Which Form 8815 Ee 2023-2024

Hello, I'm Hank Green. Welcome to Scishow where we love slime. Slime is great, except when it's the wrong kind of slime. And when I say the wrong kind, I mean the kind that can kill you. Biofilm, also sometimes referred to as slime, is a type of bacterial colony that produces a sticky organic glue which anchors the microorganisms to whatever surface they fancy. And also to each other, making them exponentially better/worse than they would otherwise be. It's also the latest addition to my list of things I wish I didn't have to worry about. We didn't think of bacteria as freewheeling loners making their way through the world all by themselves. And sometimes they are that way. Those are called planktonic bacteria. But scientists are beginning to realize that bacteria actually spend most of their lives as biofilm, which makes them way, way, way better at doing what they do; whether it's helping us digest food or killing us with cholera. Just as living in towns and cities makes us more effective as a species, bacteria living together as biofilm allows them to divvy up labor, protect each other, and share food. And that frees up more time and resources to do stuff like digesting and killing. Their secret is the slimy goo that many bacteria secrete, made up mostly of complex sugars called polysaccharides along with some proteins, to form this sort of infrastructure of bacterial towns. This concoction of chemicals is actually very similar to a substance our own bodies create and that you may be familiar with - mucus. Through this slime, different bacteria can share nutrients in water, they can also send signaling proteins to let them communicate, they can even swap DNA to pass along their genes. It's like the United Freakin' Nations of germs...