They grow their bacteria on a stainless steel plate, and use a laser to vaporise their signalling molecules, feeding these into a mass spectrometer to catalogue the molecules present.

他们在一个不锈钢培养皿里培育细菌，然后用激光蒸发它们的信号分子，把这些分子导入到质谱分析仪中并记录他们的状态。