Why microbes are smarter than you thought - life - 30 June 2009 - New Scientist

Description

The vast majority of species on Earth are single-celled. Most of these languish in obscurity – many have never even been named – but some of the relatively few species that have been studied exhibit remarkable abilities.

Many of these are physical: some micro-organisms are amazingly strong ; others can hibernate for hundreds of thousands of years or thrive in environments so extreme that they would kill off most other life forms in a flash.

But many bacteria and protists also exhibit behaviour that looks remarkably intelligent. This behaviour isn't the result of conscious thought – the sort you find in humans and other complex animals – because single-celled organisms don't have nervous systems, let alone brains.

A better explanation is that they're "biological computers" with internal machinery that can process information ( see our review of Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell ). Here are some of the most striking examples of this "intelligent" behaviour from the New Scientist archive.

Communication

Bacteria talk to each other with chemicals. They do so for a host of reasons, some of them hard to understand unless you are another bacterium (or a dedicated bacteriologist), but one of the most straightforward is demonstrated by Bacillus subtilis .

If B. subtilis individuals are growing in a food-poor area, they release chemicals into their surroundings. These essentially tell their neighbours: "There's not much food here, so clear off or we'll both starve."

In response to these chemical messages, the other bacteria set themselves up further away, completely changing the shape of the colony.

Decision-making

Many single-celled organisms can work out how many other bacteria of their own species, are in their vicinity – an ability known as "quorum sensing".

Each individual bacterium releases a small amount of a chemical into the surrounding area – a ...

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