QUORUM SENSING Cell-to-Cell Communication in Bacteria
It has been discovered that Bacteria "talk" to each other, using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry -- and our understanding of ourselves.

Quorum sensing is the process of cell-cell communication in bacteria. Until recently, the ability of bacteria to communicate was considered an anomaly that occurred only in a few marine Vibrio species. It is now clear that cell-cell communication is ubiquitous in the bacterial world and that understanding this process is fundamental to all of microbiology, including industrial and clinical microbiology, and ultimately to understanding the development of higher organisms. Bacterial communication, combines genetics, biochemistry, structural biology, chemistry, microarray studies, bioinformatics, and modeling.
Quorum sensing, which involves the production, release, and subsequent detection of chemical signaling molecules called autoinducers, allows bacteria to regulate gene expression in response to changes in cell-population density. As a population of bacteria grows, the extracellular concentration of autoinducer increases. When a threshold is reached, the group responds with a population-wide alteration in gene expression. Processes controlled by quorum sensing are usually ones that are unproductive when undertaken by an individual bacterium but become effective when undertaken by the group. For example, Quorum sensing controls bioluminescence, secretion of virulence factors, biofilm formation, sporulation, and the exchange of DNA. Thus, quorum sensing is a mechanism that allows bacteria to function as multicellular organisms. Recent studies show that bacteria make, detect, and integrate information from multiple autoinducers, some of which exclusively facilitate intraspecies communication, while others enable communication between species. Study of quorum sensing is providing insight into intra- and interspecies communication, population-level cooperation, and the design principles underlying signal transduction and information processing at the cellular level. These investigations are leading to synthetic strategies for controlling quorum sensing. Objectives include development of antimicrobial drugs aimed at bacteria that use quorum sensing to control virulence, and improved industrial production of natural products such as antibiotics.

Please Click here to See a Lecture on QUORUM SENSING Cell-to-Cell Communication in Bacteria by its Discoverer Dr. Bonnie Bassler

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html

Right Click and "Save" for and Elsevier paper titled "Quorum sensing and bacterial cross-talk in biotechnology by John C March and William E Bentley"

http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/papers/RNA-genome/quorum%20sensing-2004.pdf