Bonnie Bassler Quotes
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It's a manic-depressive life. You run in here, you open your incubator, your experiment makes no sense, you think, 'I hate this job.' Then ten minutes later you think, 'Well, now, maybe I'll try this or I'll try that.' You do it because you know there will be an 'a-ha!' day.
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What's great about bacteria is you have a surprise every day waiting for you because they're so fast, they grow overnight.
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I think being open-minded about what Nature is trying to tell you is the key to being creative and successful.
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I want to make a drug. I want the science to be more than imaginary, where I think, 'We're learning these fundamental principles, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.' I think we are doing that, but I want to do something really practical. I want to actually, in my lifetime, help people.
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I realized that lab research was the perfect path for me. It allowed me to spend every day figuring out mysteries/puzzles that have to do with what make us alive. What could be a bigger mystery or puzzle?
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By weight, you are more human than bacteria, because your cells are bigger, but by numbers, it's not even close.
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You live in intimate association with bacteria, and you couldn't survive without them.
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I think the easiest application to help people understand what quorum sensing is and why it's important to study is to tell them that if we could make the bacteria either deaf or mute, we could create new antibiotics.
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When antibiotics became industrially produced following World War II, our quality of life and our longevity improved enormously. No one thought bacteria were going to become resistant.
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My job is to teach someone something they never knew, but it should not be like you're in a prisoner-of-war camp. I'm supposed to be teaching you but also entertaining you. You're giving me an hour of your time. It should be lively. We're on a hunt, it's a mystery, and it's amazing.
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If I didn't teach the aerobics class, I wouldn't come, and I need to stay in shape. I've got a whole wardrobe of sleeveless dresses and strapless gowns, not to mention the short skirts.
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I am lucky because I get to work with the smartest, most creative, and most devoted group of students and postdoctoral fellows imaginable.
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You can find bacteria everywhere. They're invisible to us. I've never seen a bacterium, except under a microscope. They're so small, we don't see them, but they are everywhere.