On the 20^thSeptember, 2019, the 9^thsession of the “Huaxiba Academician Lecture Series”, organized by West China Medical Center, sponsored by West China School of Basic Medical Science & Forensic Medicine, was held in the lecture hall of Yifu Basic Medicine Building at the West China Campus of Sichuan University. Professor Peter Everett Greenberg, an elected fellow member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Distinguished Professor of the University of Washington, gave an academic seminar titled “Social activities of bacteria: communication and coordination of cooperation inPseudomonas aeruginosa”. The lecture attracted more than 150 students and teachers and was chaired by Professor Canhua Huang, Dean of West China School of Basic Medical Sciences & Forensic Medicine.

Professor Canhua Huang warmly welcomed Professor Greenberg's visit. After a brief introduction of the academic achievements and contributions of the speaker, Professor Huang hoped that all teachers and students would cherish the opportunity to communicate with the academician face to face, and would participate in various academic activities, striving to improve their ability in scientific research and foreign cooperation.

As the discoverer of “Quorum Sensing”, Professor Greenberg introduced the concept of “Quorum Sensing” in humorous language and figurative metaphors. Professor Greenberg and his research group showed that bacteria live in a communication system, which allowed individuals to monitor the overall population density of the group through signal molecules. Professor Greenberg went into detail about his research that employedPseudomonas aeruginosaas a model to understand how quorum sensing was embedded in the complex regulatory networks of a cell.

At last, Professor Greenberg suggested the potential applications of “Quorum Sensing” in environment, agriculture and medicine. After the lecture, Professor Linchuan Liao and Professor Min Wu thanked Professor Greenberg for his speech and expressed their own views. The teachers and students also discussed with the Professor about quorum sensing.

Characters Introduction：

Professor Everett Peter Greenberg is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and the American Academy of Microbiology. He is an authority on quorum sensing, the role of quorum sensing in virulence, and the role of quorum sensing in coordinating bacterial cooperative activities. He has an active research program that emphasizes studies of quorum sensing inPseudomonas aeruginosa. This bacterial pathogen has become a model for studies of fundamental aspects of bacterial communication. He has studied quorum sensing since the late 1970s and in fact the term quorum sensing and response originates in a 1994JBacteriolarticle on which he was senior author. Professor Greenberg has published over 200 scientific articles on quorum sensing including more than 30 articles oneNature, Science, Cell, PNASand he is a leader in the area of molecular microbiology.