SciShow Tangents - Bacteria

Episode Date: July 25, 2023

Take control of your finances today. Go to https://RocketMoney.com/TANGENTS to get started!It's easy to write off bacteria as no good, nasty, disease causing creeps, but consider this: without bacteria, we wouldn't have yogurt, or delicious sourdough bread, or a gut microbiome to digest those things! There are probably other good examples of ways bacteria are helpful to us, but I'm too hungry to think of them...SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy your very own, genuine SciShow Tangents sticker!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green, and joining me this week as always is science expert, Sari Riley. Hello! And our resident everyman, Sam Schultz. What's up? You guys, I have a burning question, and it is, what happens when a taco and a banana have a conversation?

Is this a joke? Is this an improv game? I don't know. I said, what's a good question to ask at the beginning of a silly podcast? And ChatGPT said, what happens when a taco and a banana have a conversation? And then I said, I don't know what. And it said, what if gravity suddenly turned sideways and everybody had to walk on walls? And that's what one would say to the other? Or what? Maybe that's what the one would say to the other or what maybe that's what the taco would say i thought it was gonna be i was like thinking of all the different puns let's talk about it wow

that's so appealing like other things trying to push them together that's really good i think if they were to talk to each other they would quickly deduce that they were both about to be eaten and then they would figure out a way to escape from the situation that they were in. They also have kind of a similar shape. They'd have a lot in common, I think, that they would become friends, perhaps lovers. I think that was what I was thinking. I think they could spoon each other extremely well because of the shape. Was it a soft taco?

Because I think a banana could easily break a crunchy taco. But if it's a soft flour taco that is a food that I would probably enjoy like wrapped around a banana oh what if you

had a banana just a flour taco wrapped around a banana oh you wouldn't even put I was thinking like you maybe spread some peanut

butter on it wrap it around like a crepe like a crepe yeah that's just a crepe a poor man's crepe you reinvented that

I would even eat a crunchy shell taco with some bananas in it i think it would be a weird salty sweet experience new doritos tacos locos bananos oh yeah you know this classic spanish word for banana okay but but if you fried up some plantains and put them in a spicy tacos, locos, whatever, that would maybe be delicious. I mean, if the year Taco Bell gets plantains, it's like everything got way too good in the world. Like we need to all give up. Humanity's peaked.

There's plantains at the fast food restaurants now. We can do anything. That's how World War III ended and Star Trek and everything got so good. That was the event that happened and everyone was like, we can't fight anymore. Taco Bell's got plantains. Tell that to Chad GPT. Well, I told it two times. I followed up and I was like, no, Taco Bell got plantains and it ended World War III.

And it figured it out. I was like, that's an interesting and creative scenario while it's really fictional it could be the basis for a fun and imaginative discussion on a podcast oh there's just something about the way chat gbt talks to me that i just want to knock its block off sometimes so condescending i think it's the most bullyable thing in the whole planet i'm not a bully but i want to bully it that's it's the most bullyable thing in the whole planet. I'm not a bully, but I want to bully it. That's the end. You can't start bullying the AI. That's how all the AI dystopias start.

And then we have to invent Taco Bell plantain. And end it all. Every week here at Dandies, we get together to try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science facts while also trying to stay on topic. Our panelists are playing for glory and for Hank Bucks, which we'll be awarding as we play. At the end of the episode, one of us will be crowned the winner, but not me. So now, as always, we're going to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem, This Week from Sari. Good luck, said the fighter, to all of their kin. We're living for now, but there's nothing to win. We divide and we conquer, but also lay low. Who said that this creature and us must be foes?

