'Talking bacteria' discovery that won Hong Kong's US$1m Shaw Prize could offer new model for fighting infectious diseases

Two scientists who scooped Hong Kong's prestigious Shaw Prize for their discovery that bacteria can "talk to each other" say the find could offer a new model for how medication can fight infectious diseases.

Future drugs might be able to manipulate this communication between bacteria to more effectively cure many ailments, said E. Peter Greenberg and Bonnie Bassler, who were awarded the Shaw Prize for life science and medicine in June and US$1 million in prize money shared equally between them.

It used to be thought that bacteria worked individually, until the pair discovered what has become known as quorum sensing, a process of communication between bacteria.

"All globally important pathogens use quorum sensing to be virulent. If you could ensure bacteria can't talk or can't hear, this could be the new medicine," said Bassler, chairwoman of the molecular biology department at Princeton University in the United States.

Greenberg, a microbiology professor at the University of Washington who first coined the term quorum sensing in 1994, said research on the topic started around four decades ago, but the pair eventually found bacteria could connect with each other by sensing chemical molecules secreted by their counterparts. If bacteria did not stick together, they were not strong enough to store nutrients, resist attack or produce toxins.

The social characteristics of bacteria were similar to those among humans, consisting of "cheaters, eavesdroppers and free riders who send out misinformation", Bassler said.