MicrobeWorld

Materials scientist Jeffrey Brinker and his collaborators at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M., have confined individual Staphylococcus aureus cells in vessels that consist of porous silica nanostructures. These structures isolate the cells physically and chemically from other cells and allowed the researchers to show that a single bacterial cell can sense and respond to autoinducer molecules that it secretes.