Question

Based on Bonnie Bassler’s ted talk “How bacteria talk”

Why was it useful for scientists to work with bacteria that generated light?

How might understanding bacteria better result in new medications to combat bacteria?

Answer 1

According to this Ted Talk, the bacteria produce autoinducer chemicals which act as the signal molecules through which the bacteria communicate. This process is known as the Quorum Sensing.

The bioluminescent bacteria generate light through the same mechanism. When the bacterial density increases to a certain point, the signaling molecules produced by this entire community also increases to a level enough for them to communicate with each other collectively to generate light. Thus, understanding the process of Quorum Sensing was helpful for the scientists to work with bacteria that generated light.

The higher the cell number, the greater is their communication. This, in turn, increases the number of molecules to be released. Thus, in order to combat bacterial infections, the medications devised should be able to decrease their intensity to decrease the Quorum Sensing activity. Once this hormone-like autoinducer is reduced to a level that the molecules released are no longer efficient and enough to signal neighboring bacteria, the pathogenicity decreases by halting the growth of the bacteria. This is a group behavior of releasing the toxins collectively which results in virulence attack by the pathogenic bacteria. Thus, by decreasing the concentration or the intensity of bacterial cells, their virulence for generating infections can be controlled. If the bacteria cannot talk to each other, they cannot cause virulence. Hence, understanding the bacteria would better result in new medications to combat bacterial infections. New species-specific or the disease-specific therapeutic medications in the form of the anti-quorum sensing molecules can be developed by halting their inter-species or the intra-species communication to combat the infections.