full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Bonnie Bassler: How bacteria "talk"

Unscramble the Blue Letters

And so to finish, I'll show you the strategy. In this one, I'm just using the interspecies mlcleoue, but the logic is exactly the same. So what you know is that when that bacterium gets into the animal — in this case, a mouse — it doesn't iniatite virulence right away. It gets in, it starts growing, it starts secreting its quorum-sensing molecules. It recognizes when it has enough bteicraa that now they're going to launch their atctak, and the amnail dies. And so what we've been able to do is to give these virulent infections, but we give them in conjunction with our anti-quorum-sensing molecules. So these are molecules that look kind of like the real thing, but they're a little different, which I've depicted on this slide. What we now know is that if we teart the animal with a pathogenic bacterium — a multi-drug-resistant pathogenic bacterium — in the same time we give our anti-quorum-sensing molecule, in fact, the animal leivs.

Open Cloze

And so to finish, I'll show you the strategy. In this one, I'm just using the interspecies ________, but the logic is exactly the same. So what you know is that when that bacterium gets into the animal — in this case, a mouse — it doesn't ________ virulence right away. It gets in, it starts growing, it starts secreting its quorum-sensing molecules. It recognizes when it has enough ________ that now they're going to launch their ______, and the ______ dies. And so what we've been able to do is to give these virulent infections, but we give them in conjunction with our anti-quorum-sensing molecules. So these are molecules that look kind of like the real thing, but they're a little different, which I've depicted on this slide. What we now know is that if we _____ the animal with a pathogenic bacterium — a multi-drug-resistant pathogenic bacterium — in the same time we give our anti-quorum-sensing molecule, in fact, the animal _____.

Solution

  1. animal
  2. molecule
  3. initiate
  4. attack
  5. lives
  6. bacteria
  7. treat

Original Text

And so to finish, I'll show you the strategy. In this one, I'm just using the interspecies molecule, but the logic is exactly the same. So what you know is that when that bacterium gets into the animal — in this case, a mouse — it doesn't initiate virulence right away. It gets in, it starts growing, it starts secreting its quorum-sensing molecules. It recognizes when it has enough bacteria that now they're going to launch their attack, and the animal dies. And so what we've been able to do is to give these virulent infections, but we give them in conjunction with our anti-quorum-sensing molecules. So these are molecules that look kind of like the real thing, but they're a little different, which I've depicted on this slide. What we now know is that if we treat the animal with a pathogenic bacterium — a multi-drug-resistant pathogenic bacterium — in the same time we give our anti-quorum-sensing molecule, in fact, the animal lives.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
vibrio fischeri 6
bacterial cells 3
cell number 3
making light 3
interspecies communication 3
special property 2
human cells 2
chemical language 2
bacterial cell 2
red triangles 2
squid lives 2
molecular biology 2
quorum sensing 2
single species 2
intraspecies communication 2
kill bacteria 2
communication system 2
pathogenic bacterium 2

Important Words

  1. animal
  2. attack
  3. bacteria
  4. bacterium
  5. case
  6. conjunction
  7. depicted
  8. dies
  9. fact
  10. finish
  11. give
  12. growing
  13. infections
  14. initiate
  15. interspecies
  16. kind
  17. launch
  18. lives
  19. logic
  20. molecule
  21. molecules
  22. mouse
  23. pathogenic
  24. real
  25. recognizes
  26. secreting
  27. show
  28. slide
  29. starts
  30. strategy
  31. time
  32. treat
  33. virulence
  34. virulent