Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Intelligence in Cells: Amazing News



Hi everybody,



This is a short review of an NewScientist Magazine article written by Michael Marshall on 30 June 2009.



Title of the article: Why microbes are smarter than you thought

According to the author most of the organisms known until now are singled celled and some of the relatively few species that have been studied exhibit remarkable abilities.

What impress the most are the facts that a single-cell organisms performs such activities like communication, make their own decisions, live in communitiesand have the ability of learning among other abilities.

Can you image that one organism can hibernate for hundreds of thousands of years?

It is amazing how they thrive in environments so extreme where other forms of life would be killed in a matter of seconds.

There are many micro-organisms that exhibit behaviour that looks remarkably intelligent. This behaviour cannot be compared with humans or other complex animals due to single-celled organisms don't have nervous systems or brains.

One string suggest that such micro-organims are like "biological computers" . You can read more about this in a review of Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell). There are some of the most striking examples of this "intelligent" behaviour from the New Scientist archive.