As a young scientist-in-the-making, Bonnie Bassler imagined she would grow up to cure cancer. An undergraduate at the University of California, Davis, Bassler joined the lab of Fredrick Troy, who, in the early 1980s, was conducting two major research projects: one on cancer and one on bacterial carbohydrates. "I thought, surely he'll put me on the important project: the cancer one," recalls Bassler. "Of course he signed me up to work with bacteria. I was furious," she says. "But then I just fell in love with them. During that time I learned that bacteria are like these stripped-down versions of us and that you could actually do amazing science with them. And I've never looked back."
Now, two decades later, Bassler-a professor at Princeton University and a MacArthur Foundation fellow-is credited with discovering the ability bacteria have to communicate across species using a small molecule called autoinducer-2 (AI-2). This simple ...
