bacterial intelligence: they signal electrically in biofilm (Animals)

by David Turell , Friday, March 16, 2018, 19:04 (2234 days ago) @ David Turell

Shown by recent recearch:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/bacteria-use-brainlike-bursts-of-electricity-to-communic...

"The preferred form of community for bacteria seems to be the biofilm. On teeth, on pipes, on rocks and in the ocean, microbes glom together by the billions and build sticky organic superstructures around themselves. In these films, bacteria can divide labor: Exterior cells may fend off threats, while interior cells produce food. And like humans, who have succeeded in large part by cooperating with each other, bacteria thrive in communities.

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"But Süel and other scientists are now finding that bacteria in biofilms can also talk to one another electrically. Biofilms appear to use electrically charged particles to organize and synchronize activities across large expanses. This electrical exchange has proved so powerful that biofilms even use it to recruit new bacteria from their surroundings, and to negotiate with neighboring biofilms for their mutual well-being.

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"Süel, who was trained in physics, suspected that something more than the diffusion of chemical messengers was at work in his Bacillus colonies. He focused on ion channels — specialized molecules that nestle into cells’ outer membranes and ferry electrically charged particles in and out. Ion channels are probably most famous for their role in nerve cells, or neurons.

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"Despite the parallels to neural activity, Süel emphasizes that biofilms are not just like brains. Neural signals, which rely on fast-acting sodium channels in addition to the potassium channels, can zip along at more than 100 meters per second — a speed that is critical for enabling animals to engage in sophisticated, rapid-motion behaviors such as hunting. The potassium waves in Bacillus spread at the comparatively tortoise-like rate of a few millimeters per hour. “Basically, we’re observing a primitive form of action potential in these biofilms,”

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"The first answer came earlier this year, in which they showed that Bacillus bacteria seem to use potassium ions to recruit free-swimming cells to the community. Amazingly, the bacteria attracted not only other Bacillus, but also unrelated species. Bacteria, it seems, may have evolved to live not just in monocultures but in diverse communities.

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"For Gemma Reguera, a microbiologist at Michigan State University, the recent revelations bolster an argument she has long been making to her biologist peers: that physical signals such as light, sound and electricity are as important to bacteria as chemical signals.

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“'I personally have found [positively charged ion channels] in every single-celled organism I’ve ever looked at,” said Steve Lockless, a biologist at Texas A&M University who was Süel’s lab mate in graduate school. Bacteria could thus use potassium to speak not just with one another but with other life-forms, including perhaps humans, (my bold)

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"'The fact that microbes use potassium suggests that this is an ancient adaptation that developed before the eukaryotic cells that make up plants, animals and other life-forms diverged from bacteria, according to Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo, a professor of systems biology (my bold)

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"The findings form “a very interesting piece of work,” said James Shapiro, a bacterial geneticist at the University of Chicago. Shapiro is not afraid of bold hypotheses: He has argued that bacterial colonies might be capable of a form of cognition. But he approaches analogies between neurons and bacteria with caution. The potassium-mediated behaviors Süel has demonstrated so far are simple enough that they don’t require the type of sophisticated circuitry brains have evolved, Shapiro said. “It’s not clear exactly how much information processing is going on.'”

Comment: I'm with Shapiro. This activity is certainly managed in some layer of genome control. But it also fits my key point that God uses patterns to develop upon as He conducts the process of evolution. Note my bolded sentences above.