How do bacteria communicate

Bacteria 'talk' When the announcement goes out, more and more bacteria gather at the site of the attack -- a wound, for example. ScienceDaily, 6 November Bacteria talk to each other and our cells in the same way, via molecules.

Retrieved November 12, from www. Researchers have gotten one step closer to creating such a 'synthetic ScienceDaily shares links with sites in the TrendMD network and earns revenue from third-party advertisers, where indicated.

Print Email Share. In summary, the life of a simple, single-cell microorganism, such as a bacterium, is not so simple after all! And when these microorganisms are found in a biofilm colony their complexity increases tremendously. Cunningham, John E. Lennox, and Rockford J. Ross, Eds. Microbes in a Biofilm Can Communicate With Each Other Another characteristic of cells found in a biofilm is that they can communicate with each other. Permissions P.

Science, Neural signals, which rely on fast-acting sodium channels in addition to the potassium channels, can zip along at more than meters per second — a speed that is critical for enabling animals to engage in sophisticated, rapid-motion behaviors such as hunting.

The potassium waves in Bacillus spread at the comparatively tortoise-like rate of a few millimeters per hour. When the wave of potassium-driven electrical activity reaches the edge of a biofilm, the electrical activity might stop, but the cloud of potassium ions released into the environment keeps going.

The researchers therefore decided to look at what happens once the potassium wave leaves a biofilm. The first answer came earlier this year in a Cell paper , in which they showed that Bacillus bacteria seem to use potassium ions to recruit free-swimming cells to the community. Amazingly, the bacteria attracted not only other Bacillus , but also unrelated species. Bacteria, it seems, may have evolved to live not just in monocultures but in diverse communities.

In these experiments, two bacterial communities took turns eating glutamate, enabling the biofilms to consume the limited nutrients more efficiently. As a result of this sharing, the biofilms grew more quickly than they could have if the bacteria had eaten as much as they could without interruption.

When the researchers used bacteria with ion channels that had been modified to give weaker signals, the biofilms, no longer able to coordinate their feeding, grew more slowly. El-Naggar studies how bacteria transfer electrons using specialized thin tubes , which he calls nanowires. For Gemma Reguera , a microbiologist at Michigan State University, the recent revelations bolster an argument she has long been making to her biologist peers: that physical signals such as light, sound and electricity are as important to bacteria as chemical signals.

Part of what excites researchers is that electrical signaling among bacteria shows signs of being more powerful than chemically mediated quorum sensing. Privacy Policy. Create an account. Password recovery. All Trends for Trends for Identifying the Next Frontier in Vaccine Manufacturing.

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