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In a Nutshell Animations
  • 8/31/2024
A war has been raging for billions of years, killing trillions every single day, while we don’t even notice. This war involves the single deadliest being on our planet: The Bacteriophage.

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00:00A war has been raging for billions of years, killing trillions every single day while we
00:08don't even notice.
00:10The war is fought by the single deadliest entity on our planet, the bacteriophage, or
00:16phage for short.
00:17A phage is a virus, not quite alive, not quite dead.
00:22Also, they look as if someone made them up.
00:26Their head is an icosahedron, a sort of dice with 20 faces and 30 edges.
00:32It contains the genetic material of the virus and often sits on a long tail that has leg-like
00:37fibers.
00:39There are more phages on Earth than every other organism combined, including bacteria.
00:45And they are probably everywhere living things exist.
00:50Billions are on your hands, in your intestines, and your eyelids right now, which might make
00:56you nervous since phages are responsible for the majority of deaths on Earth.
01:01But you're lucky.
01:03While they do commit genocide for breakfast, they only kill bacteria.
01:07Up to 40% of all bacteria in the oceans are killed by them every single day.
01:14But phages also have major flaws.
01:16Like any other virus, phages need a host to survive and reproduce.
01:21They're not much more than genetic material in a hull, and they specialize.
01:25Usually, a phage has chosen one specific bacteria, and maybe some of its very close relatives.
01:32These are its prey.
01:34Imagine a phage as like a cruise missile that only hunts and kills members of one very unlucky
01:40family.
01:41When a phage finds its victim, it connects its tail fibers with receptors and uses a
01:46sort of syringe to puncture the surface.
01:48In a weird motion, the phage squeezes its tail and injects its genetic information.
01:54Within minutes, the bacteria is taken over.
01:58It's now forced to manufacture all the parts of new phages.
02:02They only stop when the bacteria is filled up with brand new phages.
02:06In the final step, they produce endolysin, a powerful enzyme that punches a hole in the
02:12bacteria.
02:13The pressure is so high that the bacteria sort of vomits out all of its insides and
02:18dies.
02:19New phages are released and begin the cycle anew.
02:23In the last few years, bacteriophages have enjoyed the attention of the second deadliest
02:28beings on Earth, humans.
02:31Recently, we've started looking into injecting millions of them into our bodies.
02:36Because we're sort of getting desperate, we screwed up.
02:40In the past, a single cut or a sip from the wrong puddle could kill you.
02:45Bacteria were our phages, tiny monsters that hunted us mercilessly.
02:50But then, about 100 years ago, we found a solution in nature.
02:54By accident, we found fungi that produced a compound that killed bacteria, antibiotics.
03:00Suddenly, we had a powerful superweapon.
03:05Antibiotics were so effective that we stopped thinking of bacteria as monsters.
03:09Only the old and weakest among us were killed by them.
03:13We used antibiotics more and more for less and less serious causes.
03:18We lost respect for the monsters and the weapon.
03:22But bacteria are living things that evolve, and one by one, they started to become immune
03:27against our weapons.
03:29This continued until we had created what are called superbugs, bacteria immune to almost
03:35everything we have.
03:37This immunity is spreading across the world as we speak.
03:41By 2050, superbugs could kill more humans a year than cancer.
03:46The days when a cut or bladder infection or a cough could kill you or your loved ones
03:51are coming back.
03:52In the US alone, more than 23,000 people die from resistant bacteria each year.
03:59But it turns out that phages, our tiny killer virus robots, could save us.
04:05We can inject them into our bodies to help cure infections.
04:09Hold on, how can injecting millions of viruses into an infection be a good idea?
04:16Phages are very, very specialized killers of bacteria.
04:19So specialized, in fact, that humans are completely immune to them.
04:23We are too different.
04:26We encounter billions of phages every day, and we just politely ignore each other.
04:32Antibiotics are like carpet bombing, killing everything, even the good bacteria in our
04:37intestines that we don't want to harm.
04:40Phages are like guided missiles that only attack what they're supposed to.
04:46Wait a minute, if we use phages to kill bacteria, won't bacteria develop ways of defending
04:51themselves?
04:52Well, it's more complex than that.
04:55Phages evolve too.
04:57There has been an arms race between them and bacteria for billions of years, and so far,
05:02they're doing great.
05:04This makes phages smart weapons that are constantly getting better at killing.
05:11But even if bacteria were to become immune against our phage, we still might be able
05:15to win.
05:16It turns out that in order to become resistant to even just a few species of phages, bacteria
05:22have to give up their resistance to antibiotics.
05:26We might be able to trap them in a catch-22.
05:31This has already been successfully tested with a patient who had no other hope left.
05:37The bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, one of the most feared bacteria, infected the man's
05:42chest cavity.
05:45They are naturally resistant to most antibiotics and can even survive in alcoholic hand gel.
05:51After years of suffering, a few thousand phages were directly inserted into his chest cavity
05:56together with antibiotics the bacteria were immune to.
06:00After a few weeks, the infections had completely disappeared.
06:04Unfortunately, this treatment is still experimental, and pharma companies are still reluctant to
06:10invest the necessary billions in a treatment that has no official approval yet.
06:15But things are finally changing.
06:18In 2016, the largest phage clinical trial to date began, and phages are getting more
06:23and more attention.
06:25And we better get used to it, because the era in which antibiotics have been our super
06:30weapon is drawing to a close.
06:33It might be a weird concept, but injecting the deadliest being on planet Earth directly
06:39into our bodies could save millions of lives.

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