Abstract
AbstractCommunicative competences enable bacteria to develop, organise and coordinate rich social life with a great variety of behavioral patterns even in which they organise themselves like multicellular organisms. They have existed for almost four billion years and still survive, being part of the most dramatic changes in evolutionary history such as DNA invention, cellular life, invention of nearly all protein types, partial constitution of eukaryotic cells, vertical colonisation of all eukaryotes, high adaptability through horizontal gene transfer and co-operative multispecies colonisation of all ecological niches. Recent research demonstrates that these bacterial competences derive from the aptitude of viruses for natural genome editing. In contrast to a book which would be the appropriate space to outline in depth all communicative pathways inherent in bacterial life in this current article I want to give an overview for a broader readership over the great variety of bacterial bio-communication: In a first step I describe how they interpret and coordinate, what semiochemical vocabulary they share and which goals they try to reach. In a second stage I describe the main categories of sign-mediated interactions between bacterial and non-bacterial organisms, and between bacteria of the same or related species. In a third stage I will focus on the relationship between bacteria and their obligate settlers, i.e. viruses. We will see that bacteria are important hosts for multiviral colonisation and virally-determined order of nucleic acid sequences.
Highlights
Bacteria communicate and are able to organize and coordinate their behavior similar to a multicellular organism.[1,2] We refer to communication processes as interactions mediated by signalling processes, i.e. sign-mediated interactions
Researchers in bacteria communication like Ben Jacob[11] suggested with good reason that this approach reduces linguistic competences found in bacterial communication and has to be satisfied by both semantic aspects, i.e. the context-dependent meaning of signals which act as signs, and pragmatic aspects, which focus on the variety and differences of the behavioral patterns in common-goal coordination, shared knowledge, memory and mutual intentions
For a long time bacteria have been assumed to be the most primitive organisms and investigated as single-cell individuals determined by mechanistic input-output reactions
Summary
Bacteria communicate and are able to organize and coordinate their behavior similar to a multicellular organism.[1,2] We refer to communication processes as interactions mediated by signalling processes, i.e. sign-mediated interactions. Researchers in bacteria communication like Ben Jacob[11] suggested with good reason that this approach reduces linguistic competences found in bacterial communication and has to be satisfied by both semantic aspects, i.e. the context-dependent meaning of signals which act as signs, and pragmatic aspects, which focus on the variety and differences of the behavioral patterns in common-goal coordination, shared knowledge, memory and mutual intentions. Apart from that, it is coherent with the presupposition by Charles Morris of any non-reductionistic analysis of language-like structures, the complementarity of syntax, semantics and pragmatics.[29]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call