Discovery The first observations of an autoinducer-controlled phenotype in bacteria were reported in 1970, by Kenneth Nealson, Terry Platt, and J. Woodland Hastings, who observed what they described as a conditioning of the medium in which they had grown the bioluminescent marine bacterium Aliivibrio fischeri. These bacteria did not synthesize luciferase—and therefore did not luminesce—in freshly inoculated culture but only after the bacterial population had increased significantly.
Discovery The first observations of an autoinducer-controlled phenotype in bacteria were reported in 1970, by Kenneth Nealson, Terry Platt, and J. Woodland Hastings who observed what they described as a conditioning of the medium in which they had grown the bioluminescent marine bacterium Aliivibrio fischeri. These bacteria did not synthesize luciferase—.and therefore did not luminesce—in freshly, inoculated culture but only after the bacterial population had increased significantly