This TED Talk features researcher and entrepreneur Fatima El Zarara'a alatrachee, recorded live at TEDx Arhus, 2018.

You don't know them. You don't see them. But they're all ways around.

Whispering, making secret plans, building armies with millions of soldiers.

And when they decide to attack, they all attack at the same time.

I'm talking about bacteria.

Who did you think I was talking about?

Bacteria, living communities just like humans.

They have families, they talk, and they plan their activities.

And just like humans, they trick, deceive,

and some might even cheat on each other.

What if I tell you that we can listen to bacterial conversations

and translate their confidential information to human language?

And what if I tell you that translating bacterial conversations can save lives?

I hold a PhD in nanophysics, and I've used nanotechnology to develop a real-time translation tool

that can spy on bacterial communities and give us recordings of what bacteria are up to.

Bacterial everywhere.

They're in the soil, on our furniture and inside our bodies.

In fact, 90% of all alive cells in this theater are bacterial.

Some bacteria are good for us.

They help us digest food or produce antibiotics.

And some bacteria are bad for us. They cause

diseases and death. To coordinate all the functions bacteria have, they have to be able to organize,

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