Babak Javid
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
There is no Hollywood star that gets TB that puts it in the public mind and everyday people's thoughts. One of the reasons I was attracted to this field is I felt that infectious diseases in general, and TB in particular, is... you know, one of the mechanisms of injustice in our world. And I really wanted to tackle that.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
I remember in my graduate school, I went over a year and a half without a single experiment working. And it's very hard to get up in the morning and go back and expect to fail again.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
And the way that streptomycin works is that it does two things. It inhibits the process of making new proteins. It's called a protein synthesis inhibitor. But that in itself doesn't kill the bug. What kills the bug is that in addition to that inhibitory action, it actually causes the bug to make mistakes when it makes these proteins.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
to thwart the bacteria. What was really shocking and surprising to me is the bug didn't seem to mind. It just carried on regardless. So I cranked up the error rate and I kept pushing and pushing and really the bugs were kind of fine with it until eventually when I had really cranked up the error rate an awful lot, then the bugs died. It takes a lot of error to kill these bugs.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
I was reflecting on my results and I was thinking, this just doesn't make any sense to me. The prevailing dogma at the time is that with a small amount of error, you induce what's called error catastrophe, where the errors in the new proteins make faulty proteins. machinery in the cell that then makes more errors and it just feeds on itself. And these bugs were extremely resilient.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
And that made me take a step back and I thought, what if actually these errors aren't detrimental after all, at least in a moderate amount? And That was my, I guess, aha moment. I have to be honest, at the beginning, I had no idea why this was. We were coming up with lots of different ideas just to explain it.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
But after a lot of experimentation and blind alleys and wrong turns, we figured out that what's happening is that this mistranslation is allowing the bacteria to innovate. And that was a really exciting moment. And I kind of coined the term adaptive mistranslation, that sometimes these errors, in the right context and in the right degree, can actually be good for the bug.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
Actually, TB, for the last 20, 30 years, has been the number one infectious disease killer in the world. Babak Javid is a physician scientist who studies tuberculosis, or TB.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
TB is a disease of poverty It's really a major problem in India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, South Africa, Nigeria TB is a bacterial infection There is a vaccine for it, but it's not always effective