Intercellular Signaling in Vibrio Harveyi

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Intellectual Merit: The overall goal of the PI's research is to understand quorum sensing, i.e., the process of cell-cell communication in bacteria. Quorum sensing involves the production, release, and subsequent detection of chemical signal molecules called autoinducers. This process enables populations of bacteria to regulate gene expression, and therefore behavior on a population-wide scale. The ability to produce and simultaneously detect multiple autoinducers and to transduce that information into the precise control of gene expression was first discovered, and is best studied, in Vibrio harveyi which uses three distinct autoinducers for intra-species, intra-genera, and inter-species cell-cell communication. Thus, the V. harveyi quorum-sensing circuit has revealed itself to be ideally suited for explorations of questions concerning how sensory information is integrated at the molecular level and how regulatory proteins controlled by multiple cues can nonetheless provide a mechanism for differential responses to those inputs. For a full understanding of how multiple signals are integrated to control gene expression, it is necessary to know and characterize all of the inputs, how these inputs are relayed into the cell, how sensory information is integrated, and, finally, a detailed knowledge of what the target outputs are and the molecular mechanisms underlying their precise control is required. The research to be carried out under this award focuses on V. harveyi, with the aim of exploring how information from the intra-species, intra-genera and inter-species signals is integrated, processed, and transduced to control community-wide behavior. Importantly, the past decade has shown that cell-cell communication is the norm in the bacterial world and thus understanding this process is fundamental to all of microbiology, including agricultural, industrial and clinical microbiology, and ultimately to understanding the development of higher organisms. Broader Impacts: Dr. Bassler participates in many teaching and service related activities. At Princeton, she teaches an undergraduate lecture and laboratory class for non-majors (MOL101: From DNA to Human Complexity) and she teaches the graduate course MOL545: Advanced Microbial Genetics. She is the Director of Graduate Studies for Molecular Biology, the Chair of the Graduate Committee, the Chair of the Biology Umbrella Development Program, and the Chair of the Committee for Scientific Direction, Curriculum Development, and Faculty Recruitment for Molecular Biology. She is on the University Diversity Committee responsible for recruiting women faculty in science and minority faculty in all disciplines. She is an undergraduate advisor at one of the Princeton residential colleges. She developed and supervises a high school outreach program for teaching science to children and teens in NJ public libraries. She is on the advisory board of Science Museum, which develops science exhibits for NY museums. She is an editor for Molecular Microbiology and Annual Reviews of Genetics, and on the editorial board of Journal of Bacteriology. She serves on NSF, Keck, Damon Runyon, Burroughs Wellcome, ASM, and AAM grant, fellowship, meeting, and award review panels. Finally and most importantly, she is actively involved in mentoring in her laboratory. She currently has 5 graduate students, 4 postdocs, 2 undergraduates, and 2 technicians. Over the past 12 years she has mentored a total of 6 postdocs, 13 graduate students, and 19 undergraduates. This award will support two graduate students per year in her laboratory.