7/31/2009 PERMALINK
Disrupting bacteria's communication prevents infection Bacteria use a process called "quorum sensing" to synchronize their efforts to infect your cells. "Quorum sensing allows bacteria to collectively carry out tasks that would be unsuccessful if carried out by an individual bacterium acting alone," explains senior study author Dr. Bonnie L. Bassler from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Princeton University. During the process of quorum sensing, bacteria communicate via chemical signals called autoinducers which bind to receptors, but researchers have now found a molecule that can prevent this binding, blocking bacteria's ability to coordinate attacks.