Question: What have you found so far about stopping bacteria work as a team?

Matthew Hurley answered on 15 Jun 2010:

OK – ask any scientist about their work and they’ll ramble on for hours, but I’ll try to keep this brief… We know that many bacteria produce signal molecules (a bit like a hormone in people) that are released into their immediate environment. The more bacteria present, the more signals are in the environment. Eventually there’s loads of signal molecules around so that the bacteria know that there’s loads of other bacteria too. This means that there’s safety in numbers. They know that when there’s enough of them they can withstand attack from the human’s immune system and attack the human themselves.

I’ve shown that garlic (yes the smelly odorous vegetable) can reduce the ability of the bacteria to produce signals. As a result they can’t tell if there are lots of other bacteria around or not. This means that they never reach the point that they feel able to attack the human. If we can keep them like this then we can kill them with antibiotics. Clear as mud? Sorry.