An AI microscope watches bacteria turn nasty — one human cell at a time

In Szeged, Hungary, researchers built MALVINA, a machine-learning microscope that watches millions of individual human cells to see exactly how bacteria invade them and damage their DNA. Published in Nature Communications, it turned up two surprises: some drugs kill bacteria while making the survivors invade cells more aggressively, and bacteria change each other's nastiness depending on which microbes are nearby. The big idea: future medicines could be judged not just on how many germs they kill, but on whether they make the survivors less dangerous.