Phenotype

Sociology

Bacteria

Evolutionary biology

Biology

Autoinducer

Gene

Collective behavior

Quorum sensing

Anthropology

Computational biology

Genetics

Biofilm

Trends in Microbiology

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).

Bacterial quorum sensing and phenotypic heterogeneity: how the collective shapes the individual