WIKIMEDIA, NIH, TINSLEY DAVISJ. Woodland “Woody” Hastings, whose work on the luminescent marine bacterium Vibrio fischeri led to the characterization of quorum sensing, died last week (August 6) in his home in Lexington, Massachusetts. The cause was pulmonary fibrosis, according to his family; he was 87.
When Hastings and his colleague Kenneth Nealson first uncovered evidence in the late 1960s that V. fischeri could communicate with one another, only producing the bioluminescence once their population reached certain concentrations, the scientific community was skeptical. In fact, quorum sensing, as it came to be known, was not accepted until nearly 20 years later, when researchers identified the molecule that allowed the bacteria to sense the concentration of their community. And it was another decade before quorum sensing was recognized as a widespread bacterial phenomenon.
“One of Woody’s great fortes was coming up with concepts,” Nealson, an environmental science professor at the University of Southern California, told The New York Times. “He would see things other people wouldn’t see.”
Hastings began his work on ...
