Question: Do you think you will ever be able to hear what the bacteria said according to the chemical signals

Katie Fala answered on 12 Nov 2019:

Hmmm, good question! Bacteria aren’t known for their prose and poetry so I don’t expect I’ll be transcribing any literary works. But yes, the type of bacterial communication I study is called quorum sensing, the cells produce small chemicals and detect these chemicals, a bit like taking a census. And they use this information to decide on how to act as a group, e.g. if the population is small let’s lay low and hide. If our population is massive, lets take the opportunity to make biofilms or cause disease. There are different experiments to detect and quantify the type and amount of chemical signals they produce. Also, we can study the genome and gene expression of the bacteria to determine what actions they take when there are very high or low levels of these chemical signals. Hope that answered your question, let me know if you’d like to know more about it!