How life's forms modify and evolve the Earth: cyanobacteria (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 07, 2025, 12:30 (29 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTES: "Nanotubes are a recent addition to scientists’ understanding of bacterial communication[…] These tubes were actively transporting material: The researchers showed that green fluorescent proteins produced in one cell of the network quickly percolated through the others." […]

"Moving across these bridges from cell to cell were substances such as amino acids(opens a new tab), the basic building blocks of proteins, as well as enzymes and toxins(opens a new tab). Bacteria, biologists now think, have probably been making these structures all along.
Scientists simply hadn’t noticed them or realized their significance."

"this [new] paper shows that this transfer is both happening within and between species,” he said. “This is super interesting,”

DAVID: life works best with cooperative cells. This finding in bacteria tells us multicellular organisms were built into the design to appear at some point.

Thank you for this very thought-provoking, “super interesting” article. My first thought on reading your comment is that although conflict can also be productive in evolution and in our human world (e.g. through new weapons of attack and defence), I’m sure we all wish that our great leaders would realize that life works best through cooperation! In relation to all the different theories we have discussed in the past, I will always accept the logic of the design argument for the possible existence of God (see below).Here I would add that the above quotes seem to me to confirm that some sort of autonomous intelligence underlies this bacterial cooperation. But what is also intriguing is that these bacteria have NOT evolved. They have been “making these structures all along”. We humans speculate about life on other planets, and what that might prove. Even if there was microbial life, will it have evolved into beings like ourselves and our fellow creatures? Why did it do so here? The great mystery is not confined to the origin of life, but also to the origin of evolution. (We needn’t go over all the theories again – I’m merely drawing attention to the unsolved mysteries.)

DAVID: Note: I'd like to continue to present design suggesting science papers when they appear.

Welcome back, and thank you for what is already a significant addition to the on-going education you have provided down through the years. I think we can agree to disagree on all the major topics we have discussed together for so long, but it would be wonderful if you could keep the forum alive with whatever new findings you think may shed light on the various mysteries. As above, I will always accept the logic of the design argument, but will continue to add my own comments in the interest of balance, though not in order to repeat the daily discussions of yesteryear! Basically, this simply means that the forum will continue only through new material which you feel is worth publishing, and for this – as always – I’m deeply grateful.

Of course, though, we would welcome new contributors as well as the return of old friends such as George Jelliss, balance_maintained and xeno. This would almost certainly provide material for new discussions. But David and I agree that our own discussions have reached a dead end. Meanwhile, I shall continue to delete bogus and foreign language articles.