Microbes communicate like neurons
Scientists have grown a "brain" from bacteria in a test tube
Alexander Khramov, Infox.ruMicrobiologists have found that bacteria can coordinate their actions like nerve cells in the brain.
The discovery forces us to reconsider the view of bacteria as individuals who are not capable of complex communication, Infox reports.This is stated in an article by American specialists from the University of California at San Diego, whose article was published in the journal Nature (Prindle et al., Ion channels enable electrical communication in bacterial communities).
As you know, neurons in the brain work as a whole, communicating their membrane (electrical) potentials to each other. The key role in this process is played by ion channels – membrane proteins that launch charged particles into cells, such as calcium and potassium. The authors of the article found out that a similar process is observed in bacteria, despite their apparent primitiveness.
The discovery was made when scientists observed the growth of Bacillus subtilis bacteria in Petri dishes – these microorganisms form bacterial films on the surface of the substrate. At first, the authors noticed that waves of metabolic activity were observed in the films – bacteria at the edges of the film periodically stopped consuming glutamic acid (glutamate), which served as food for Bacillus subtilis in the experiment. Thanks to this, glutamate seeped to the inner parts of the film, which provided nutrition to the bacteria there so that they would not die and holes would not form in the center of the colony.
Highly structured colony of B.subtilis – VM.Then the researchers found out that potassium concentration drops occur in the bacterial film, which coincide in time with fluctuations in metabolic activity in the center and at the edges.
When scientists deprived bacteria of ion channels, such fluctuations stopped. From this, scientists concluded that electrical potentials help bacteria coordinate their actions.
"Just like the neurons in our brain, bacteria use ion channels to contact each other through electrical signals. In this sense, bacteria in biofilms function like a microbial brain," explained Gural Sewell, co–author of the article (in a press release from UC San Diego Biologists Discover Bacteria Communicate Like Neurons in the Brain - VM).
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru
22.10.2015