I'll try, said the builder to all those in need. We've got our components and work with great speed, churning out structures that save human lives. As if this was our purpose, we make and we thrive. Take this, said the healer to their nearby friend. We give care and give food and are happy to lend whatever we have for the greater good. Together, we do more than separate we could. It's easy to think of bacterial cells as tools or as reapers tolling death bells, but their kingdom is vast. It spans oceans and dirt. They strive for survival regardless of hurt. They outnumber the stars and the sand and the trees. They form seeds of clouds or the stomachs of bees. They were

life before life could give them a name. So at least let us marvel at all that they became. I think that's the most lofty, beautiful thing anyone's ever written about bacteria. I would mind like not even joking. I think you can look at all of human history. That's the nicest thing anyone's ever written about bacteria i would mind like not even joking i think you can look at all human history that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about them that was great i wanted to give some empathy before we go rah rah there's a lot of in the complexly media universe and the hank and john media universe extended they hate bacteria bacteria disease i just recorded an episode about antibacterial resistance. Uh-oh.

Yeah. So I don't know if that's going to come up. I won't tell you anything I learned because I don't want to ruin your facts. But it was pretty cool. Anyway, Sari, what's a bacteria? And oh, no, I've asked. Yeah. There's probably some fuzzy lines here.

There are some fuzzy lines. There are also a lot of of sub components to this definition. So I'll try to keep it interesting. But they're single celled. Yeah. But they can aggregate and specialize in certain circumstances. So like microbial mats, biofilms, like the like pond scum or the stuff that forms on your teeth. Sometimes bacteria can cluster up.

But largely speaking, one bacterium is one cell. And that cell is prokaryotic rather than eukaryotic. And so prokaryotic means that they don't have organelles or little sub-containers within their cell. They don't have a nucleus that holds their DNA. Their DNA is generally a one circular chromosome of a few megabases, so like a couple million bases, which is relatively small compared to like multicellular organisms. And they often have these little circular, even smaller circular chromosomes called plasmids that you can use to hold a couple different genes. And those can occur naturally, but also is how a lot of scientists manipulate E. coli in labs or what scientists use E. coli in labs for is to amplify, put a gene,

stick a gene into a plasmid, and then amplify it so that you can do other experiments with it. And that's because bacterial reproduction is very weird. Bacteria cells, they reproduce asexually. So they just bloop, binary fission, they divide into two. But they have lots of different ways of exchanging genetic material that are very weird because they are relatively simple so they can take up dna from the environment they can have little viruses called bacteriophages introduce foreign dna or they can just kind of like smooch a little bit and swap dna through direct cell contact and so with them being just one cell going about the world, doing a bunch of things, there's a lot of opportunities for genetic exchanges or mutations,

which is partially why we have so many different bacteria that are specialized to so many different environments, whether that's deep sea or eating metals or radioactive resistance or building antibiotic resistance because these cells are relatively simple and can change a lot over time and pass on those changes pretty easily to each other. So do they get older or like, how do they die? When you divide, how do you know how old you are does that make sense yeah which is that which is the mother cell and which is the

daughter cell i think with bacteria it's just two new cells and they're both the daughter cell and there's like there there is there's never one that like gets old and the other ones it's like they're both new when they divide yeah so it's not immortality necessarily because like colonies grow and then you can destroy a bunch of them but i guess asexual reproduction is kind of like in the way that the water is just cycling around the planet and energy is cycling around this universe there is a chunk of the first bacterium to ever exist in every bacteria. Well, I mean, the first cell that ever existed

is basically every cell that is on Earth, which is not great for existential feelings. Okay, is it not great for other more practical reasons or it's okay? No, no, it's fine. Yeah, it seems a little incestuous, but it's biological. Just cognitively, it's fine. Yeah, it seems a little incestuous, but it's biological. Just cognitively.

Do we know where the word bacteria comes from? We got to. That's got to be a new one. It is relatively new. So when we first started seeing microorganisms, so scientists like Hook or Leuvenhawk. I don't know how to say his name. Leuvenhock. I don't know how to say his name. Leuvenhock. Thank you.

