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

  • General and Applied Physics
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Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported, in part, by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa de São Paulo (FAPESP), Project #2019/05832-0. The authors thank Prof. J. Onuchic of Rice University for helpful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas, Departamento de Ciências Biomoleculares, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil

    C. P. Aires, A. C. Polizello & A. Caliri

  2. Instituto de Física de São Carlos, Universidade de São Paulo, São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil

    S. Mascarenhas

Authors
  1. C. P. Aires
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  2. A. C. Polizello
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  3. A. Caliri
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  4. S. Mascarenhas
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Correspondence to A. Caliri.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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This article is part of a tribute to Professor Sergio Mascaren for his prolific career in favor of physics and scientific development in Brazil. He was a tireless encourager of people and a great source of ideas; this article is an example of his effervescent mind. Unfortunately, there was no time for this work to be expanded—and published with him alive—which will probably still be done by one of his collaborators.

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Aires, C.P., Polizello, A.C., Caliri, A. et al. Bacillus subtilis Engagement Induced via Sporulation: a Case of Bacterial Communication. Braz J Phys 52, 88 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13538-022-01079-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13538-022-01079-7

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