Talk:Microbial intelligence

Naming

I'm a biologist and this is the first time I've heard of the term 'microbial intelligence'. A google search shows about fifteen hits, most of them relevant and basically corroborating what this article says. But a search for 'bacterial intelligence' shows quite a few more hits, so maybe this article should be renamed 'bacterial intelligence'? Not that microbial intelligence should be limited to bacteria, but perhaps the article name should reflect the most used terminology?

The article has some valid information and kin selective behavior is not only possible for bacterial colonies, but also strongly predicted by Hamiltons rule and has been discussed in several papers I have read. If I can dig them up I'll add some examples.

What bothers me most is the controversial title. It sounds like a buzz word used by 'far out' researchers to attract publicity. I'm not going into the semantics and philosophical arguements regarding intelligence, but a self-organising system is not necessarily intelligent. Nor is it considered so in mainstream usage of the term. For example, endocrine (internal, chemical signalling) functions in the human body are not called 'intelligent' by most people, and that is about all that chemical signals between microbial cells constitutes.

A useful subject to mention on the page is that these apparently crude interactions between single celled organisms is at least analogous to the way multicellular or colony organisms organise themselves.

By the way, I believe it is good practice for authors to leave starting comments on articles they create, to avoid any misunderstandings by the new pages squad and future editors. --ChrisJMoor 09:10, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

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Reply from Paras Chopra

Hi, its good to see that a biologist is giving his comments on such topics. I completely agree that the term 'bacterial intelligence' is perhaps more popular than microbial intelligence. But see, one way of looking at it is that bacterial intelligence is just a sub-topic of microbial intelligence (MI).

Let us take an analogy. If we assume that Hydrogen atom is the only atom known to mankind but someone proposes that there are certain other atoms besides hydrogen. Infact, hydrogen is just a type of atom but not the only one. Then, would we replace the term 'Hydrogen' for 'Atom'? Certainly, hydrogen *term* is more popular than the term atom, but we can't replace it.

We, at WikiPedia, should aim to promote correctness. And I certainly think that the term 'Microbial Intelligence' is more broader in concept.

In a nutshell, I am against renaming the article to Bacterial Intelligence.

This apart, the issue that whether microbes really show intelligence is certainly very controversial. And this is because we don't even have a fixed defination of intelligence itself. But my personal opinion is that they show crude form of intelligence and the field needs more research to prove itself.

--Paras Chopra 17:45, 9 December 2005 (IST)

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• Your arguement regarding the naming convention is compelling. The term 'microbial intelligence' is indeed more accurate and broad than 'bacterial intelligence' The only problem is that if the more technically-incorrect term is more common, people will search for that term and come up either nul (ie: the page will not be indexed by a search engine such as google or will result in the often-criticised 'search results' page of wikipedia). That is the practical arguement. The philosophical question is: 'should an encyclopedia attempt to assign a new term to a subject in order to make it more technically correct?'

Based on your arguement, I have withdrawn the 'suggested move' banner from this article. Perhaps if a convention regarding the usage of 'most correct' versus 'most used' term can be established, we can resolve this difference of opinion. Basically this means the article should stay where it is until the the larger issue is resolved. In retrospect, I tend to support the 'most correct' approach, especially given the likelihood that anyone who seeks an article on this subject will probably try the most correct term after the most used one fails to give a match.

The obvious controversy over what 'intelligence' is is worth a section in the article. However, I will mostly be adding material on the 'evolutionary feasibility' and examples of the phenomenon. I have looked at your personal web pages and your own site. Between us, we should be able to write a darn good article--ChrisJMoor 04:35, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

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Oh! Great! Now the article will remain titled Microbial Intelligence. I know that there is disagreement between people regarding the role of encyclopedia. An Encyclopedia is meant to be an ultimate source of information and genrally the most accurate one. But, there is always an uncertainity lurking behind the sub-conciousness of people that whether the information provided is 100% accurate and relevant. And now, in the age of collaborative encyclopedia where anyone can add any information, this uncertainity has grown even larger. There is no way to be entirely sure about anything on the internet.

What I want to say is that people would rather prefer correct technical term rather than the popular one. But, the only problem is that if correct term is not that popular people would never know that it even exists! So, it is a chicken and egg problem.

By the way, yes we can write good articles on all the latest happenings in the biology world. I believe that most of the people are not quite aware how exciting biology can be. Our task must be to stimulate people into thinking about the marvels of biology such as self-replication and intricacy of cell's working.

Commenting upon biology, it is sad to observe that common people put little attention towards it. Maybe, it is not publicised enough. The internet is full of electronics, gadgets, iPODs, etc. But you can rarely see E.coli. being touted as next killer app!!! :)

P.S: Is there any way in Wikipedia to duplicate the name of an entry? Like, why can't we replicate the same stuff under two names i.e. MI and BI.