We started sensing, like looking through microscopes, seeing that there were protists and bacteria and little animal cells, basically. naturalist who really dug into so-called infusoria, which I think he just was like, dirty water is infusoria, was a German naturalist named Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, who described numerous microbes in writing in a big tome. and the word bacterium came from the greek bacterion which is a derivative of bactron and they all mean stick or rod or staff or cudgel so specifically um the bacteria the first bacteria that were named were the kinds that were rod shaped. So the bacilli or bacillus, which also derives from the Latin baculus, which means stick and is the same root word as the baculum, which is the little penis bone. So lots of stick shaped things in nature. And we named bacteria because we were like, that's a little stick.

Little stick guy. There's a little stick guy down there. Yeah. Little rod, which was my nickname in high school. Oh. Anyway, and that means that it's time to move on to the quiz portion of our show this week. It's time to go back to the gauntlet. The ultimate game of science, knowledge, strategy, and treachery.

So Sam and Sari, you're going to be facing a series of seven questions of decreasing difficulty asked by me. I will be directing these questions to you in order from seven to one, asking just one of you at a time, and you can choose to either answer or pass. If you answer correctly, you will get the points. The same number of points

as the question number. So the hardest one gets more points. If you're wrong, then you will lose that amount of points and your opponent can steal for that same point. If they are wrong, they do not lose any points once they are stealing. If you pass, your opponent will get to be asked the next question,

which is a little less difficult. After we're done, we'll revisit the past questions, only this time they can't be skipped. And if you get the answer wrong, your opponent can steal from you. And remember to pay close attention to all the questions

because you might get some clues to help you on the harder questions the second time through. So for today's gauntlet, we're going to be talking about bacteria and the culture. Not bacteria cultures, but our culture.

Are you ready? I'm ready. I was born ready for the gauntlet. I'm so confused by the gauntlet constantly. I'm ready. I was born ready for the gauntlet. I'm so confused by the gauntlet constantly. I'm ready. Yeah. So he's like, I'm not ready, but do it anyway. I do think the rules are a little different this time.

I think me and Deboki pass them back and forth, and we just like, it's constantly evolving, just like a bacteria. Okay. Sam, you're going first. I don't know why. Question number seven. Bald's Leech Book is one of the earliest known medical texts in English, dating back to the 9th and 10th century.

In 2015, a team of scientists from Nottingham University decided to test one of the treatments in the books against various bacteria. Based on their translation of the recipe, they mixed onion, garlic, and wine with one more ingredient. What was it spaghetti noodles you don't have to answer i was just kidding that was a joke answer no negative seven negative seven no they're making a tasty volanese sauce uh does sound good i'm gonna pass i don't know okay sorry it does sound like a little yummy sauce um i don't get a consequence for this guess so i'm gonna say i don't know like silver like a metal good guess but no it's not close or anything but it is a good question number six king henry the eighth's favorite warship was called the mary rose but

in 1545 the mary rose sank to the bottom of the english channel during a french invasion while people were able to excavate the ship in 1982 it has since been degrading in 2021 scientists were able to figure out what one of the problems was anaerobic bacteria what were the bacteria making that was so bad for the shit? What was it about what the bacteria were doing that was so bad for the shit? They were making something that was bad for wood, I assume.

I'm going to pass. I don't know. I mean, it can't just be acid. What's anaerobic mean? I'm going to pass too. You're not even going to try even though there's no consequence. Great. Question number five.

Biota Beats is a collaboration between artists, musicians, scientists, and engineers to create music out of the microbiome. On their website, Biota Beats documents collecting bacteria from five regions, including the mouth, feet, genitalia, and belly button. What was the fifth body part? Mouth, feet, genitalia, and belly button. What was the fifth body part? Mouth, feet, genitalia, belly button. Mouth, feet, hands. That is not right. Sam with the negative five

points. It's great, though. Armpits. I bet it was armpits. Okay, anyway. Sari, do you want to steal? Yeah, that wasn't going to be my guess. I think it's armpit. I think there's a lot of bacteria.

