[Bacteria] have an incredibly complicated chemical lexicon that … allows bacteria to be multicellular. In the spirit of TED they’re doing things together because it makes a difference.

Bonnie Bassler, a Princeton microbiologist known for pioneering work on quorum sensing, has often explained bacterial “communication” to general audiences through public lectures and TED talks. In that setting she describes how bacteria release and detect small signaling molecules to gauge population density and coordinate group behaviors (e.g., bioluminescence, virulence, biofilm formation). The line’s playful nod to “the spirit of TED” suggests it was delivered in a popular-science talk rather than a technical paper, using TED’s theme of collaboration to make the idea of microbial collective action vivid and memorable.

The quote argues that bacteria are not merely solitary, simple organisms: they possess a rich “chemical lexicon” of signals that lets them act collectively, in effect behaving like a multicellular system when conditions warrant. Bassler’s point is both descriptive and corrective—challenging the intuition that complexity requires large brains or bodies. By framing bacterial coordination as “doing things together because it makes a difference,” she emphasizes the evolutionary payoff of cooperation: synchronized gene expression can enable behaviors that are ineffective or impossible for single cells acting alone.