A friend to. Crime fighters dont miss it. For a long time microbes have been synonymous with plagues diseases and epidemics. But in recent Years Research from around the globe has revealed that microbes are in fact essential to all forms of life plants animals and of course to us humans. The bacteria inside us are useful for breathing eating into growth they can even influence our behavior and sometimes they can even change the destiny of a species. Looking into the microbial is as transcending as looking through a telescope to the stars and thinking about our place in the universe. We cant keep them but with the observation tools available we can reveal their existence this is a very novel time hides a lot of people feel that we have not been just kind of the function of life since darwin. The study of bacteria is revolutionizing all we know about how living things function and could possibly revolutionize medicine. We cant see them but they number in the billion us. Their presence is beyond question. We are immersed in a sea of bacteria and water on the leaves of trees in the air we breathe. Every tiny corner of the planet. Here in amsterdam zoo a contemporary museum called microbiota was created to make microbes visible. First appeared three point five billion years ago making them one of the very first forms of life on earth theyre also among the most basic consisting of a single cell without a nucleus with a few d. N. A. Molecules floating around inside. Invisible to the naked eye bacteria exist in all shapes round. More with filaments. Since their advent and theyve multiplied to colonize the entire surface of the globe theyre present on the most every day about jact. Bacteria are everywhere absolutely everywhere. They form a world of their own and now were finally beginning to understand the complexity of this world. The goal was always after you leave microbial you can never have a look the same way as yourself as before you are part of nature and youre not just this individual but youre full of other organisms which make us do what we can and this is the start of a new thinking of a new era and i think its like steve jobs coming out of his garage with the first computer we will see in the future at the explosion of an empty field. Over the past ten years Microbe Research has taken off around the globe engaging teams of scientists in many different countries. All areas of Life Sciences are involved in biology genetics medicine Behavioral Sciences and even the science of evolution. For the last hundred years really biology has focused largely on genetics and d. N. A. Inside the nucleus of animal and plant cells what were interested in is asking how important is micro biome and in fact a these questions and driving the definition of who we are as a biological. And today. Here in nashville Seth Borenstein works at vanderbilt university. His research on the mechanisms of evolution may possibly revolutionize our conception of the human species. The goal of our work is to understand who we are as a species what does it mean to be homo sapiens and who we are as animal micro associations because we do not live alone we live with trillions of other microbial cells and thousands of other species. Like many of his colleagues Seth Borenstein studies insect models and his research has led him to redefine what constitutes a living being. And what many it. Is that there is no individual in the d. M. All the plant is an assemblage of individuals it could be called an ecosystem it could be called an assemblage a community. Ecosystem assemblage community our traditional notions of animals and plants are being completely overhauled by the study of microbes because the whole animate world lives with bacteria and sometimes even thanks to them. But how does this strange coexistence function. At the university of took a bar in japan the research of professor document for consumers have unleashed shows how bacteria can be indispensable to the survival of a living being. A delicate operation. This taking place. At a section of an effort to remove its done just have system. Professor for council was searching here for a very specific type of cell. You can see it in the n. T. The body very the special so cold the bacterial site and inside the many pot holes there orbach to yourself and that you dont see how you want to deal with any os seem to sell zani by the are missing each of these red dots is a living microorganism autonomous with its own d. N. A. And which is found what it needs to feed and proliferate inside the if its intestinal cell. Invisible to the naked eye this microbe book nera measures just three microns three thousand years of a millimeter. In the evens intestine there are between five and six million of them. Why so many book to deal with in the cell you need to enter the body not needing it. This bacteria by the if you do with ascension you tory ends the essential amino acid so if removing these bacteria by anything about the romans insect that if we did suck the prime to juice but im saying grow because they cannot decide proteins without octavia so this bacteria is really nutritional barry important. Without a spank tyria if it would be unable to absorb the sample from plants and as a result be unable to grow and develop. The a different relationship with the microbes is vital. Their association in the establishments hundred million years ago the age of the dinosaur and so this one is a feat on the brain there are almost single. Scientists call this working