Chemical communication, also called quorum sensing, is well known to regulate several different behaviors in bacteria. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology have now added yet another behavior to this list. They have shown that the gut bacterium Escherichia coli can use communication via the universal signaling molecule autoinducer 2 to attract individual bacteria into aggregates. This work demonstrates that the ability to actively self-aggregate using long-range signal exchange is not limited to eukaryotic organisms but can also be exhibited by motile bacteria, thus highlighting commonalities between mechanisms of collective behavior across domains of life. Given the fact that autoaggregation is widespread among bacteria, the described mechanism is likely to be common in nature.
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