] 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.