relationship between the bacteria and its host symbiosis. And sometimes such collaboration can be extremely close. In italy off the coast of the island of elba a small marine warm and its bacteria have surprised researchers hope. This little worm palladius has a remarkable feature that has no mouth and no anus. That is somewhat of a perfect. We saw a large floating while taking the samples i hope there are no thats a good sign. When ever you talk to someone whether in science or not in science and he told them im working with worms start dont have a mouse dont have a god they dont have kidneys and everyone is ok how do they lose them and thats needed fascinating that nature has a role so efficiently that they are able to exist without all of these and are still able to try and i think its its quite fascinating. How is this little worm been able to survive without a digestive system. And why did this extreme enterprising system develop. Its a double enigma because the environment in which the olivias lives is so hostile. To work. The worm thrives in this sandy sediment its not only very poor nutritionally but its packed with substances that most creatures would find poisonous substances such as Carbon Monoxide and hydrogen sulfide. And its thanks to images taken with an electron microscope they dont leave us a secret to be revealed. Each of these small formations on the surface of its skin is actually a bacteria that converts toxic substances compounds of carbon and sulfur into nutrients for a living yes its similar to photosynthesis so the same way plants produce food so they are able to use Carbon Dioxide there it will to use water and theyre able to use energy from the light to make food for themselves and in a similar manner. The book to avoid this in organic carbon organic carbon and that the worms can use to for energy. Gain some some lengths of. The microbes living on the worm skin function as an organ. Is the equivalent of our intestine. Humans can no longer view themselves as autonomous entities. Biologists now consider all the bacteria that colonize the body as an organ in its own right just like our lungs liver and heart. This organ has a name the microbiota. Its functions are innumerable the immune system digestion development of the coagulation system synthesis of certain vitamins and the protection of our skin tissue. In an adult human microbiota can weigh up to two kilos in total. But how do we acquire these microorganisms are we merely contaminated by our environment or are the bacteria transmitted from parents to their offspring. The surprising behavior of a small sum isee day studied by a document to cancer reveals some clues. Very strange strange animal it is. This bug lays its eggs in a kind of jelly that totally encapsulates them. When the eggs hatch in midwinter the larvae feed on the jelly until the arrival of spring but this is not its only use one after another twenty or thirty x. Ray in roll on the bar the mother produce the jerry by their ovary jerry about the egg the symbiote is also it was created at the mixed up with jerry jerry come out and in this way the bacteria its a transmitter from the mother to offspring by way of the jerry. So generation after generation the essential bacteria are transmitted to the bug through this maternal jelly is the only no from the sect but anyway all. Dependent on the microbes in some way and of course and they the baby acquire there. From the hamas. Just as within sex a crucial process plays out at the birth of humans and other mammals. It is at this precise moment that you acquire and develop your microbiota. After spending nine months protected from all external bacteria babies enter into contact with the microbes that will be indispensable for the rest of their lives. Said chuckle so at birth its a shock. In the end then it will be contaminated by its mother. The mother transmits the microbes present in her vagina anus and on her skin and therefore its an invasion so to speak. Then the baby will feed on breast milk and this milk also contains certain microbes and then when it goes on to solid food it many new bacteria colonise the baby and these new bacteria are those that it will more or less until the end of its life. And from birth the bacterial invasion will trigger the creation of another biological system essential to survival the immune system. The organs of the system bone marrow spleen or lymph nodes produce lymphocytes these cells and their antibodies are responsible for controlling the activity of microbes and if necessary for neutralizing them. Whats surprising is that the immune system needs microbes to become operational. This is why a baby born biases are in section may have a less effective immune system than a child born naturally. Its a little like sports to be effective you have to train all the time that the immune system thats not trained thats not in Constant Contact with bacteria is much less efficient. As you develop you come into contact with more and more. Little by little your immune system becomes stronger the bacterial population your host grows to gigantic proportions. Adult humans have as many bacteria as they have. Into people kiss for ten seconds nearly eighty million bacteria of seven hundred different species that are exchanged. This is our internal ecosystem is modified really thats a positive thing. Thanks. So that microbes. Some of the boss. We dont know. For over a century microbes were regarded as disease carriers to be found with antibiotics and anti