--Paras Chopra 16:50, 12 December 2005 (IST)

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Aye, you can use two terms to point to a page and thats a good compromise in this case. That would assume that 'bacterial intelligence is not merit-worthy of a separate article (I think not, we can put it all here). Not sure how you do it. Perhaps someone else who reads this can do it (please:D).

You are right that their is systemic bias against biology content in wikipedia and in fact much of the internet, unless you want to look at very technical sites such as NCBI and pubmed. Its just not a 'geeky' enough subject, unlike your ipods and rootsets. I think that undergraduate-level online texts would be useful for an article at this level.

Your move, I need time to revise stuff. If you write the article from your viewpoint I can add material later. I'll give you an idea of what I can contribute below so you can start the tone and structure in a sensible way.

• Defined as altruistic and/or cooperative behavior between like or unlike cells mediated by chemical signalling that induces physiological or behavioral changes in cells and influences colony structures. A protoform of multicellularity, possibly a weak form of cell differentiation?
• This is a new subject that has only really kicked off in the last 15 years due to advances in equipment and interest in the field.
• It is predicted by much older works into the evolution of kin-selected behavior and the evolution of multicellularity.
• There may be constraints as to how far the simplest cells can evolve complex behavior of this sort. These may be physiological or relate to how much 'information' can be coded by the simple cells. Applies strongly to bacteria.
• Strongly influences formation of Biofilms.
• Microbial intelligence may be a key adaption to single cells living in extreme environments, from black smoker vents to the bodies of antibiotic-dosed animals. Examples will be provided. An important subject in ecology and infectious disease prophylaxis?

The above list is a draft, as I havent yet looked at anything in depth. May ammend, so check for changes. Feel free to start on the above if you wish, I'll do the peer review bit for you. Sorry, can't do the same for discussions of neural nets and self-organising systems, its too specialised for me:D. Suggesting you summarise the subject with an introduction section as the first heading after the definition part. Have fun! --ChrisJMoor 02:02, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

this article is kind of silly

no? one of those, junk-science/hoax articles, that doesn't get deleted, simply by virtue of being uncategorized/non-notable--152.163.100.71 05:47, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

• Nope, the external links section lists some articles (like this one: http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/papers/bacterial%20wisdom.pdf) published by established academics in established academic journals with complete referencing etc. Controversial, but a proper subject with proper research. Dawnfrenzy 15:56, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

broken link removed

• Brian J Ford presentation Intelligence in Protozoa was removed and pasted here for repair.Trilobitealive 04:05, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Dispute flag

OK, where are the sources for statements such as:

• It may be defined as complex adaptive behaviour shown by single cells, also as altruistic and/or cooperative behavior between like or unlike cells mediated by chemical signalling that induces physiological or behavioral changes in cells and influences colony structures. Defined by who in what context?
• ...can display more sophisticated responses when they group their activity within a colony (like a biofilm). Examples from the literature?
• It is predicted by much older works .. Which older works?
• It has been suggested that a bacterial colony loosely... Who suggested it, when and where?

et cetera. :^)

I see a lot of references, but how do they connect to the article so the non-biologist reader can sort out the truth of the matter? This article needs significant work. I'll be glad to help out, but I don't want to just come in and change things because it might not be recognizable when I finish. Trilobitealive 05:24, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

well, i went in and cleaned up alot of this article.

There are definitely concrete topics in here. I.e. i'm familiar with Bonnie Bassler's work on quorum sensing.

I'm not familiar with the current state of many of the topics and what terms everything would be under. for instance the original article mentions 'intelligence' of individual eukaryotic cells and 'intelligence' of populations. These should probably not be together. I suspect there might be a good term for all this. Not sure what it is.

I put in a link to the wiki on quorum sensing.

I read one of Eshel Ben-Jacob's papers on line and it looked interesting 'till the end where he does experiments on bacterial colonies detecting effects of EM radiation on nutrient solutions. might be nuts. http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/papers/11.11.04.pdf

maybe something can be done with it.Wikiskimmer 02:31, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Microbial intelligence

I believe microbial 'intelligence' emerges out of microbial organisational behaviour. Microbial organisational behaviour arises when cells respond to their microenvironment, including, but not limited to, quorum sensing signals. Their genome records the available (successful or at least neutral)responses to changes in internal and external environment. A cell's genome determines its sensitivity to environmental change, and those capable of sensing this, respond by up-regulation or down-regulation of transcription, changing behaviour or structure.

Such changes may occur within a single cell or more widely propagating through a biofilm. With evolution, unsuccessful strategies have been bred out, and those successful reinforced. The observed outcome, we may describe as 'intelligence', but we may be observing the effect of 3.5 billion years of evolution.

For these reasons I feel that microbial intelligence should be placed in a sub-category of microbial organisational behaviour. If we approach it from this viewpoint, we may then identify approaches to overcome this 'intelligence', such as the ability to withstand the effects of antibiotics, extending their lifespan, and highlighting alternative mechanisms to control pathogenic biofilms. Getsyar (talk) 09:05, 26 April 2008 (UTC)