Posted on 03/21/2003 7:56:35 PM PST by gore3000
Issue 11.04 - April 2003
this article for free. |
|
|
The Bacteria Whisperer
Bonnie Bassler discovered a secret about microbes that the science world has missed for centuries. The bugs are talking to each other. And plotting against us.
By Steve Silberman
Trim and hyperkinetic at 40, Bonnie Bassler is often mistaken for a graduate student at conferences. Five mornings a week at dawn, she walks a mile to the local YMCA to lead a popular aerobics class. When a representative from the MacArthur Foundation phoned last fall, the caller played coy at first, asking Bassler if she knew anyone who might be worthy of one of the foundation's fellowships, popularly known as genius grants. "I'm sorry," Bassler apologized, "I don't hang out with that caliber of people."
The point of the call, of course, was that Bassler - an associate professor of molecular biology at Princeton - is now officially a genius herself. More than a decade ago, she began studying a phenomenon that even fellow biologists considered to be of questionable significance: bacterial communication. Now she finds herself at the forefront of a major shift in mainstream science.
The notion that microbes have anything to say to each other is surprisingly new. For more than a century, bacterial cells were regarded as single-minded opportunists, little more than efficient machines for self-replication. Flourishing in plant and animal tissue, in volcanic vents and polar ice, thriving on gasoline additives and radiation, they were supremely adaptive, but their lives seemed, well, boring. The "sole ambition" of a bacterium, wrote geneticist François Jacob in 1973, is "to produce two bacteria."
New research suggests, however, that microbial life is much richer: highly social, intricately networked, and teeming with interactions. Bassler and other researchers have determined that bacteria communicate using molecules comparable to pheromones. By tapping into this cell-to-cell network, microbes are able to collectively track changes in their environment, conspire with their own species, build mutually beneficial alliances with other types of bacteria, gain advantages over competitors, and communicate with their hosts - the sort of collective strategizing typically ascribed to bees, ants, and people, not to bacteria.
Last year, Bassler and her colleagues unlocked the structure of a molecular language shared by many of nature's most fearsome particles of mass destruction, including those responsible for cholera, tuberculosis, pneumonia, septicemia, ulcers, Lyme disease, stomach cancer, and bubonic plague. Now even Big Pharma, faced with a soaring number of microbes resistant to existing drugs, is taking notice of her work.
(Excerpt) Read more at wired.com ...
Was the method of communication understood or just the fact they communicated? If the method was understood, then you are right, what is the big deal.
These are the "first" bacteria, are they?
May be, we may have to write a bill of rights for them!
Perhaps if you had gone on to read the rest of the article you would not have said that:
The conclusion that only highly evolved organisms have the ability to act collectively proved to be a stubborn prejudice, however. On several occasions, Nealson tried to publish a diagram in microbiology journals illustrating cell-to-cell signaling in V. fischeri, but peer reviewers rejected it. Bacteria just don't do this, the critics told him.
It has been known for a while that bacteria can acquire genetic information from other bacteria. However, that they can cooperate together pruposely to achieve a certain objective, is something new.
Since evolutionists treat present genetic information as if it had not changed since the species first arose, to deny that this arose at the beginning they will have to throw out all the garbage they have been spouting for 150 years. They cannot have it both ways.
Sure they can:
All effects have a cause/ all effects do not have a cause
Life only comes from life/ life sometimes comes from non-life.
Spontaneous generation is an old wives' tale/ spontaneous generation is science.
A theory without evidence is fact/ creation is a theory without evidence.
There are no transitional forms/ all forms are transitional.
Archaeopteryx is a reptile/ A. is a bird/ A. is a transitional form.
Dinos are warm-blooded/ dinos are cold-blooded.
Evo is established truth/ evo cannot stand criticism.
Evo is predictive/ we do not know into what we are evolving.
etc. etc. etc.
Yeah. Right. Evolutionists believe that genetic information never changes. Got it.
That something happens, does not mean it is evolution. What we have this is much more than symbiosis, it is working towards a goal and exchange of information.
Yes, I've been hearing voices in my head for years, that would explain it!
Yeah. Right. Evolutionists believe that genetic information never changes. Got it.
Now, now, Jenny, you know you are misrepresenting what I said. Evolutionists claim that species are changing all the time, however, to prove their assumption they claim that species that have arisen hundreds of millions of years ago (according to evolution) can be compared in their present form to supposedly newer species as if none of them had ever been changing.
This article also poses a pretty great problem for evolutionists since communication is an intelligent act requiring symbolism.
Yes indeed, and apparently some drug firms are already investigating the possibilities.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.