Bacillus subtilis Engagement Induced via Sporulation: a Case of Bacterial Communication

Communication among living structures is certainly one of the most important parameters in biology leading to evolution, social, and complex behavior. It did not escape our attention, and surprise, that those important philosophers of science such as Daniel Dennet, explicitly denies bacterial communication, while other eminent molecular biophysicists present explicit theoretical modeling for it. Communication is a loose concept, and this may be the key point for disagreements. In view of the fundamental importance of the problem, we designed and performed a clean dedicated experiment, reducing at most technical jargons concerning the context of microorganisms, in order to find the correct answer under Popperian falsification paradigm test for the problem. For this purpose, we use a set of colonies of Bacillus subtilis accordingly elaborated: in short, two independent colonies are identically prepared, but one receives false external information and the other does not. Then, we compare their sporulation evolution, and using the Shannon concepts of the information theory, we conclude that in Bacillus subtilis, there exists some sort of bacterial communication.

Automated summary

Communication among living structures is an important parameter in biology, and this study provides evidence for bacterial communication using a dedicated experiment on Bacillus subtilis colonies.