Talk:Microbial intelligence

message: 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)
thread_title: Naming

message: 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)
thread_title: this article is kind of silly

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

message: 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)
thread_title: Dispute flag

message: 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)
thread_title:  well, i went in and cleaned up alot of this article. 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Microbial intelligence