That is correct. Damn. Where is the armpits? To produce the bacterial beats, the team samples bacteria from various parts of the body and then streak them onto a large agar plate resembling a vinyl record and sectors defined by the parts of the body

that they were taken from. And after some time, they took images of the plates to gather data from the colonies growing on the plates, including the diameter and density. And that was then converted into musical notes played by an instrument

corresponding to the part of the body of origin. Wow. Of the bacteria. What's the armpit instrument? It's a saxophone. I just made that up. I was like, that's pretty good, though. Probably just the noise.

Fart noises. That's genitalia, too, I guess. Question number four. While bacteria and their waste can be damaging to historical artifacts, they can also be valuable tools for conservation efforts. Recently, an Italian team of biologists, historians, and conservators used bacteria to clean up a 16th century tomb in Florence. Who built that tomb? The problem is, I don't know history at all. And if I guess, I'm going to embarrass myself. So I'm going to pass. Okay. Which radical dude?

Oh, a radical guy. Is it Leonardo da Vinci? No, it's not Leonardo da Vinci. Oh, he's radical. Question number three. Just like the musicians making bacterial beats, scientists have explored ways to control the movement of E. coli so that they can paint an image. In one case, scientists engineered E. coli to make a protein called proteorhodopsin that allowed them to control the movement of the bacteria with one other ingredient.

With this system, they were able to create an image of the Mona Lisa made of E. coli. What was the ingredient that scientists used to control bacteria to form this image? Light. It was light. Oh, did you know that? Yeah. Got those opsins in your eyes. Oh, you know science, so you knew the answer. That sucks. She knew one of the science words. Yeah. I knew a science word. My degree was worth something. All right, Sari, you get a chance to pull even further into the lead here. While older medical texts have suggested the use of cow bile to kill infections, the 20th century ushered in the antibiotic era, and the discoverer of penicillin was known to make art with bacteria. Who was that bacterial artist? Fleming? That's correct. Oh, I hate you so much. Fleming?

That's correct. Oh, I hate you so much. That would have been really, really embarrassing if I... I don't know if I would have got it because my brain's not on here and I would have been embarrassed. In addition to being a scientist, Alexander Fleming was an artist known for dabbling in watercolors, but also biological forms. but also biological forms. He made mold medallions made up of penicillium mold inoculated on blotting paper discs and mounted them between lenses. And then he would give these medallions to famous people

like Queen Elizabeth II and Winston Churchill. What a weirdo. Here's your mold, buddy. Oh my God, I love that. He also made bacteria art by tracing images onto blotting paper and soaking the paper in nutrients and then applying bacteria to it the subjects included a boxing scene between stick figures a soldier and a mother feeding her babies he was having some fun this one this one sold for six thousand pounds at auction wow there's a lot, but not unachievably a lot. But you can make your own mold.

That's the thing. That's right. It's easy. In fact, I do it accidentally all the freaking time. It's kind of harder not to make mold than it is to make mold. Sam. Bacteria art continues to be a popular art form even now

with artists etching designs onto agar plates with different species of bacteria to get different colors to get brown you might paint with bacillus subtilis to get purple you might turn to chromobacterium violacium and to get a translucent edge you might streak your plate with e coli what color does micrococcus rosius make? If you're tricking me, I'm going to be mad at you. Red? It's question number one. Yes.

Okay, good. It's sort of a pink red. There's also a bioluminescent one that you can use, Vibrio fischeri, and a blue-green one that's Pseudomonas aeruginosa. I said that one bad, I'm sure. I think you did good. that's pseudomonas aeruginosa. I said that one bad, I'm sure. I think you did good. Now we're going to go back through and you got to answer. No passing.

Sari, back to question number seven for seven points. Can you tell me what they mixed with onion, garlic, and wine? There was a hint on this one. Mold, maybe? No. Sam, can you steal? Sariari i listened to all the clues unlike you

and wrote them down i believe the answer is cow bile that is correct it is by the cow oh no seven points the nottingham university scientists were interested in a particular treatment that claimed to treat a lump in the eye, which might refer to a stye, using bovine bile salts in their mix. They tested their solution against three different bacteria, and they found that while these ingredients on their own couldn't kill the bacteria, when mixed together

and used to treat wounds on mice, the solution was able to kill the bacteria. About one in a thousand bacteria survived. Is that good? Or some pasta sauce with cow puke. It's great, I think. That's a huge win.

