Bacteria can talk to each other and are multilingual, says biologist

Bacteria can get into us, make us sick, and they can even kill us – but they give us our life too. Bonnie Bassler, renowned molecular biologist and professor of Princeton University, best known for her work in bacterial communication, described bacteria as “magical microbes” holding great promise in the fields of medicine, environment and agriculture.

“Bacteria can talk to each other and are multilingual, have so much to teach us about how collective behaviours evolved on earth,” said Prof. Bassler said at a lecture on Wednesday titled ‘A chemical language that enables communication between diverse organisms’. “It’s the bacteria in your gut that digests food and gives you those [nutrients].”

This phenomenon of bacterial communication, or “quorum sensing” could indeed be a game changer for medicine, by opening new avenues to develop anti-quorum sensing therapies instead of antibiotics. Several are “notorious bacterial characters,” she said, specifically citing the deadly cholera-causing Vibrio cholerae bacterium, and perspectives on treating the disease.

This bacterium is “the terrible cousin” to an obscure but brilliantly bioluminescent bacterium, the Vibrio fischeri that makes blue light and lives in a wonderful one-to-one symbiosis with a squid, she explained.

The large squids live in knee-deep water along the coast of Hawaii. And as it is a nocturnal animal, when scavenging under a bright moonlit sky, it needs a way to protect itself from predators that track the squid through their moving shadow. And this is where Vibrio fischeri glows under the squid, making it shadowless.

We know that bacteria very early in life colonise us and they teach our immune system over time to keep harmful bacteria out and to let good bacteria in, she said, adding “We don’t know how they do it, but we know that the microbes are in charge of educating our immune system.”

“But there are no applications unless people, scientists make discoveries and work on mechanisms and work at the very basic part of how life on Earth manages to do what it does,” Prof. Bassler said.

Prof. Bassler said she was delighted that she was delivering her lecture on the International Day for Women and Girls in Science.

The lecture was organised by TNQ, a non-profit foundation set up in India to support basic research in maths and the life sciences. Prof. Bassler is the 2022 winner of the Wolf Prize in Chemistry and the 2023 winner of the Canada Gairdner Award.