Quorum Sensing Across Domains: From Viruses to Bacteria to Eukaryotes
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Indiana University William T. Patten Foundation
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Bacteria communicate with one another via the production and detection of secreted signal molecules called autoinducers. This process, called “Quorum Sensing”, allows bacteria to synchronize behavior on a population-wide scale. Behaviors controlled by quorum sensing are unproductive when undertaken by an individual bacterium acting alone but become effective when undertaken in unison by the group. For example, quorum sensing controls virulence factor production and biofilm formation. Eukaryotes harboring quorum-sensing bacteria participate in these chemical conversations by providing the substrates bacteria need to make autoinducers. Quorum-sensing autoinducer information can be hijacked by viruses that infect and kill bacteria. Thus, interactions across the eukaryotic, bacterial, and viral domains all rely on quorum sensing. Quorum-sensing disruption strategies are being developed into new anti-microbials and phage therapies.
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Bonnie Bassler’s discoveries of how bacterial cells communicate have placed her as one of the world’s most eminent scientists in the field of microbiology. Her strategy draws on interdisciplinary techniques to accomplish this research. Dr. Bassler is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the Squibb Professor and former chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. Bassler received a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of California at Davis, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Johns Hopkins University. She performed postdoctoral work in genetics at the Agouron Institute, and she joined the Princeton faculty in 1994.
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