Biological complexity: teaching bacteria new tricks (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 27, 2016, 12:45 (3133 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: It has been observed that narcotics, medication, alcohol, diseases and other interventions can have such an influence on the human body that they change a person's behaviour. That plays a strong role in some people's contention that human behaviour is all automatic. Other people contend that without such interference, human behaviour is controlled by autonomous mental processes. For the latter group of thinkers, the fact that interference can change the behaviour of non-human organisms can therefore hardly be taken as evidence that those organisms are incapable of autonomous mental processes, even if those are of a different and less complex nature.-DAVID: Apples and oranges! You are comparing chemical effects on functioning organisms, not the question of when the controlling genome is manipulated directly to force change in function. Swimming is an athletic activity, not a 'behavior' in the sense you are using it.-It was you and the researchers who introduced the term “behaviour”AVID: In the discussion of how bacteria respond, the fact that the bacterial genome can be manipulated to make bacteria have new behaviors plays a strong role in my contention that it is all automatic…(my bold)-QUOTE: "Johanna Roßmanith and her doctoral supervisor Prof Dr Franz Narberhaus from the Chair of Microbial Biology carried out a successful study where they controlled the type of proteins a bacterium would manufacture and its behaviour. This is how they have made a bacterium swim that hadn't previously had the ability to move. The researchers made that possible by combining various modules from the bacterium's RNA in a new way.” (my bold)-Regardless of the meaning of “behaviour”, perhaps you could briefly explain how manipulating the genome to enable a bacterium to swim (an athletic activity) strongly supports your contention that ALL bacterial behaviour is automatic (i.e. bacteria are incapable of any autonomous mental activity, such as decision-making or problem-solving).