New Study Show How Bacteria Actually Synchronize Together to Harm You

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New Study Show How Bacteria Actually Synchronize Together to Harm You

_http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/04/28/New-Study-Sho

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(http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/04/28/New-Study-Show-Ho\

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VIDEO

 

Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria " talk " to each other, using a

chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find

has stunning implications for science, medicine and industry.

 

 

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

 

 

In this video, Bonnie Bassler with Princeton New Jersey, explains an

amazing new discovery – that bacteria actually communicate with each other,

and

once they realize that their numbers are sufficient to carry out their

genetic function, they launch into action as a synchronized unit.

 

 

Isn’t that just amazing! Who knew bacteria -- single-celled, microscopic

organisms – had such sophisticated mechanisms?

 

 

As you likely know, _bacteria are essential for your good health_

(http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2004/09/29/probiotics-benefi\

ts.as

px) . They perform numerous vital functions in and on your body, such as:

 

--- Keeping environmental hazards from entering through your skin

--- Digesting your food

--- Making vitamins

--- Educating your immune system to keep bad microbes at bay

 

 

Since bacteria are single-celled organisms, they have only one string of

DNA. Hence they contain very few genes, which encode the traits they’re

supposed to carry out. The way bacteria multiply is by consuming nutrients from

their environment, grow to twice their size, and then divide down the

middle.

 

 

We’ve known for some time that once bacteria reach a critical mass, they

can overwhelm your immune system. But no one understood the mechanism behind

it, until now.

 

 

How Bacteria Communicate With Each Other

 

 

They’ve now discovered that bacteria communicate with each other using a

chemical language called “quorum sensing.†As it turns out, every type of

bacteria make and secrete small molecules. When a bacterium is alone, these

molecules simply float away.

 

 

But when there’s a large enough group of bacteria, these secreted

molecules increase in proportion to the number of bacteria emitting them. When

the

molecules reach a certain amount, the bacteria can tell how many neighbors

it has, and suddenly all the bacteria begin to act as a synchronized group,

based on the group behavior programmed into its genes.

 

But that’s not all. Not only do bacteria communicate in this way between

their own species; they’re all “multi-lingual,†and can determine the

presence and strength of other bacterial colonies.

 

 

Essentially, they can count how many of its own kind there are compared to

the amount of another species. They then use that information to decide

what tasks to carry out, depending on who’s in a minority and who’s in the

majority of any given population of bacteria.

 

 

This information can have any number of implications for science and

medicine. For example, they’re already working on a new generation of

_antibiotics_

(http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2003/06/18/antibiotics-bacte\

ria.aspx) that can jam the sensing mechanism of a specific

pathogen rather than killing it. They’re also considering creating pro-quorum

sensing drugs that can boost the communication between beneficial bacteria to

make them operate more efficiently.

 

 

There may be far more complexity to this picture than what we’re currently

seeing. However, the finding is an intriguing one, and may lead to all

sorts of new discoveries about how your body works to maintain optimal health