Eur. Phys. J. B 65, 315-322 (2008)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2008-00222-x

Social behavior of bacteria: from physics to complex organization

¹ School of Physics and Astronomy Raymond & Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel
² The Center for Theoretical and Biological Physics University of California San Diego La JollaLa Jolla, California 92093, USA

Corresponding author: ^a eshel@tamar.tau.ac.il

Received: 2 March 2008
Published online: 11 June 2008

Abstract

I describe how bacteria develop complex colonial patterns by utilizing intricate communication capabilities, such as quorum sensing, chemotactic signaling and exchange of genetic information (plasmids) Bacteria do not store genetically all the information required for generating the patterns for all possible environments. Instead, additional information is cooperatively generated as required for the colonial organization to proceed. Each bacterium is, by itself, a biotic autonomous system with its own internal cellular informatics capabilities (storage, processing and assessments of information). These afford the cell certain plasticity to select its response to biochemical messages it receives, including self-alteration and broadcasting messages to initiate alterations in other bacteria. Hence, new features can collectively emerge during self-organization from the intra-cellular level to the whole colony. Collectively bacteria store information, perform decision make decisions (e.g. to sporulate) and even learn from past experience (e.g. exposure to antibiotics) – features we begin to associate with bacterial social behavior and even rudimentary intelligence. I also take Schrdinger's' “feeding on negative entropy" criteria further and propose that, in addition organisms have to extract latent information embedded in the environment. By latent information we refer to the non-arbitrary spatio-temporal patterns of regularities and variations that characterize the environmental dynamics. In other words, bacteria must be able to sense the environment and perform internal information processing for thriving on latent information embedded in the complexity of their environment. I then propose that by acting together, bacteria can perform this most elementary cognitive function more efficiently as can be illustrated by their cooperative behavior.