The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology for year 2020 in Biological Sciences has been awarded to Dr Subhadeep Chatterjee of Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad for his brilliant and sustained investigations discovered reversible non-genetic heterogeneity in bacterial social communication systems that coordinate virulence and lifestyle transitions during plant disease. The fundamental findings have implication for bacterial disease management, including those of medical importance, and they give key insights on microbial evolution.