361 | Bonnie Bassler on How Bacteria Talk and Work Together

Sean Carroll hosts Bonnie Bassler, a Princeton professor and pioneering researcher in bacterial communication. The episode focuses on quorum sensing, the chemical mechanism bacteria use to sense their population density and coordinate group behaviors. Bassler, a MacArthur Fellow, explains how this process enables bacteria to accomplish tasks they could never perform individually, with important implications for understanding infection dynamics and the nature of life.