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Science 10 April 1998:
Vol. 280. no. 5361, pp. 226 - 227
DOI: 10.1126/science.280.5361.226
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Research Commentaries

Also see the archival list of Science's Compass: Research commentaries

MICROBIOLOGY:
Enhanced: One for All and All for One

Roberto Kolter and Richard Losick

We usually think of bacteria as lone, unicellular organisms, competing with their brethren for food and desirable places to live. But in fact, bacteria can form organized colonies in which individual cells work together. As Kolter and Losick discuss in their commentary, a report in this issue (Davies et al.) describes the signaling molecule that controls the multicellular architecture of one of these types of colonies--biofilms of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can form hard-to-treat deposits of infection in patients.

R. Kolter is in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA. E-mail: kolter{at}mbcrr.harvard.edu. R. Losick is in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.

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