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Listening to bacteria

Summer Student Fellow Rose Kantor spent her summer working with marine chemist Tracy Mincer studying quorum sensing in microbes associated with sinking particles in the ocean water column. Quorum sensing is a process where bacteria gauge the density of related cells in their environment so they can coordinate behavior. Kantor was responsible for isolating pure cultures of bacteria, freezing them, and sequencing their DNA, enabling her to identify each culture and study how they regulate the expression of the gene encoding the hydrolytic enzymes they use to communicate.

(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)