Bacterial Hunger Games

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07/24/2015

Jul. 24, 2015

Bacterial Hunger Games

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Bacteria living in colonies band together to fend off attackers and survive, like soldiers and peasants in fortresses, says Gürol Süel, a molecular biologist at the University of California, San Diego. Time and again, they resist our attempts to destroy them. But what if we’re going about it all wrong? Instead of dousing infectious microbes in antibiotics, what if we pit them against each other, in a type of bacterial Hunger Games? Suel, who probed these colony dynamics in a Nature study out this week, explains how bacterial societies work—and how we might curb their odds of surviving.

Produced by Alexa Lim, Associate Producer

Produced by Elah Feder, Intern, Radio

Guests

Gürol Süel
Associate Professor, Molecular Biology
University of California San Diego
San Diego, California

Discussion

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Code:
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line 2: sub doEval { 
line 3: 	my($parent);
line 4: 	
line 5: 	if($LayoutManager::url_resolved_values{'SEGMENT.nickname'}) {
line 6: 		$parent = $LayoutManager::url_resolved_values{'SEGMENT.nickname'};
line 7: 	}
line 8: 	elsif($LayoutManager::url_resolved_values{'VIDEO.nickname'}) {
line 9: 		$parent = $LayoutManager::url_resolved_values{'VIDEO.nickname'};
line 10: 	}
line 11: 	elsif($LayoutManager::url_resolved_values{'DOCUMENT.nickname'}) {
line 12: 		$parent = $LayoutManager::url_resolved_values{'DOCUMENT.nickname'}
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line 16: 		my(@books) = &Database::SelectClause('BOOK',"parent = $parent");
line 17: 		if(!@books) {
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line 21: 	
line 22: 	if(!$parent) {
line 23: 		my(@sel) = &Database::SelectClause('GLOBAL','record all ""');
line 24: 		if(@sel) {
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line 27: 			$main::ENV{'reading_header'} = "FEATURED READING";
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line 29: 	
line 30: 	 = '';
line 31: 	
line 32: 	if($parent) {
line 33: 		my(@books) = &Database::SelectClause('BOOK',"parent = $parent");
line 34: 		0 = 0;
line 35: 		my $dots;
line 36: 		foreach(@books) {
line 37: 			my(%data);
line 38: 			&Database::GetRow($_,'BOOK',\%data);
line 39: 			my($status,$title,$author,$url,$image,$width,$height) = &SciFri::Schema::getAmazonItem($data{'isbn'});
line 40: 			if($data{'title'}) {
line 41: 				$title = $data{'title'};
line 42: 			}
line 43: 			if($data{'author'}) {
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line 45: 			}
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line 50: 				 .= "			<img src=\"$image\" data-width=\"$width\" data-height=\"$height\">";
line 51: 				 .= "		</div>";
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line 66: &doEval();
line 67: 1;