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Alan Decho and colleagues make cover of Environmental Microbiology
February 2, 2009
Alan Decho's Microbial Interactions Laboratory, and colleagues from the USC Department of Chemistry, recently published research that made the cover of the February issue of the journal Environmental Microbiology.
Their article describes how bacteria use chemical communication (i.e., quorum sensing) to form bacterial mats out in the environment. Decho and colleagues were the first to detect and characterize such signaling in the field.
This image is a confocal micrograph showing the beautiful variety of microorganisms living in and around the mats formed by bacteria. These "mats" also serve as refugia for bacteria in our bodies; as dental plaque on teeth, as antibiotic resistant films in lungs, on bones, and in our blood vessels.