Yeah. All right, Sam, can you continue pulling ahead and tell me how King Henry VIII's favorite warship was being injured by bacteria? No, this one I don't. I can't even venture a guess. There was a bit of a hint. I figured there probably was, but I lost track. Sorry. What were they making? Sulfur compounds? That's great. They're not right.

I would have accepted just poop. But also there were zinc nanoparticles in the poop. Scientists were able to study the ship's hull and they found that zinc sulfide nanoparticles. Well, there was sulfur in it. There was sulfur, but I wouldn't give it to me. And when the zinc sulfide particles oxidized, they became acidic. They become sulfuric acid, damaging the ship, I think is what they became. It becomes sulfuric acid damaging the ship, I think, is what they became.

It wasn't the only issue, though. Scientists found that a compound that the wood had been sprayed with to keep it from drying out was also becoming acidic and contributing to the damage. All right, Sari, now you can try and get this question about the radical dude who built a 16th century tomb in Florence. Is it Michelangelo? Yes! Damn it. I chose the least radical Ninja Turtle when I answered my question he's the most radical ninja turtle darn it and then we got that one we got that one and we got that one that's it everybody how did we do okay i did score it

because i felt bad as soon as i said i was doing nothing i mean you said sulfur compounds. I got to give it to you. I got to give it to you. Zinc sulfide, that's a sulfur compound. If I would have taken poop, I definitely should have taken zinc sulfide as sulfur compounds. Okay, okay. Well, then the sweep continues. So Sam is seven.

Sam did pretty good, but he got a lot of negatives. I got a lot wrong. I think you got 0 exactly, right? Negative 8 plus 8. Oh, yep. Plus positive 8. That would be 0. I got 20.

A very balanced game. Oh my god. I got 20. We can tally it out to one point. I don't know how this works. No, you got 20. Shoot. 0 to 20. I'm humiliated. He got negative 7,, he got 20. Shoot. Zero to 20.

I'm humiliated. Almost got negative seven, but he got zero, which is huge. But there's still a chance for him to come back, I guess. Next, we're going to take a short break, and then it'll be time for the fact talk. welcome back everybody our panelists have brought science facts to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind in an attempt to for for Sam, overcome 20 points of death. My facts better be really fucking good. Let's go! After they've presented their facts, I'm going to judge them and award Hank Bucks any way I see fit.

I'm going to have a total of 40 to give out. So Sam can get... Okay. Sam can get... I can sweep this too. 40 points. You can sweep it. You can sweep it. Okay. Sam can get. I can sweep this too. 40 points. You can sweep it. You can sweep it.

Okay. All right. To decide who goes first, I have a trivia question. Bacteria like Salmonella and Campylobacter are responsible for around 1.8 million foodborne infections in the U.S. each year. To understand more about how these bacteria might spread, scientists at Rutgers watched 371 adults cook the same turkey burger recipe in different kitchens. I love that.

This is sponsored by HelloFresh. The subjects of the study were given prepackaged salad, a seasoning recipe, and raw ground turkey patties infected with a bacteria-infecting virus, or bacteriophage, MS2, which is safe for humans. When the subjects were done cooking, the researchers swabbed surfaces in the kitchen for MS2 to see where that bacteriophage ended up,

and they found that the most frequently contaminated objects included the trash can lids, makes sense, and cutting boards, but the most contaminated object of all was surprisingly spice containers. What percent of spice container samples had the bacteriophage on them? I would say that there are 60% of them that are contaminated. I think it's like 90%. I think I don't trust people at all. Well, as you may or may not know, people of course mostly do the spices

with their mouths. And so it's a big deal to get a bunch of bacteria all over it. You don't use your mouth for the spices? Yeah, I think I do. You get really good twisting off the cap with your tongue. Yeah, you're grinding the pepper. You're grinding the pepper.

