The Bacteria Whisperer

Wired News ^ | 04/03 | Steve Silberman

[gore3000]

Issue 11.04 - April 2003

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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.

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[rustbucket]

This article also poses a pretty great problem for evolutionists since communication is an intelligent act requiring symbolism.

Not in the least. It would simply require a concentration-dependent chemical reaction that gave its possessors an evolutionary advantage over those bacteria that didn't have it.

This "communication" ability sounds somewhat similar to the ability to detect smells. Does smelling require symbolism?

[general_re]

Psst. Don't tell him that there are some species of trees that are able to communicate with each other. It'll only confuse him further.

[rustbucket]

Psst. Don't tell him that there are some species of trees that are able to communicate with each other. It'll only confuse him further.

Those are the Ents, right?

Actually, you have a good point. I'd forgotten about tree communication. IIRC, tree chemical signals can alert neighbor trees to caterpillar attacks, etc., enabling them to start generating caterpillar toxins.

[general_re]

IIRC, tree chemical signals can alert neighbor trees to caterpillar attacks, etc., enabling them to start generating caterpillar toxins.

Exactly. And you probably recall how skilled trees are when it comes to abstract thought ;)

[gore3000]

This article also poses a pretty great problem for evolutionists since communication is an intelligent act requiring symbolism.-me-

Not in the least. It would simply require a concentration-dependent chemical reaction that gave its possessors an evolutionary advantage over those bacteria that didn't have it.

This "communication" ability sounds somewhat similar to the ability to detect smells. Does smelling require symbolism?

You are wrong, very wrong. Communication does require symbolism. While it is true that smells can and probably do create chemical reactions in our glands, that does not constitute communication. Communication requires understanding the meaning of what our senses perceive. For that you need symbolism and understanding, something totally unexplainable by materialism.

What you do not understand is that our bodies, and those of higher organisms have a dual nature. On one hand they are run by proteins, on another hand they have a nervous system and a brain that runs on electrical impulses. What this means is that for the senses to communicate with the brain back and forth the information has to be translated into symbols which the other will understand. So yes, communication requires symbolism.

[rustbucket]

Communication requires understanding the meaning of what our senses perceive. For that you need symbolism and understanding, something totally unexplainable by materialism.

What you do not understand is that our bodies, and those of higher organisms have a dual nature. On one hand they are run by proteins, on another hand they have a nervous system and a brain that runs on electrical impulses.

Your argument sounds like materialism to me. Here is a dictionary definition of materialism:

a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all being and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter.

[gore3000]

What you do not understand is that our bodies, and those of higher organisms have a dual nature. On one hand they are run by proteins, on another hand they have a nervous system and a brain that runs on electrical impulses. -me-

Your argument sounds like materialism to me. Here is a dictionary definition of materialism:

a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality

No. Symbols are totally immaterial and without the non-material correlation of one thing with another life would be totally impossible. DNA itself is a symbol. It is an abstract language which is read in threes by DNA and interpreted as amino acids. Symbols are a sign of intelligence and a total disproof of materialism.

[AndrewC]

Interesting I missed this during the war. I notice someone understated something. All chemical reactions are concentration-dependent.