Read about Bonnie Bassler, Ph.D., in the October 2004 issue.
Bacteria aren’t the silent, asocial creatures biologists once thought. Instead, they use a communications system that allows them to detect when they’ve reached a critical mass and organize for a group attack.
Geneticist Bonnie Bassler studies this phenomenon, which is called quorum sensing. She’s discovered that each strain of bacteria communicates with its own chemical vocabulary but that there’s also a universal language understood across species. By learning to interpret and block these signals, Bassler hopes to thwart the bugs causing ailments from tuberculosis to tooth decay.