It was 48%, so Sam gets to go first. So the term slime mold refers to an informal group of single-celled organisms that are called slime molds because they spend some part of their lifetime being really slimy and they look like mold. So Dichthyostelidia is a particular group of these slime molds. I think they're an amoeba, whatever that means exactly, that do something really weird. They colonize an area and eat all the bacteria there. And when they run out of bacteria to eat in an area, they all sort of blob together into a mobile form called a slug because it looks like a slug. And they crawl off to more bacteria laden pastures. So that in itself is like distressing in a sci-fi horror movie kind of way.

But these gooey guys have another trick up their metaphorical sleeves that make them seem even more like advanced little aliens. Around 2010, a researcher named Deborah Brock was studying these Dictostelium, looking at them through a microscope, as you do, when she noticed that about a third of them had something weird going on in the long, thin structures that they grow on top of themselves. So these structures are basically the fruiting body of the mold, and they're usually full of spores. So when it's time to reproduce, the Dictostelium dries up or something like that, releases the spores and makes little clones of itself. But the Dictostelium Dr. Brock was looking at didn't just have spores in their socks. They also were carrying bacteria in there.

It was the same kind of bacteria, in fact, that they eat. So that was really weird and possibly it was like an infection of some sort. So Dr. Brock treated them with antibiotics to get rid of the bacteria. But the next time that the Dictostelium were exposed to the bacteria, the same ones that had bacteria in them the first time ended up with bacteria in them again, and the ones that didn't have bacteria in them the first time didn't get more bacteria. So Dr. Brock kept experimenting and figured out why one third of these guys had bacteria in them so before the slime molds got together into their slug form to look for more food these dictostelium would stash away a few bacteria in their little

hat thing then when the slug de-slugged they would release their spores and along with them the bacteria which would then do its bacteria thing and start multiplying and colonizing the new place that the slime mold would set up shop. So they were effectively planting new fields of bacteria wherever they went. So Dr. Brock nicknamed these special dictostelium farmers. There are a few trade-offs, like farming dictostelium are slower than non-farming ones, because I guess to like a guy that little, bacteria are heavy enough to make them slow. And also farming dictostelium have less offspring, I think maybe because they have bacteria where all their babies are supposed to be.

But when the slime mold end up in a place where food is scarce, you know that those farmers are thriving compared to non-farmers. And even when the slime didn't end up in places low on food, the bacteria that the farmers stored and brought with them seemed to be the type of bacteria preferred by the slime molds. So they're growing that good shit and they're helping everybody out. preferred by the slime molds so they're growing that good shit and they're helping everybody out this makes me wonder if you're like a like an olympic sprinter do you need to make sure that you've pooped all your poop out or are you going to be a little slow because you're a little heavier than you'd otherwise be it's a great takeaway from my fact probably i bet you probably do yeah you came up to the mic like you were going to authoritatively tell me a story of a sprinter. You know, who takes big poops.

No, I'm just wondering what I was mostly thinking was like, is there a sprinter who had a bunch of poop in them? And they were like, I lost that race by one fraction of a millisecond. And I know it's because I had to take a big crap. I was lugging that around with me. Like a dick.

Stelium with its bacteria hat. Exactly. I love that. I love, man, I love a farmer. I love it even more when it's a creepy slug. What? I hate that they get together into a slug. No, I love farmers.

I hate that they get together into one guy and then they're like, ugh. I think they look, more than than anything more than any other type of slime mold very pokeable like i want to touch a slime mold slug because they look kind of like orbeez and those are fun to touch and you just know they got a little bacteria hat so you don't poke the bacteria hat you poke the rest of their Yeah, you can't poke their bacteria hat or else they'll be in trouble. They'll starve. Their families will starve. Sari, what do you got? So in the ocean, bioluminescence is practically everywhere. Some animals can make their own light, but others use symbioses to glow. And one of the most well-studied

