Natures wonders: bacterial language (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 16, 2013, 12:55 (3935 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: They use chemical signals:-http://phys.org/news/2013-07-bacterial-language.html-In nature, bacteria are no mavericks but live in close association with neighboring bacteria. They have evolved specific cell-cell communication systems that allow them to detect the presence of others and even to build up cooperative networks.-LMU microbiologist PD Dr. Ralf Heermann and Professor Helge Bode of the Goethe-University in Frankfurt have just reported the discovery of a previously unknown bacterial "language". Their findings are detailed in the latest issue of the journal Nature Chemical Biology. "Our results demonstrate that bacterial communication is much more complex than has been assumed to date," Heermann says.-And so once again we learn that the simplest forms of life have complex methods of communicating, which enable them to cooperate, to create new communities, to innovate. These are forms of intelligence that may be very different from ours, but we only need to think about our own bodies to realize that there are countless intelligent mechanisms which perceive, calculate, decide and act independently of our will and our consciousness. Each one of us is a community of cell communities, and these function just like all communities, through a common language and a shared goal. It's the same throughout Nature ... forms of intelligence which we do not understand, but which function just as efficiently as those within us. How the first forms arose is a mystery, but once we acknowledge the inventive, cooperative intelligence of cells, all the other mysteries of evolution seem to me to solve themselves.