Crowd Management

Thousands of people in a concert crowd might share a love for a particular performer, but they’re each unique individuals with distinct needs and behaviours. The same is true of communities of microbes, even those that are all genetically identical, but technical limitations mean many traditional studies treat them as a single population. At tiny scales each bacterium experiences differences in the environment, and a new technique reveals how their gene expression – and hence activity – varies accordingly (pictured, with expression of particular genes coloured in individual cells, right, within a layer of bacteria, left). Observing differences at this scale reveals the dynamics allowing a whole community to adapt to changing conditions and develop characteristics such as antibiotic resistance. Understanding these could be key to manipulating them for the benefit of human and environmental health, bringing more effective treatments for chronic infections or promoting plant growth in response to climate change.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Daniel Dar and colleagues
• Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Science, August 2021