septics. Such medical thinking is now widely questioned. Tend to treat bacterial infections with antibiotics however an antibiotic cannot target a specific bacteria it will kill the other bacteria responsible for the disease. These but many other bacteria as well. Thats why doctors are now cautioning against the systematic use of antibiotics and its estimated that less than one percent of the bacteria in our bodies are harmful compared to the thousands of microbes that are useful to us only a few dozen can prove dangerous. But the probably the accurate way to think about microbes is they are just microbes sometimes theyre bad sometimes theyre good and this depends on a myriad of variables including what types of genes does that microbes out what types of genes does that human whats the environmental pressures and it really takes all three of those kinds of variables to determine whether a microbe is going to be good or bad. Microbes are thus essential factors in our health in our intestines alone researchers have found nineteen thousand different functions that are provided by over one hundred sixty species of bacteria. This is what is commonly called our intestinal flora. The intestinal microbiota has become a major focus of medical interest. In the southern german city of heidelberg the team of dr p. A book a pioneer in the exploration of the intestinal microbiota is leading a worldwide study. Theyre collecting human excrement from around the globe to study its microbial composition. Developed on the web the project has already got senate bills from a lot of volunteers. And scientists studying the microbiota collection guy. Theyre entitled burge quickly discovered something startling. A kind of autumn. When we started in two thousand and eleven we didnt really have any expectations because no one had ever worked on this but we might for example have assume that no two cases would be the same or that there would be links between the bacteria and the different eating habits in various countries like the japanese eat a lot of fish and that has a certain composition the french drink wine and that would be reflected. Given that what surprised us was that food geography and also gender and age apparently have no impact. On china kind of. By comparing samples from different continents the researchers observed that human intestinal microbiota could be classified in three main categories that they have called enteral types. The three enter zero times are like three large intestinal flora families. What type we are in does not depend on our environment our sex age or even on our diet. In fact the scientists still do not know what determines our gut type. And yet this is what dictates how we digest our food or react to a drug. Research in this field is still in its infancy and yet professor borks team has already established correlations between changes in intestinal microbiota and diseases such as colon cancer or obesity. These findings sometimes go beyond mere diagnosis and offer new prospects for treatment. The script on the biosphere and theres a big one there are other examples as well such as fecal transplants which are graphs of feces from one person to another. On this is a rather disgusting job here as it is but it helps to fight against certain Infectious Diseases which cant be cured with antibiotics. Transplantation is effective in ninety percent of cases and and just come on how we could also expand this research would use of such knowledge might enable doctors to find the right donor for an intestinal transplant to one containing the right enteral type which could increase the transplant success rate and do it too as a smoke to steam a focus a lot at stake on. The idea of transferring intestinal microbiota could revolutionize medicine. Worldwide many teams are working on new solutions to treat patients with Metabolic Diseases such as diabetes and obesity in particular. Nutritional specialist dr cutting climb all coordinates a major event funded program investigating the role of gut microbes in cardio Metabolic Diseases here in her medical unit in paris her team is undertaking Important Research on the intestinal microbiota of patients who are diabetic or obese. State this is the animal model which has created out people in the fields so we found that if you take a none obese animal gym free and you transfer the intestinal flora of an obese animal to it in two weeks it will become obese based. The publication of these findings had to resign being imperfect. The mice given the intestinal flora of obese mice had almost doubled in size after fifteen days but strangely the phenomenon was short lived some time after the experiment the mice returned to normal even though they were receiving exactly the same diet has before. No one yet understands what happened but its now certain that a malfunctioning of our microbiota is a factor in obesity. She dont know what the challenge is to understand the changes in intestinal flora and see their role in the development of obesity and weve observed. In the intestinal flora of obese people this is not a loss of bacteria across the board but the loss of specific material and an increase in other types and this is what were trying to understand including the role of these changes in the development of obesity. But also complications associated with obesity which on us. It will take a few years before research into the role of intestinal bacteria will lead to new therapies. But doctors are now in no doubt that microbes are a crucial