by Spencer Scott & John De Friel — Mi­cro­bial ecol­ogy may be a young field but it is well un­der­stood al­ready that there is a broad spec­trum of in­ter­ac­tions be­tween bac­te­r­ial species, rang­ing from co­op­er­a­tive to com­pet­i­tive. In a re­cent pa­per re­searchers from John Mekalanos' lab fur­ther char­ac­ter­ized a re­cently dis­cov­ered mech­a­nism for in­ter-cell com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This sys­tem, called…