It is an oft-repeated fact that all living organisms have essentially the same structure at the molecular level; a varying portion of our DNA overlaps with anything from penguins to bacteria. With the latter, it appears that the DNA sequences responsible for encoding social networking habits are among those shared. Scientists discovered that a species of soil bacterium, Myxococcus xantus, is capable of communicating with other bacteria via a network of molecular “wires” that interlink nearby bacteria together.
Possible bacterial network structure. Photo: Remis et. al 2014.
This covert communication method – these wires are only several nanometers thick – allows Myxococcus to coordinate their actions with each other. They, in essence, form a microbial wolf pack. This discovery – previously written off as extraneous matter resulting from sample preparation – implies that bacteria are better able to feed and defend themselves due to their ability to coordinate against threats or to help one another find nutrition. This has further implications in the medical field – at a time when antibiotic resistance is becoming a grave threat, knowledge of this bacterial networking may give us a new method of eradicating harmful bacteria by designing drugs that break down these networks.
Gizmodo Article Headline. Photo: Helon Law.
What I found even more interesting than this discovery, however, was how I stumbled upon this article. Perusing my usual tech websites, when I saw this article for the first time, it was hard to ignore: “Socially Networked Bacteria Isn’t as Scary as It Sounds” . Not only was it fresh, interesting, and most of all scientific news, it was scientific news that was presented in a way directly related to techniques we were taught in class!
The article provided source links to the original academic paper as well as another tech blog, presumably the source from which this website’s author came across this topic. While the other blog essentially summarized the article, the piece that I came across did an excellent job of succinctly reporting the science, and did so using an attention-grabbing, but truthful, headline, as well as simple-to-understand vocabulary, well-placed quotations, and a steady stream of relevant analogies. In short, the article essentially did a SCIE300 assignment, and did so masterfully. Learning these techniques is one thing; seeing them played out on well-known websites by real journalists is something else entirely.
1. Remis, J.P; Dongguang, W.; Gorur, A.; Zemla, M.; Haraga, J.; Allen, S.; Witkowska, H.E.; Costerton, J.; Berleman, J.E.; Auer, M. 2014. Bacterial social networks: structure and composition of Myxococcus xanths outer membrane vesicle chains. Environmental Microbiology. 16 (2): 598-610.
-Helon Law