factor in the overall functioning of oregon as a. You are a part of us theyre an essential element in our organiser and contribute to all aspects of our physical existence. Theyve been present since life first appeared and played a role in every stage of the development of the living world. One microbe in particular has become a. Daryn the bacterial world. Has stepped out of the shadows and into the limelight. In the early one nine hundred ninety s. Researchers detected the bacterias ability to spread rapidly through different insect populations but they couldnt explain it. A team from the French National center for Scientific Research has examined this bacteria as reproductive strategies in micro wasps their findings are astounding. Thats not bad if we can really see the accumulation of. Basically. Bacteria. The researchers quickly nicknamed. The reproduction manipulator. When it infects a microbe os microbe also takes control of the insect sexuality. Has a unique dual feature first its transmitted only by females from mother to daughter and you know allows female osps to reproduce by themselves without the need of a male. Weve isolated the females in these tubes they come either from populations where well baccy is fixed where individuals carry a while back or populations where will back it is absent in both cases the females are virgins so the idea is to introduce males into both tubes and watch what happens and this will illustrate the long term consequences of infection by well back. Ill put some males inside here. For a little but now well wait and see what happens. Well i think there we see a male and hes beginning to mount onto the female and the mating begins. And so we have here a coupling that will last between ten and twenty seconds which is pretty rapid but what i do know when we introduce males with virgin females which do not have all back you know we see that quite soon coupling occurs between the males and the females most of the last special now well see what happens when we introduce this same type of male but this time with females who have been infected with will back for a few generations you know its. One of the members of the same system and we could watch this too for a long time because nothing will happen. We see the males just moving around keeping to themselves meaning that the females are incapable of initiating male courtship behavior. The infected females have lost their ability to issue mating signals to the males with full baki female micro wasps no longer need males to breed. The biological mechanisms of the symbiosis between the parasitic microbe and insects are not yet understood nor what causes the bacteria to colonize entire populations but its estimated that will affect sixty percent of crustaceans spiders and insects. On a more general level biologists are beginning to understand that bacteria played an essential role in the fundamental mechanisms of the evolution of living organisms. Over millions of years nature is created the most diverse forms of life and each time with new forms of symbiosis between living organisms and microbes. Joinder stand these mechanisms scientists must now discover the molecular processes at work between the bacteria and their hosts. On Coconut Island in hawaii a surprising discovery has allowed scientists to understand the first principles. Biologist Margaret Macfarlane guy is studying the collaboration between a very particular type of bacteria and their small cuttlefish host the bob tail squid. The. Way. This is my bob tail squid. Hes a beautiful one medium size just. Very soon hell be large enough to be in a breeding part of the breeding colony. The bacteria that colonize the bob tailed squid have a unique feature their bio luminescent. What the bacteria do is they make life and that life is diffused across the ventral surface of the animal and matches moonlight and starlight so that no shadow creates a camouflage so that its an anti predatory strategy. This is an extraordinary phenomenon a form of calm a florist that only functions at night without any intention on the part of cuttlefish or the bacteria. And the phenomenon is repeated day after day. Margaret mcfall new guys team eventually discovered that this mechanism is triggered only when the bacteria count exceeds a specific threshold. Were. How is this possible. We didnt know what was causing that requirement for a Large Population of bacteria to be present but what we discovered was that it was due to a single compound that each individual cell produces and if he doesnt hear that same signal compound from other bacteria around it closely related bacteria that are also bioluminescent it will not produce light itself. In the cuttlefish his body the signalling molecule is continuously produced by the bacterial cells. During the day the bacteria multiply and produce the molecule. But as long as the threshold is not read nothing will happen. It is only when their concentration is sick. The cuttlefish is organs after many reproductive cycles that bio luminescence will be triggered in the bacteria. Us there is a mode of communication between microbes that takes the form of an elementary chemical language. Bacterias d. N. A. Sends messages to the cells of their host body which in turn communicates with microbes. In paris and a laboratory of the pasta institute a team of biologists is investigating whether bacteria can affect behavior in mice. These mice born using this area and were raised in sterile conditions theyve been kept in isolators