In a person's body there are more bacterial cells (38 billion) than human (30 billion), to the point that some microbiologists invite to consider the human being as a coral reef populated by billions of tiny beings, instead of as an individual organism. American researchers Bonnie Lynn Bassler, Jeffrey Gordon and Peter Greenberg won the 2023 Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research on Wednesday for illuminating this microscopic world and its robust link to human health.
Bacteria know how many companions they have around them thanks to a phenomenon known as quorum perception. In this process, the microbes secrete chemical signals as if it were a census and the group adopts one behavior or another depending on its population density. Biochemist Bonnie Lynn Bassler, born in Chicago 61 years ago, and microbiologist Peter Greenberg, a 75-year-old New Yorker, were the first to understand the mechanisms of this form of communication. It is the social life of bacteria.
Greenberg of the University of Washington coined the term quorum perception in 1994. The first investigations showed that each species of bacteria expels characteristic molecules, as if it were a language of its own that only those of the same species recognize. Bassler, of Princeton University, discovered that there was also a universal language: other molecules that facilitated communication between bacteria of different species. Quorum sensing allows microbes to coordinate their attacks on the human organism.
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The Princess of Asturias Foundation has highlighted in a statement that doctor Jeffrey Gordon was "the pioneer" in the study of the human microbiome – the microorganisms present in the digestive system – and their influence on health, more than two decades ago. Gordon has focused on processes such as diabetes, obesity and malnutrition, but has also clarified the role of bacteria in the neurological and immune development of children and adolescents. The institution emphasizes that the researcher was one of the promoters of the Human Microbiome Project, a consortium that since 2007 has identified some 10,000 different species and has read the genome of a hundred of them.
Gordon, born in New Orleans 76 years ago, already won the BBVA Foundation Frontiers Award in 2019 for "his fundamental discovery of the importance of the gut microbial community for human health," according to the jury at the time. The doctor, from Washington University in St. Louis, has opened a field of research that has crystallized in new therapies, such as transplants of fecal microbes from one person to another, for the treatment of some diseases, such as certain types of colitis.
Agronomist María Carmen Collado studies the vertical transmission of the microbiome, from mothers to children; and horizontal, between people close to you, including co-workers. "This recognition is fantastic to encourage and promote research in microbiome and human health," applauds Collado, from the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology of the CSIC, in Paterna (Valencia). "There's still a lot to do and a lot to discover," he says.
This year, 40 nominations from 16 countries were eligible for the award. The winners have been chosen by a jury of almost twenty scientists, such as physicist Pedro Miguel Echenique, former Minister of Science Cristina Garmendia, chemist María Vallet and biologist Miguel Delibes de Castro. The prize, awarded by the Princess of Asturias Foundation, includes a sculpture by Joan Miró and an economic endowment of 50,000 euros to be distributed.
The scientific award is the seventh of eight international awards to be announced this year by the Princess of Asturias Foundation. American actress Meryl Streep has won in the Arts category. The Italian philosopher Nuccio Ordine will receive the Communication and Humanities award. The French historian Hélène Carrère, a specialist in Russia and the USSR, has been chosen for the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences. The Kenyan athlete Eliud Kipchoge, double Olympic champion in marathon, has won in Sports. The Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, in Letters. And the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative has won the International Cooperation Award. The latest, Concordia, will be announced on June 14. The award ceremony will be in October.
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