This TED video explains how bacteria work. Bacteria are single-celled organisms with only one piece of DNA. They live by dividing and duplicating themselves.
Some bacteria are very good. They help keep us alive by keeping environmental insults out, keeping bad microbes out and helping our digestive system. But there are all kinds of bacteria that make you sick.
Researchers wanted to know: How do bacteria do anything at all?
Bacteria make molecules, and when these molecules reach a certain number, they make light.
How can the bacteria tell when they’re alone and when they’re in a community, and then do something together?
They communicate. They all participate in making a molecule and tell each other, with chemical words, how many they are.
All bacteria have systems like this. Scientists call this behavior quorum-sensing. They count themselves with these little molecules that they create. The number of molecules tells them how many bacterial cells there are, and once there is a critical mass of them, this turns on the behavior.
Each bacteria uses a particular language to count its own siblings.
But they don’t only live by themselves. They have a species-specific system with one kind of secret communication and a different kind of system for communicating outside their species.
They count how many of me and how many of you, and decide what tasks to take on depending on who is in the majority and who is in the minority.
This has practical implications. We need a new solution to disease because we are running out of antibiotics. There’s another problem. To counter harmful bacteria, antibiotics popped the bacterial membrane. In response to this destructive strategy, the bacteria are fighting back, so that antibiotics are no longer effective.
So scientists are rethinking things. If they create a situation where bacteria can’t talk and can’t hear, then they won’t be able to communicate, and they won’t know how to launch virulence.
They do this by making disease-specific quorum-counting molecules that look kind of like the real molecules but are different. In this way, they jam the communication system and render them incapable of doing what they do.
In addition, they are trying to beef up the conversations with helpful bacteria.
What can we learn from bacteria?
Just as bacteria talk to each other and cooperate, we can talk to each other and cooperate.
Just as bacteria can distinguish self from other and have intra-species communication and inter-species communication, we can have communication that serves the best interests of our immediate family or community, while maintaining positive, mutually-helpful relationships outside our immediate sphere, based on the understanding that we are all interconnected.
Just as bacteria “understand” that doing things together makes a difference, and allows them to carry out tasks they could never accomplish if they weren’t doing it together, we too can accomplish together what we could not accomplish alone.
Just as fighting harmful bacteria makes them fight back, while the best strategy is jamming their communication systems or better still, creating a healthy climate in which predators cannot thrive, we too can best fight evil by creating a climate of spiritual strength.
An organic gardener once told me that if the soil is healthy and well-nurtured, this creates an environment where pests don’t feel welcome.
The same is true for our bodies, our spirits and our world. We do ourselves a favor by looking at the environment we’re creating inside our bodies. Is it an environment that makes harmful bacteria feel less than welcome?
This talk about bacteria was posted on a health website with the message: Take your health into your own hands. Don’t wait for the scientists. Eat fermented vegetables to create beneficial gut flora, the kind of bacteria that keep harmful bacteria from doing harm.
with the aim of encouraging people to take their health into their own hands by creating healthy gut flora by eating fermented vegetables, this video was posted on a health site. The effort to beef up the beneficial bacteria is the reason why this video was posted on a health website. Making your own fermented vegetables is an excellent way to take your health into your own hands and create gut flora of beneficial bacteria that keep you alive.
In addition to our bodies, we can learn from bacteria for the sake of our spirits. What is the inner spiritual environment we create? Is it strong and nurturing or is it susceptible to all kinds of harmful ideas to enter? If we have a negative reaction to someone, what is triggering it? What do I need to strengthen within myself to maintain equanimity in the face of onslaught?
Finally, the world can learn from bacteria. Are we strong enough to stand up to evil or do we, out of weakness, succumb to it? As the bacteria count their molecules and then turns on their light, we can communicate and count the humane among us, and turn on our light. Have we reached the critical mass?