Forging new paths in bacterial motility and sensory transduction: highlights from BLAST XVIII

The Bacterial Locomotion And Signal Transduction (BLAST) conference was founded in 1991 and has been held biennially thereafter. While BLAST meetings have typically covered two-component and chemotactic signaling, as well as aspects of motor and flagellum, this year's program broadened its scope and included emerging areas of research, such as microbial signal perception, cellular signal processing, downstream physiological impacts of bacterial signaling, microbe interactions and communities, integrative approaches, and technology innovations. This review summarizes the oral presentations from BLAST XVIII, held in January 2025 in Cancun, Mexico.