Is Bacterial Biofilms Related to Brains?

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Bacterial biofilms drive a lot of very brain like electrical dynamics. They are fita little organisms for human beings too, right? Ye. Oddly enough, they get addicted to all the same stuff that we do an son. So this is already telling us that there's some very interesting room between the anatomy and the genetics. We don't even really know what you're sequencing when you sequence these things. A the is an incredible mess. And yet the regeneration, the anatomy, is rock solid. 100 % of the time, you cut that thing into pieces, you get normal worms. Now now let's get to our next question - which is the two headed worm...

As a semi-outsider, it’s fun for me to watch as a new era dawns in biology: one that adds ideas from physics, big data, computer science, and information theory to the usual biological toolkit. One of the big areas of study in this burgeoning field is the relationship between the basic bioinformatic building blocks (genes and proteins) to the macroscopic organism that eventually results. That relationship is not a simple one, as we’re discovering. Standard metaphors notwithstanding, an organism is not a machine based on genetic blueprints. I talk with biologist and information scientist Michael Levin about how information and physical constraints come together to make organisms and selves.

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Michael Levin received his Ph.D. in genetics from Harvard University. He is currently Distinguished Professor and Vannevar Bush Chair in the Biology department at Tufts University, and serves as director of the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. His work on left-right asymmetric body structures is on Nature’s list of 100 Milestones of Developmental Biology of the Century.

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