More than 1,000 species of bacteria have been identified in the human gut, and understanding this incredibly diverse “microbiome” that can greatly impact health and disease is a hot topic in scientific research. Because bacteria are routinely genetically engineered in science labs, there is great excitement about the possibility of tweaking the genes of our intestinal interlopers so that they can do more than just help digest our food (e.g., record information about the state of the gut in real-time, report the presence of disease, etc.). However, little is known about how all those different strains communicate with each other, and whether it is even possible to create the kinds of signaling pathways that would allow information to be passed between them.