Structural Insight into a Biofilm Signaling Molecule

Life as a bacterium presents special challenges—primary among them the need to sense and respond to the environment—which for an organism just 3 micrometers long, like Pseudomonas aeruginosa, might seem a daunting prospect. One way Pseudomonas and other bacteria cope with the rigors of existence is by forming highly organized communities called biofilms. As members of a biofilm, microbes gain access to nutrients, genetic traits, and metabolic processes that are unavailable to them as individuals. They also find protection from the elements in the sticky extracellular matrix that holds the cells together.