me decide to do everything I can to push this technology into the hospital. Together with doctors, I'm already working on implementing this tool in clinics to diagnose early infections, although it's still not known how doctor should treat patients during the whispering face. This tool can help doctors keep a closer eye on patients and risk it could help them confirm if the treatment had worked or not.

And it could help answering simple questions. Is the patient infected? And what are the bacteria to bacteria talk? They make secret plans, and they sent confidential information to each other. But not only can we catch them whispering, we can all learn their secret language and become ourselves material whisperers. And as back three, I would say three. Oxo See 12 and a line. Thank you

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