We've all been sick; we're all afraid of infection. I think the easiest application to help people understand what quorum sensing is and why it's important to study is to tell them that if we could make the bacteria either deaf or mute, we could create new antibiotics.

Bonnie Bassler

Categorized in : Think Understand People Sick

My bacteria glow in the dark - no human being doesn't like that.

Bonnie Bassler

bacteria humans dark

You think of yourselves as human beings, but I think of you as 99 percent bacterial.

Bonnie Bassler

motivation inspiration thinking

I think being open-minded about what Nature is trying to tell you is the key to being creative and successful.

Bonnie Bassler

keys successful thinking

[Bacteria] have an incredibly complicated chemical lexicon that ... allows bacteria to be multicellular. In the spirit of TED they're doing things together because it makes a difference.

Bonnie Bassler

differences motivation inspiration

The goal of scientists is you hope that the thing you're working on is bigger than the thing you're pipetting into that tube at the moment.

Bonnie Bassler

scientist moments goal

When antibiotics became industrially produced following World War II, our quality of life and our longevity improved enormously. No one thought bacteria were going to become resistant.

Bonnie Bassler

antibiotics quality war

Bacteria mineralized the rocks; they deposited the iron. They made the geology we see.

Bonnie Bassler

bacteria iron rocks

When antibiotics first came out, nobody could have imagined we'd have the resistance problem we face today. We didn't give bacteria credit for being able to change and adapt so fast.

Bonnie Bassler

face nobody change today

You can find bacteria everywhere. They're invisible to us. I've never seen a bacterium, except under a microscope. They're so small, we don't see them, but they are everywhere.

Bonnie Bassler

small never see you

It's incorrect to think of bacteria as these asocial, single cells. They are individual cells, but they act in communities, exactly the way people do.

Bonnie Bassler

think single people way

We mostly don't get sick. Most often, bacteria are keeping us well.

Bonnie Bassler

us well get sick

As a kid, I loved doing puzzles, solving riddles, and reading mystery books. I also loved animals and always had pets.

Bonnie Bassler

loved doing mystery reading

It's a manic-depressive life. You run in here, you open your incubator, your experiment makes no sense, you think, 'I hate this job.' Then ten minutes later you think, 'Well, now, maybe I'll try this or I'll try that.' You do it because you know there will be an 'a-ha!' day.

Bonnie Bassler

day you hate life

You live in intimate association with bacteria, and you couldn't survive without them.

Bonnie Bassler

survive live without you

Think about multicellularity on this Earth. Every living thing originally came from bacteria. So, who do you think made up the rules for how to perform collective behaviors? It had to be the bacteria.

Bonnie Bassler

rules think you earth

What's great about bacteria is you have a surprise every day waiting for you because they're so fast, they grow overnight.

Bonnie Bassler

day great you waiting

The goal of scientists is you hope that the thing you're working on is bigger than the thing you're pipetting into that tube at that moment.

Bonnie Bassler

moment you goal hope

All these bacteria that coat our skin and live in our intestines, they fend off bad bacteria. They protect us. And you can't even digest your food without the bacteria that are in your gut. They have enzymes and proteins that allow you to metabolize foods you eat.

Bonnie Bassler

skin live you food

Most bacteria aren't bad. We breathe and eat and ingest gobs of bacteria every single moment of our lives. Our food is covered in bacteria. And you're breathing in bacteria all the time, and you mostly don't get sick.

Bonnie Bassler

moment you time food

In my lab, we are always thinking about how cells, bacterial cells, can talk to each other and then organize themselves into enormous groups that function in unison.

Bonnie Bassler

talk how always thinking