| Profession | Biochemist and Educator |
| Born | Chicago, IL |
| Innovation | Breakthrough discoveries in the nature and communication of bacteria |
| NJ Connection | Professor and Chair of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator |
Bonnie Bassler has her own fish story but it has nothing to do with the size or difficulty of her catch.
By closely observing microbes common inside of certain fish, the biologist eventually intruded into ongoing “conversations” between bacteria. This communication was a chemical process that came to be called “quorum sensing” because bacteria use it to ‘sense” the presence of fellow bacteria.
Bassler and her associates further discovered that bacteria used quorum sensing to coordinate their invasion of a living organism (plant, animal or person).
This led to the theory that interfering with quorum sensing could lead to new generations of antibiotics, a critical medical initiative today as more and more bacterial strains are proving resistant to current antibiotics.
For the discovery of quorum sensing and her subsequent work, Dr. Bassler received the 2016 Alice H. Parker Women Leaders in Innovation Award from the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce.
Today Bassler is Chair and Squibb Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University.
Bassler is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The latest in a series of prestigious awards she has won is the 2015 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine.
