I was floating… ready to respond to the call. But it wasn’t time yet. I kept telling myself ‘Simply go with the flow. When its time you will know…’ I did my part. I sent out the right signals. Now I just had to wait… I waited patiently… simply swimming with the flow… floating and waiting… Time rolled on… And just like that the call came – NOW! I could sense there where enough of us to make the difference. We were ready. The lights came on!! The squid was saved ! If you didn’t already know – I am Vibrio fischeri – the marine bacterium. And I have just helped save a life!
Science smiled in satisfaction. Nothing completes one like the feeling of living their potential – even if it was just a single celled bacterium. There was a peace – not the calm, accepting kind of peace, but the more exuberant kind that actually keeps growing in peace. The voice whispered:
God: You are basking in silence. Wonder what gave you that smile!
Science: Just saw the miracle of bacteria communicating! There was the right quorum, the lights came on and the squid was saved!!!
God: Can we have the whole story? It will inspire every mind…
Science: On a starry night, when the light from the night skies are bright and the Hawaiian squid begins its nightly hunt, it needs to counter illuminate the shadow it casts on the shallow waters. Otherwise it can become the prey rather than the hunter. The squid has a light organ at its bottom that is filled with Vibrio fischeri bacteria. When the bacteria grow in number to a high cell density, they induce bioluminescence. They match the illumination from the skies and create just enough glow to merge with the light in the surrounding waters. When the lights come ‘on’ the shadow cast by the squid swimming in the shallow water is no longer present. This hides the squid and protects it from predators.
God: But if each of these bacteria have the capacity of bioluminescence in them, why do they wait eternally? Do you really understand how the bacteria know when to turn ‘on’ ?
Science: It is one of your most magical creations and one of my most exhilarating discoveries Lord! Bacteria can talk!! Wow! When my children first began, you know what they used to think? Such a boring life to be a bacteria. You grow, you divide. Just keep growing and dividing! Whew! We thought they were so reclusive. In fact most human beings even now believe that all bacteria are bad! That is unfortunate! It is really a lot of bad press given to all those disease causing bacteria which are actually very few in number when compared to the enormous amount of beneficial bacteria without which normal human functioning will be impaired!!
God: (Smiling) Then you should correct the bad publicity and give bacteria some good press!!
Science: Oh my children have begun that task! Dr. Bonnie Bassler of Princeton university is virtually a star advocate for Bacteria. It is the pioneering work of her and her colleagues that have led to greater understanding of how bacteria actually communicate. Now they educate people to understand that the number of bacteria in and around a human body is ten times more than the number of human cells! I think finally we have reached a tipping point in creating the awareness of how useful and good bacteria is.
God: I wonder if you understand the glory of how bacteria could do anything at all – good or otherwise!
Science: Indeed we do Father! In fact that is how we were able to find out that bacteria communicate! They are in fact multi-lingual !! They use chemical signal molecules for both inter cellular and intra cellular communication. As in higher organisms, the information supplied by these molecules is critical for synchronising the activities of large groups of cells. Very often, it is unproductive when an individual bacterium acts alone. It needs to be able to do things as a community. For this it needs to communicate to other bacteria. In bacteria, chemical communication involves producing, releasing, detecting, and responding to small hormone-like molecules termed autoinducers. The process of communication allows bacteria to monitor the environment for other bacteria, alter behaviours on a population-wide scale in response to the number and species of bacteria present. This process is called ‘quorum sensing’ like taking votes in a board meeting!
God: Ha ha !! Quorum sensing !! Lovely way to put it !
Science: (With a grin) Yes Father. It does give the feeling of choice! Almost like the bacteria vote to be part of the group and when they know there are enough of them, they perform their job.
God: So how does the voting happen inside the light organ of the squid?
Science: The Vibrio fischeri keep growing and dividing with each one of them secreting a chemical signalling molecule like a hormone. This molecule is trapped inside the light organ with the bacteria. Now this tells the bacteria that it is inside the organ, because otherwise the molecule will drift away. The bacteria understands that it has neighbours around it. Now census is taken. When they detect enough number of molecules around them in the light organ, each bacterium turns on its genetic expression of bioluminescence. So quorum sensing allows a group of bacteria to express specific genes only at a particular population density. This mechanism allows bacteria to function as multi-cellular organisms.
