When antibiotics first came out, nobody could have imagined we'd have the resistance problem we face today. We didn't give bacteria credit for being able to change and adapt so fast.

My bacteria glow in the dark - no human being doesn't like that.

What's great about bacteria is you have a surprise every day waiting for you because they're so fast, they grow overnight.

We've all been sick; we're all afraid of infection. 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.

Bacteria mineralized the rocks; they deposited the iron. They made the geology we see.

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.