partnerships out there is between the bacterium Vibrio fischeri, which we mentioned in the gauntlet, and the Hawaiian bobtail squid. The gist of it is that the squid provides these bacteria with a home and nutrients to grow in its light organs, while the bacteria help it camouflage at night through what's known as counterluminescence. They glow only on the bottom of the squid so that it blends in with moonlight when seen from below and it still blends in with the dark ocean floor when seen from above. That's cool and all, but what is more interesting to me as a big old biology nerd is how cellularly intertwined these

organisms are. So for example, baby squid have to gather V. fischerei from seawater as they're swimming around, pumping water through their bodies. They have these specialized wiggly cell bits called cilia, which we have in our lungs and intestines and whatnot, that coax the bacteria from the water into deep pockets of their light organs. And these cilia disappear after a successful bacterial infection. So they are a key part of the development of the squid. And that's not all. These symbiotic bacteria affect the genetics of the squid and vice versa. Like we know that V. fischeri bacteria produce light because of a gene system called flux,

where proteins upregulate and downregulate based on things like how densely packed the bacteria are or how much oxygen is available. And these factors are directly sensed and controlled by the squid. The squid cyclically do things like spit out 95% of the bacteria every day back into the ocean to regulate levels of nutrient sharing or light brightness or to repopulate the ocean, or the squid's body adjusts the amount of hemocyanin floating around to affect oxygen availability. And because light is such a measurable output in the lab, scientists have been able to dedicate their careers to unpacking the nuances of these rhythms and this gene regulation and

the co-development of these two organisms. And I'm just scraping the surface here. I don't really have a thesis for this fact. I just started reading about these guys and there were so much. And these are just like a couple little things of how intertwined bacteria are with macro organism cells. And it really makes me wonder about all the signaling that's constantly going on between bacterial cells and hosts that we haven't found ways to measure yet because they aren't as obvious as a glow. mean all on its own having the bottom part of you glow so that you're like i'm like the moon blend in is very very clever what is this

species called that's the hawaiian bobtail squid they're little guys too they're very cute they're so small oh my gosh but not only that but then like you start digging into, they have to sense the moonlight. They have to control the bacteria somehow. Like the bacteria don't decide how bright the moonlight is. Squids kick them out or deprive them of oxygen or any number of other things. Give them extra oxygen. Yeah. So like the squid circulatory system is feeding the bacteria

yeah that's cool wow all right i said i was gonna have 40 points to distribute we've got slime molds that farm bacteria which is like what's so special about humans anyway and then a symbiosis between glowing bacteria and hawaiian bobt squid, which is like nothing is special about humans. We're so boring. Yeah. 20 points each. That means that Sarah is going to be our winner for this episode. Congratulations, Sarah. You came out with a lot more points than Sam.

I'm rich. I'm Hank Buck rich. Now it's time to ask. I'm Hank Buck Rich. Now it's time to ask the science couch. We've got a question for our virtual couch of finely honed scientific minds. Smay745 on YouTube asks, What's the difference between pre and probiotics? Can you have too many of one and not enough of another? Never heard of prebiotics in my life.

Yeah, that's the newer one i think it correct me if i'm wrong sari but a probiotic is when you eat some bacteria and a prebiotic is when you eat stuff that bacteria like theoretically and so you're putting bacteria like the right kind of bacteria food into your digestive system so that the bacteria are happier and more well-balanced or whatever. That's it. A hundred percent. I can retire now. I have a bunch about the history of these two terms if you want,

but we can also just. Probiotic is a little bit of a weird thing to say because it's not like you, what you would think is that the definition of the second thing would be probiotic. It is a thing that's good for the biotics but that's not really the situation the probiotic is just the biotic well it was specifically defined as the opposite of an antibiotic we've got antibiotics which are but that's but the prebiotic is the thing that's good for the bacteria. But I think before we knew that humans could just eat food that were good for bacteria,

