Cellosophical Explorations #2 - Cellosophy

Steering yourself by the bootstraps: how cells create their own gradients for chemotaxis

Chemotaxis, where cell movement is steered by chemical gradients, is a widespread and essential way of organising cell behaviour. But where do the instructions come from – who makes gradients, and how are they controlled? We discuss the emerging concept that chemotactic cells often create attractant gradients at the same time as responding to them. This self-guidance is more robust, works across greater distances, and is more informative about the local environment than passive responses. Several mechanisms can establish autonomous gradients.

The cognitive cell: bacterial behavior reconsidered

Research on how bacteria adapt to changing environments underlies the contemporary biological understanding of signal transduction, and signal transduction provides the foundation of the information-processing approach that is the hallmark of the ‘cognitive revolution,’ which began in the mid-20th century. Yet cognitive scientists largely remain oblivious to research into microbial behavior that might provide insights into problems in their own domains, while microbiologists seem equally unaware of the potential importance of their work to understanding cognitive capacities in multicellular organisms, including vertebrates. Evidence in bacteria for capacities encompassed by the concept of cognition is reviewed. Parallels exist not only at the heuristic level of functional analogue, but also at the level of molecular mechanism, evolution and ecology, which is where fruitful cross-fertilization among disciplines might be found.

Controlled Mold

A blog about fermentation, engineering, and cell-ag. We run wild experiments on microbes and try to eat them, all with the help of computers and math.

Cellosophy

Cognition and Intelligence in Unicellular Creatures

Principles of Minimal Cognition: Casting Cognition as Sensorimotor Coordination

Within the cognitive sciences, cognition tends to be interpreted from an anthropocentric perspective, involving a stringent set of human capabilities. Instead, we suggest that cognition is better explicated as a much more general biological phenomenon, allowing the lower bound of cognition to extend much further down the phylogenetic scale. We argue that elementary forms of cognition can already be witnessed in prokaryotes possessing a functional sensorimotor analogue of the nervous system. Building on a case-study of the Escherichia coli bacterium and its sensorimotor system, the TCST-system, we home in on the characteristics of minimal cognition, and distinguish it from more basic forms of ontogenetic adaptation. In our view, minimal cognition requires an embodiment consisting of a sensorimotor coupling mechanism that subsumes an autopoietic organization; this forms the basis of the growing consensus that the core of cognition revolves around sensorimotor coupling. We discuss the relevance of our interpretation of minimal cognition for the study of cognition in general

Global constraint principle for microbial growth laws | PNAS

Understanding complex living systems requires identifying universal phenomenological laws that are independent of species and molecular-biological ...

Even a Single Bacterial Cell Can Sense the Seasons Changing | Quanta Magazine

Though they live only a few hours before dividing, bacteria can anticipate the approach of cold weather and prepare for it. The discovery suggests that seasonal tracking is fundamental to life.

Even a Single Bacterial Cell Can Sense the Seasons Changing | Quanta Magazine

Though they live only a few hours before dividing, bacteria can anticipate the approach of cold weather and prepare for it. The discovery suggests that seasonal tracking is fundamental to life.

Holobiont

A holobiont is an assemblage of a host and the many other species living in or around it, which together form a discrete ecological unit through symbiosis, though there is controversy over this discreteness. The components of a holobiont are individual species or bionts, while the combined genome of all bionts is the hologenome. The holobiont concept was initially introduced by the German theoretical biologist Adolf Meyer-Abich in 1943, and then apparently independently by Dr. Lynn Margulis in her 1991 book Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation. The concept has evolved since the original formulations. Holobionts include the host, virome, microbiome, and any other organisms which contribute in some way to the functioning of the whole. Well-studied holobionts include reef-building corals and humans.

Cognition without brains? Learning and memory in microorganisms

Memory and learning are cognitive abilities typically associated with animals that possess a complex nervous system. Interestingly, recent studies suggest that microorganisms might also display learning-like behaviours. However, a factor limiting progress in this field is the lack of shared, microbe-specific frameworks that allow microbiologists to easily compare discoveries with concepts developed in cognitive sciences. In this review, we aim to bridge this gap by providing a conceptual overview of the definitional requirements for memory and learning to classify microbial behaviours and capabilities. Additionally, we identify and address problems that cause conceptual ambiguity in the microbial cognition literature, thereby facilitating more productive debates on the topic. Finally, we provide a novel perspective on how microbes might ‘learn’ from each other.

Design in The Age of Biology: Shifting From a Mechanical-Object Ethos to an Organic-Systems Ethos

In the early twentieth century, our understanding of physics changed rapidly; now, our understanding of biology is undergoing a similar rapid change.

bisks.net — atprotozoa

A little zoo of tiny atproto experiments.

Rotten Menu

Exploring the microbiology of food fermentation