cc	first vid >> Tom Zinnen: Welcome,	 everybody.	 My name is Tom Zinnen	 Welcome to Wednesday Nite at the	 Lab here at the University	 of Wisconsin-Madison	 Biotechnology Center.	 We do this every Wednesday night	 50 times a year, and on behalf	 of the Biotech Center, the	 Wisconsin Alumni Association,	 Wisconsin Public Television and	 UW Extension, glad to have you	 here tonight.	 Tonight we have Margaret	 McFall-Ngai with the Department	 of Medical Microbiology and	 Immunology here at UW-Madison.	 She'll be talking about waging	 peace, diplomatic relations	 in animal bacterial symbiosis.	 I kind of like that.	 It sounds like the Department of	 State.	 Professor McFall-Ngai is in the	 Department of Medical	 Microbiology and Immunology	 here.	 She's one of the leaders in the	 frontier field in the role of	 beneficial bacteria in health	 and disease.	 She received her PhD from the	 University of California	 Los Angeles in 1983.	 During that work she was a field	 biologist with a study site in	 the central Philippine Islands.	 Which island was that?	 >> Negros.	 >> Pardon me?	 >> Negros.	 >> Negros.	 My dad was in Manila in '45.	 Her work centered upon how	 animals use the light produced	 by luminous bacteria in their	 behaviors.	 Her postdoc work was at the	 Jules Stein Eye Institute which	 is part of UCLA Medical Center	 and the Scripps Institution of	 Oceanography at UC San Diego	 which has a terrible setting	 right there on the Pacific	 ocean, I feel sorry for you.	 In 2004, in response to a	 cluster hire initiative here in	 the field of symbiosis,	 Dr. McFall-Ngai accepted a	 position at UW-Madison, and she	 continues to develop the squid	 Vibrio model and to promote the	 study of beneficial animal	 bacterial interactions.	 Please join me in welcoming	 Margaret McFall-Ngai to	 Wednesday Nite at the Lab.	 [APPLAUSE]	 >> Margaret McFall-Ngai:	 Thank you, Tom.	 It's a great pleasure to have	 an opportunity to speak	 to this audience.	 I'm really excited.	 I always like to speak to the	 general public because I think	 this is a frontier field trying	 to understand how beneficial	 bacteria impact our health.	 So I'm going to tell you a story	 today about a 20+ year adventure	 that I've had with Dr. Edward	 Ruby who will speak next week.	 So it's going to be a	 she said/he said situation.	 And in studying symbiosis,	 you're studying two sides a	 conversation, and my laboratory	 here at UW studies the host	 side, in other words the animal	 side of symbiosis, and Ned	 studies the bacterial side.	 So you're going to get a	 host-centric view today about	 how animals respond to	 interactions with bacteria.	 So one of the things that we	 have become aware of in the	 last, I would say, 15 years is	 that almost all animals have	 beneficial associations with	 microbial partners.	 And what's more interesting is	 that those interactions, it	 turns out, are absolutely	 required for health.	 And this is a new thing.	 This is a completely new idea,	 and it's enabled by technology.	 So before 15 or 20 years ago we	 couldn't know who the bacteria	 were that lived with us because	 most of them are not culturable.	 We couldn't know how many there	 were and what they might be	 doing.	 But with new techniques we can	 know who they are, what they're	 doing, whether they're stable	 and so on and so forth.	 And so there's a whole big field	 that has developed around	 studying how animals associate	 with bacterial partners.	 And bacteria particularly,	 and viruses, have had a profound	 effect on human history.	 And usually as a pathogen.	 And so all of biology and all of	 medicine and every aspect of	 this field thus far, up until	 15 years ago, was directed	 toward understanding	 how pathogens work.	 And now we have to completely	 change the way we think.	 And it's a big adventure,	 and I think a big revolution	 in biology.	 So I'm going to tell you about	 how we study this today.	 So what I have up here is I just	 have a series of animals that	 people have been studying	 in regard to this.	 And there's the squid.	 And I'll be telling you abou