we were specifically studying bacterial interactions with other bacterial. So in general, since cultured milk and yogurt and whatnot existed, the concept that microbes could affect the gut microbiome existed. And this is like mini tangent but there was this guy called named elia um mechnikoff who was a pioneering immunologist like won a nobel prize for his white blood cell research he wrote this book called The Prolongation of Life Optimistic Studies in 1907, which sounds like the most eugenics-y, weird quack scientist research book. But really, he just really loved bacteria fermentation. this idea that in Bulgarian peasant populations that ate yogurt, they had enhanced health and longevity. From there, other folks throughout the 1900s started noticing that growing one species

of bacteria in a medium and then pouring that media on other bacteria would enhance the growth of both. So like something that was being made by one bacteria could help the growth of both. And then people put those ideas together where maybe something in that fermented milk being created by other bacteria would then help the bacteria in your microbiome. And the word probiotic was first used in 1965 to describe these substances, secreted by one microorganism to stimulate the growth of another. Because the first antibiotics that we kind of knew of, if we're thinking of penicillin, were substances secreted by one microorganism that destroyed the the growth of another so not so stupid after all

okay i guess okay if like growth promoting as opposed to growth reducing factors produced by microorganisms the idea of prebiotics in general started also a while ago um in 1921 and also in like traditional diet and nutrition ideas, people found that their tummies felt better following the consumption of certain types of carbohydrates rather than others. And specifically in 1995, Glenn Gibson and Marcel Roberfreud introduced the idea of prebiotics as something that is not digestible for humans, but that are edible by bacteria that selectively stimulate and feed bacteria. Fructans and galactans are the two big groups that are considered to be prebiotics or some of the first recognized prebiotics because they really contribute to certain kinds of bacteria that you don't need and either way you are um helping your little microbiome and i don't think you can really eat them out of balance as far as i know there's probably a lot of research into like ratios of either thing but i don't think you can be like i've eaten too much yogurt and now

i got the poop i mean you can eat too much yogurt there's always an amount of something that's too much uh but i think that it in general it's very hard to study all of this stuff um we don't we don't know that much and it would be and that the effects tend to be subtle and they tend to be um very different person to person so makes it difficult to study but definitely good to eat food that's good for you what i'm coming down to is i should be drinking less Coca-Cola. Is the name. I'm going to get some kombucha in you. Yeah. I've been getting into booch lately. I'm a booch boy.

Getting into the booch. I'm booching. You go to the farmer's market enough times, you're going to end up booching for sure. You're going to start booching. If you want to ask the science couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes of the week.

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it up at you like it's a telescope and they're like, look at that guy. Holy shit. Oh my god, it's a giant eye. That's a big rod. Squid? That rod is huge. And Journey to the Microcosmos has created, because I always was like I don't know what microscope to get. So we finally

created the perfect beginner microscope and you can find it at microcosmos.store. Check it out. I love mine. It's right over there. It's summertime, so it is. Microbe City, everywhere in Missoula. It's been a beautiful summer so far.

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But one more thing. One of the main bacteria that makes sourdough bread sour is called Fructolactobacillus sanfranciscensis. If you're watching the video, it's on the screen right now. It digests maltose produced by sourdough yeast and makes lactic acid and acetic acid as waste. So that's a buff act in itself. But the story of sourdough yeast and makes lactic acid and acetic acid as waste so that's a buff act in itself but the story of sourdough might involve poopception in a 2017 paper tried to suss out where this bacterium came from because it's been a long-standing mystery maybe gotten a bread dough from human skin or the air or grains who knows So, according to these researchers' analysis of over 130 species

of insect poop, there's a chance that F. San Francisco might have come from the butts of beetles, moths, flies, and so on that feed on stored grains. Oh no. Oh no. It's all poop.

Sourdough is my favorite bread. Sourdough is my favorite bread. Sourdough is my favorite bread. I've eaten so much of it. It was always bacteria poop. Now it's just bacteria poop from bacteria that were pooped. That makes me feel a little better, I guess. Does it? Now it doesn't.

I take it back. Bacteria poop from poop. It's all over, everywhere, all the time earth is living is just a living world earth is dookie world you can say it earth is definitely dookie world i don't not in a bad way