Silencing cholera's social media
Tuesday, May 24, 2016 - 13:20
in Biology & Nature
Bacteria use a form of "social media" communication called quorum sensing to monitor how many of their fellow species are in the neighborhood, allowing them to detect changes in density and respond with changes in collective behavior. Because of the importance of quorum sensing to the behavior of disease-causing bacteria like Vibrio cholerae, the cause of the deadly disease cholera, understanding how it works has the potential to allow us to disrupt it for therapeutic purposes.