Cracking the Code of Bacterial Communication

TEDChris writes "Microbiologist Bonnie Bassler explains her discovery of 'quorum sensing' — the amazing ability of bacteria to communicate with each other and coordinate attack strategies (video). By cracking the communication code, she has opened up potential for a new class of drugs tackling microbial diseases. The talk got a massive standing ovation at this year's TED and has just been posted. To quote one commenter: 'This is by far the most inspiring, amazing, and far-reaching talk I've seen in a very long time.'"

Comments

Killing household mold

[BadAnalogyGuy]

One of the leading health concerns is household mold and staph. The inhalation of these over years of exposure leaves the body weakened and infected. In very bad cases it can lead to pneumonia and in the worst case staph infections which lead to amputation.

If they can find a way to reduce or eliminate bacteria growth in the home, they are halfway to eliminating disease in Western nations.

Re:Orson Scott Card

[calcapt]

I doubt he invented the concept. In the afterward sections of his books, he often talks about how he draws from other sources. I'm pretty sure in one of his books he mentions how he consulted medical workers on plausible scenarios; Card could've simply picked up the idea of communicating via chemicals through such an experience. While the earliest scientific article I can find on quorum sensing, through PubMed and Web of Science, is from 1995, I'm sure the idea of microorganisms communicating through such a mechanism is much older and probably predates Xenocide.

For those who prefer to read

[oldhack]

I read this about bacteria communication as reported in Science News in January:

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/39602/title/Team_spirit

Different researchers are interviewed, though.

Where have I heard that before

[gringer]

"Quorum Sensing"... I remember that phrase. It sounds strangely like something we considered putting into our signal transduction paper back in 2004 (published 2006). It was Lisa, not I, who did the reading on quorum sensing, so I can't claim to be well-read in the subject.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=search&term=cashin+goldsack+hall

Re:I love TED.

[bugnuts]

just keep taking the drug, forever, and you'll never get the symptoms that your immune system needs to tell it to fight off the infection

You do have a good point... delaying virulence while the bacterium continues reproducing is probably bad because if you ever stop the drugs, you get a much worse infection. But I would bet your body will still know the bacteria are there, before they reach critical mass. It would still detect the proteins of the bacterium cell walls.

You could go the other direction: on exposure to something, you could get a shot of the receptor that caused virulence. The bacterium would, possibly, burn itself out before reaching critical mass or release useless pathogens before it was bound to a host's cell (e.g.).

This type of treatment might be able to slow down infection, giving your system time to fight it off. It might be useful for, say, battlefield injuries to slow the nasty infection while they drag your limp body to a medic, despite the fact you'll have to fight off more of the pathogen.

It would also be really useful as an on-off switch for a living glow-stick :-)

Re:I love TED.

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

Quorum sensing blocking drugs may have theraputic efforts. Wooo, ya don't say. But the silliest thing is that she suggests these might replace anti-biotics. Cause, apparently, stopping pathogenic bacteria from enacting their "we're in the majority now" payload is just as good as killing them.

Stopping them from making the biofilm or communicating IS as good as killing them, because it leaves them vulnerable to the body's defenses that they would be invulnerable to. It's a form of bacteriostatic drug like the ones given for anthrax, rickettsia (Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever), bubonic plague, etc. Those are bacteria you don't want to kill quickly.

started good, ended poorly

[v1]

I found it interesting that she didn't expand on what the actual effects of the quorum drugs were. She just said that we have these quorum suppressors and quorum enhancers and we're going to use them to fix our problems. Why? Why would an enhancer be useful and a suppressor be useful? when? Felt more like "we found a way to meddle with the system and are going to flail our hands wildly and hope something good happens!"

The mouse example was a good illustration of this. After all the setup describing what they did, the conclusion: "the mouse lived" or "the mouse died". Well, THAT demonstrates a good understanding and thorough conclusion now doesn't it? I'd feel a lot better if they acted like they had any idea WHY the mouse lived or died, other than based on what drugs they treated it with. Why did the drugs help? What specific bacterial behaviors were altered?

My wild speculation here is that if you pump a bunch of those quorum signals into a body, you fool the bacteria into believing they are a lot more numerous, and trigger their pathogenic (dangerous/attack) behavior (and thus an accelerated immune system response) before there's enough bacteria present to overcome the immune system. Instead, the immune system has the time to get ramped up and move to action while there's still a low bacterial count, and the bacteria are wiped out. THAT'S the kind of conclusion I was expecting from this presentation. But instead I was sadly disappointed by the almost complete lack of followthrough at the end of what started as a very interesting presentation.