BLOG POST #4: Bonnie Bassler - How Bacteria Talk
I learned many things when watching Bonnie Bassler’s presentation. I thought it was very generous of her to come on and spend time talking in real time with us and even answering some of our questions. Before learning from Bonnie I thought what she said most people believe about bacteria is that they live a boring life/ are asocial and just harm humans. Now I know, they do so many beneficial things for us, like, they act as an invisible body armor, digest food, make vitamins, and even educate the immune system. I also learned they talk with chemical language (think like human hormones) to do things like come together/ obtain a high enough cell density and turn on their light simultaneously; bioluminescence. This is scientifically called quorum sensing and the process starts with all bacteria talking to each other by making chemical words, they then recognize those words, and turn on group behaviors that only work in unison. This is also used in virulence as bacteria will get in you and wait, then they start growing, count themselves, and recognize when they have the right cell number, they can launch an attack and be successful. Something I thought was so interesting was that humans have 10 times more bacteria cells than human cells and 100 times more bacteria genes than human genes at all times. I also love the visuals Bonnie showed as she talked as it helped me visualize what is actually happening in our body as she spoke! If I get the chance to speak to Bonnie again, some questions I have for Bonnie are “why can’t we feel the bacteria on us?” and “how do we distinguish good vs. bad bacteria?” Both of these questions came up for me because she mentioned we cannot see bacteria with a naked eye but not why can’t we feel them and she mentioned how bacteria can be good and can be bad but I would have loved for her to tell us how we know the good from the bad? What are the characteristics that stand out?
If you guys want to check out Bonnie talking about this interesting subject in more depth, check out her amazing TedTalk here:
https://www.ted.com/talks/bonnie_bassler_how_bacteria_talk?language=en
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