Bacterial linguistic communication and social intelligence.
Bacteria have developed intricate communication capabilities (e.g. quorum-sensing, chemotactic signaling and plasmid exchange) to cooperatively self-organize into highly structured colonies with elevated environmental adaptability. We propose that bacteria use their intracellular flexibility, involving signal transduction networks and genomic plasticity, to collectively maintain linguistic communication: self and shared interpretations of chemical cues, exchange of chemical messages (semantic) and dialogues (pragmatic). Meaning-based communication permits colonial identity, intentional behavior (e.g. pheromone-based courtship for mating), purposeful alteration of colony structure (e.g. formation of fruiting bodies), decision-making (e.g. to sporulate) and the recognition and identification of other colonies - features we might begin to associate with a bacterial social intelligence. Such a social intelligence, should it exist, would require going beyond communication to encompass unknown additional intracellular processes to generate inheritable colonial memory and commonly shared genomic context.
School of Physics and Astronomy, The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel. eshel@tamar.ac.il
Eshel
E
Ben Jacob
Israela
I
Becker
Yoash
Y
Shapira
Herbert
H
Levine
D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000502:physiology; D001419:Bacteria / Q000166:cytology / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D018407:Bacterial Physiological Phenomena; D002633:Chemotaxis / Q000502:physiology; D015964:Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial / Q000502:physiology; D009024:Morphogenesis; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000502:physiology*