where there are absolutely no bacteria so theyve lived without microbiota since birth. In this experiment the pastor Institute Team is prepared another group of mice born and raised in normal conditions that is to say in contact with microbes. The scientists compared the two groups. As a test is the principle of this test is to measure their level of anxiety. We place the mouse in the center of this intersection composed of two paths with no walls open all around. With walls the mouse faces a dilemma because naturally being a curious animal it tends to want to explore the open paths but that creates anxiety so its more reassuring to be in the closed paths with was seventy i think. And the result is surprising that two groups of mice react very differently to the experiment. We found that sterile mice are less anxious than normal mice though we dont know how yet intestinal bacteria influences the behavior of the mice and their level of anxiety. Less anxious the mice with bacteria take more risks than normal mice are somewhat more aware of the possible danger. But what is happening inside the body of the mouse one of the biological processes at the molecular and Cellular Level which allow bacteria to interact with the brain. Just circes to know how to eke still suggest one lead maybe the interrogator of a system since we know that there are nerves in our brain that go into the intestines so its possible that some messages or signals passed through these nerves and carry this information up from the intestines to the brain another hypothesis is that intestinal bacteria disseminate certain molecules or disseminate certain portions of themselves in artley which pass into the blood and the blood eventually reaches the brain a little to. Put your gentleman case as a kind of fast track communication between intestinal flora the bacteria and the brain via nerve impulses as a result stress responses anxiety impulsivity feeding behavior common biological parts linked to in the brain its like a highway with lots of into sections filled with molecules in all directions whose role we dont understand it all said the six or seven years ago the microbiota came along which like an organ has a role in speaking to the brain factitious the liver and now were trying to understand what kind of tiny counseling the microbiota to the other organs clinical yet it is absorbed. In the study of bacteria plunges researchers and physicians into the heart of the complexity of living organisms if we come to understand the interactions between bacteria and organs we could influence them one day thats an exciting medical prospect might we have bacterial therapies in the future or drugs that target microbes only. But before we can identify a promising medical perspectives researchers still have to dissect the hundreds of thousands of biological interactions that take place each instant between our body and our microbiota its a task of dizzying proportions. We are definitely going to. So its truly a special moment in biology and i think the revolution that we could be experiencing in the Life Sciences today is just as significant and powerful as the one that was experienced when genetics and evolution fused together where in the one decade of probably a century long retooling a biological mollett to understand the significance of microbes in our living world. The research on microbes is still in its infancy. There are billions of microscopic organisms still to be discovered which inhabited our World Without us realizing it. No longer can we conceive of living beings as independent entities rather their ecosystems caught up in a multitude of biological interactions. After having battled bacteria for decades perhaps tomorrow will revolutionize how we treat disease. Already there radically transforming the way we see ourselves traditionally we. See. Other human. From the front we are not living as individuals were living is complex communities it does beg the question whos driving the bus whos in the lead here basically its who am i who are we and the truth of the matter i think will be that there is nobody driving the bus in fact everyone is driving it simultaneously then what does he need to. Not be the barrier. Fundamental. Question. Really changing. The way we think about what it means to be human. Not getting beat up a reggae sensation from germany. Twenty eight korea. Over a million records sold worldwide grabbed us. This gentle. Germanys number one reggae expert. Thirty minutes w. Bush on his germany is a strong country. That we have achieved so much we can do this and if something hinders us we must overcome it via. Going where its uncomfortable global news that matters w made for mines. Climate change. Waste. Pollution. Isnt it time for good news to go out africa people and projects that are changing our environment for the better its up to us to make a difference the good for the magazine d w. And that w. Without me speak your language being dug up. For content in dari pashto and order prospects for returning our web special with the refugee journeys of life germany and the prospects for those returning home and the prospects for those returning home. Join the discussion on t w dot com and on facebook. Prospects for returning. D. W. May for mine. Thousands of demonstrators have turned out in barcelona in favor of spanish unity and against the sunday referendum on independence for catalonia spains Central Government has vowed to prevent people voting in the referendum. Spanish national to