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Related Experiment Videos

Self-engineering capabilities of bacteria.

Eshel Ben-Jacob1, Herbert Levine

  • 1School of Physics and Astronomy, Raymond and Beverly Sackler, Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Israel. ebenjacob@ucsd.edu

Journal of the Royal Society, Interface
|July 20, 2006
PubMed
Summary
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Bacteria cooperatively engineer complex colonies by communicating and generating new information as needed, not just relying on genetic code. This self-organization allows adaptable colonial patterns in response to environmental conditions.

Area of Science:

  • Microbiology
  • Systems Biology
  • Biophysics

Background:

  • Bacteria exhibit complex communication methods like quorum-sensing and plasmid exchange.
  • Colonial patterns emerge through collective bacterial behavior and environmental adaptation.
  • Genetic information alone does not dictate all possible colonial structures.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To describe the emergence of complex bacterial colonial patterns.
  • To elucidate the role of communication and self-organization in bacterial colonies.
  • To explain how bacteria generate information beyond their genetic code for adaptation.

Main Methods:

  • Descriptive analysis of bacterial communication and self-organization.
  • Examination of the interplay between individual bacteria and the colony.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Focus on information processing at the cellular and colonial levels.

    • Main Results:

    • Complex colonial forms arise from communication-based interactions between individual bacteria and the colony.
    • Bacteria act as autonomous systems with internal informatics capabilities.
    • Cells exhibit plasticity, responding to and broadcasting biochemical messages to alter behavior.
    • New traits and abilities emerge collectively, not being explicitly stored in individual genetic information.

    Conclusions:

    • Bacterial colonial self-organization is an emergent property driven by communication and information generation.
    • Adaptability in bacterial colonies stems from dynamic, co-generated information and cellular plasticity.
    • The interplay between individual cells and the collective enables the engineering of complex, adaptive colonial patterns.