Bonnie Bassler

Bonnie Lynn Bassler (born 1962) is an American molecular biologist who has researched chemical communication between bacteria known as quorum sensing, and contributed to the idea that disruption of chemical signaling can be used as an antimicrobial therapy. She is the Squibb Professor in Molecular Biology and chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and her research focuses on cell-to-cell communication in bacteria.

She has received numerous awards for her research, including the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences (2009), the Richard Lounsbery Award (2011), and the L’Oreal-UNESCO award (2012), a MacArthur Fellowship (2002), and the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize (2016). She is a former president of the American Society for Microbiology, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a former six-year member of National Science Board.

Early life and education

Born in Chicago and raised in Danville, California, Bassler began her career in science "as a veterinarian’s assistant at the Miami Zoo and later at a local dog and cat clinic." Bassler received a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry from the University of California, Davis and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Johns Hopkins University. She made key insights into the mechanism by which bacteria communicate, known as quorum sensing. Her postdoctoral research was conducted at Agouron Institute in genetics for four years before joining the Princeton faculty in 1994. She is currently the chair of the department of molecular biology and the Squibb Professor in molecular biology.

Honors and awards

• 2002 MacArthur Fellowship
• 2004 Elected member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
• 2006 National Academy of Sciences
• 2007 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2008 Special Recognition from the World Cultural Council
• 2009 Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences
• 2010 USA Science and Engineering Festival's Nifty Fifty Speakers, nominated by American Society for Microbiology
• 2010-2016 National Science Board, nominated by President Barack Obama
• 2011 Richard Lounsbery Award
• 2011 L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Awards Laureate for North America
• 2011 President of the American Society for Microbiology
• 2012 Member in the American Philosophical Society
• 2014 American Society for Microbiology EMD Millipore Alice C. Evans Award
• 2014 Phi Beta Kappa Excellence in Teaching Award
• 2015 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine
• 2016 The FASEB Excellence in Science Award
• 2016 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize prize
• 2016 Max Planck Research Award
• 2016 Elected member of the National Academy of Medicine
• 2018 Dickson Prize
• 2018 Ernst Schering Prize

Notable publications

• Ng, W. L., & Bassler, B. L. (2009). Bacterial quorum-sensing network architectures. Annual review of genetics, 43, 197-222.
• Bassler, B. L., & Losick, R. (2006). Bacterially speaking. Cell, 125(2), 237-246.
• Camilli, A., & Bassler, B. L. (2006). Bacterial small-molecule signaling pathways. Science, 311(5764), 1113-1116.
• Waters, C. M., & Bassler, B. L. (2005). Quorum sensing: cell-to-cell communication in bacteria. Annu. Rev. Cell Dev. Biol., 21, 319-346.
• Lenz, D. H., Mok, K. C., Lilley, B. N., Kulkarni, R. V., Wingreen, N. S., & Bassler, B. L. (2004). The small RNA chaperone Hfq and multiple small RNAs control quorum sensing in Vibrio harveyi and Vibrio cholerae. Cell, 118(1), 69-82.
• Chen, X., Schauder, S., Potier, N., Van Dorsselaer, A., Pelczer, I., Bassler, B. L., & Hughson, F. M. (2002). Structural identification of a bacterial quorum-sensing signal containing boron. Nature, 415(6871), 545.
• Miller, M. B., & Bassler, B. L. (2001). Quorum sensing in bacteria. Annual Reviews in Microbiology, 55(1), 165-199.
• Schauder, S., Shokat, K., Surette, M. G., & Bassler, B. L. (2001). The LuxS family of bacterial autoinducers: biosynthesis of a novel quorum‐sensing signal molecule. Molecular microbiology, 41(2), 463-476.
• Surette, M. G., Miller, M. B., & Bassler, B. L. (1999). Quorum sensing in Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium, and Vibrio harveyi: a new family of genes responsible for autoinducer production. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96(4), 1639-1644.
• Bassler, B. L. (1999). How bacteria talk to each other: regulation of gene expression by quorum sensing. Current opinion in microbiology, 2(6), 582-587.
• Bassler, B. L., Wright, M., Showalter, R. E., & Silverman, M. R. (1993). Intercellular signalling in Vibrio harveyi: sequence and function of genes regulating expression of luminescence. Molecular microbiology, 9(4), 773-786.