The Levine - de Beer Lecture in Genetics presents "Tiny Conspiracies: Cell to Cell Communication in Bacteria" by Dr. Bonnie L. Bassler.

About The Lecture

Bacteria communicate with one another via the production and detection of secreted signal molecules called autoinducers. This cell-to-cell communication process, called “Quorum Sensing”, allows bacteria to synchronize behavior on a population-wide scale. Behaviors controlled by quorum sensing are ones that are unproductive when undertaken by an individual bacterium acting alone but become effective when undertaken in unison by the group. For example, quorum sensing controls virulence factor production and biofilm formation. Bassler’s group discovered that higher organisms that harbor quorum-sensing bacteria in their microbiomes participate in these chemical conversations by providing the biological building blocks bacteria need to make autoinducers. Bassler’s group also showed that quorum-sensing autoinducer information can be hijacked by viruses that infect and kill bacteria. The viral strategy of monitoring quorum-sensing autoinducer accumulation and killing the bacterial host exclusively at high cell density maximizes viral dissemination to the next host cell. Thus, interactions across the eukaryotic, bacterial, and viral domains all rely on quorum sensing. Bassler’s group invented quorum-sensing disruption strategies for development into new anti-microbials. They also engineered viruses to respond to user-defined inputs, rather than the bacterial autoinducers, to make phage therapies that kill particular bacterial pathogens on demand.

The Louis Levine-Gabriella de Beer Lecture in Genetics was established by Gabriella de Beer in memory of her husband, Professor Louis Levine. A graduate of the College, he earned his Ph.D. in population genetics under the late great evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky at Columbia University.

Professor Levine’s research centered on population studies of Drosophila and behavior genetics of mice. Human genetics and forensic genetics were among other areas towhich he was devoted.

Professor Levine taught in the Department of Biology and in the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, participated in bi-national research studies in Mexico, was Visiting Professor at the Technion (the Israel Institute of Technology) in Israel, and in later years served as a consultant and expert witness in criminal cases involving DNA evidence.

The aim of these annual lectures is to perpetuate Professor Louis Levine’s lifelong interest in the ever-expanding field of genetics.