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Updated: Oct 18, 2025

Time-lapse Imaging of Bacterial Swarms and the Collective Stress Response
Published on: May 23, 2020
Bacterial quorum sensing and phenotypic heterogeneity: how the collective shapes the individual
Bianca Striednig1, Hubert Hilbi1
1Institute of Medical Microbiology, University of Zürich, Gloriastrasse 30, 8006 Zürich, Switzerland.
Abstract:
Bacteria communicate with each other through a plethora of small, diffusible organic molecules called autoinducers. This cell-density-dependent regulatory principle is termed quorum sensing, and in many cases the process indeed coordinates group behavior of bacterial populations. Yet, even clonal bacterial populations are not uniform entities; rather, they adopt phenotypic heterogeneity to cope with consecutive, rapid, and frequent environmental fluctuations (bet-hedging) or to concurrently interact with each other by exerting different, often complementary, functions (division of labor). Quorum sensing is mainly regarded as a coordinator of bacterial collective behavior. However, it can also be a driver or a target of individual phenotypic heterogeneity. Hence, quorum sensing increases the overall fitness of a bacterial community by orchestrating group behavior as well as individual traits.
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