God: And you just witnessed one such process of the lights coming on inside the squid saving it from a predator…
Science: Yes Father! And it was awe inspiring… Not a bit more or a bit less…just the exact level of luminescence to ensure the shadow doesn’t fall. By the way, we know that the amount of light is controlled by the squid’s detectors on its back that ensure the light emitted matches the moon or star light that night.
God: Hmm… But there are thousands of types of bacteria. How do they even know which ones are part of their species and which ones are not?
Science: Every type of bacterium talks in a chemical language that has a little bit different molecule than every body else. So this gives the bacteria species specific language. So a Vibrio fischeri bacteria listens and counts votes only in relation to its own group. This is called intra-species communication. They are like private conversations between their siblings recognisable only by the same species.
God: Do you realise what this tells you? When a tiny harmful bacterium enters a human body and tries to cause harm all by itself, the immune system in the human will easily kill that bacteria. So the bacterium waits. When there are enough bacteria, they count their votes and turn on the attack together taking their host by surprise.
Science: Yes! And that is not all. They all have a species-specific system – they have a molecule that says “me.” But then, running in parallel to that is a second system that we’ve discovered, that’s generic, it says the ‘other’. So, they have a second enzyme that makes a second signal and this molecule is the trade language of bacteria. It’s used by all different bacteria and it’s the language of interspecies communication. What happens is that bacteria are able to count how many of me and how many of you. They take that information inside, and they decide what tasks to carry out depending on who’s in the minority and who’s in the majority of any given population.
God: So is this going to help humans become healthier? Can they use this information to make better health care drugs?
Science: Yes indeed Father! We have been running out of antibiotics! Bacteria have become incredibly multi-drug resistant because all of the antibiotics humans have used till now killed the bacteria. That resulted in resistant mutants – the bacteria now have learned to survive those drugs. So understanding ‘quorum sensing’ helps us see if we can just change the behaviour of bacteria – make them so they cannot talk or cannot count the census. They are also trying to increase the conversation of the bacteria that live as mutualists with humans, in the hopes of making them more healthy, making those conversations better, so bacteria can do things that they want them to do better than they would on their own.
God: My dear child! Do you see the similarity between entrainment and how the bacteria actually communicate?
Science: Well! Entrainment is the process whereby two interacting oscillating systems, which have different periods when they function independently, assume a common period. The two oscillators may fall into synchrony, but other phase relationships are also possible.The system with the greater frequency slows down, and the other accelerates. Brainwave entrainment or “brainwave synchronisation,” is any practice that aims to cause brainwave frequencies to fall into step with a periodic stimulus having a frequency corresponding to the intended brain-state (for example, to induce sleep). It purportedly depends upon a “frequency following” response on the assumption that the human brain has a tendency to change its dominant EEG frequency towards the frequency of a dominant external stimulus.
God: Exactly! The internal environment of the bacteria has a tendency to change in response to the dominant external stimulus – in this case either the intra-species request for gene expression or the inter-species communication depending on majority and minority.
Science: You are right! That is exactly what the bacteria are doing – entraining themselves to a common cause.
God: Now! Like how your scientists are designing a way by which they can increase the ‘chatter’ between the good bacteria to help improve health, imagine there is a way to increase the ‘connectivity’ between ‘good’ people with good thoughts to improve the overall state of affairs on planet earth – how does that sound?
Science: Sounds awesome! If the critical mass of such people were indeed achieved we can easily change the world. But how does one begin?
God: (With a smile) Quorum sensing! Just as how each bacteria simply waits to ensure the right quorum is present to get connected, at a particular time – say 11.11 like the infinitheists, every morning, if ‘good’ humans can get connected… What individual bacteria cannot accomplish as single celled organisms, they are capable of accomplishing as a community working like a multicellular organism. Similarly, entraining oneself into a community at a particular time becomes the tipping point – miracles will unfold!
Written by Gita Krishna Raj | Published in infinithoughts in November 2011
When Science met God… | Segment Two: From the Apes | Chapter Five: Entraining @ 11:11
