“If you’ve ever felt like the microbes making you sick are just doing it out of spite, here is some support for your suspicion. Although bacteria and viruses only harm their host for their own benefit, the same isn’t true in their relations with others of their kind, a new study indicates. When one bacterium hurts another, the victim may respond in a way that also harms itself, just to get revenge. It’s basically Game of Thrones in a petri dish.
For all the benefits of living communally, there is one great problem that applies from the smallest bacterium to the largest whale: what to do about freeloaders. Microbes’ relative simplicity and short lifespans offer an excellent opportunity to study this, and researchers have reported in PLOS Computational Biology they can be like us in ways we might not expect.
Colonies of bacteria work together by producing chemicals, such as enzymes, that benefit the colony as a whole. However, it takes energy to make these, and some don’t bother, instead relying on the effort put in by those around them. Sound familiar?
Humans deal with freeloaders through laws, social pressure, or occasionally outright violence. Hardworking bacteria have fewer options, but that doesn’t mean they’re helpless.
Researchers investigated an option called quorum-sensing, which involves organisms detecting how many of their species are around and regulating which genes get expressed depending on the answer. The authors were surprised to learn quorum sensing can have serious negative consequences, but bacteria use it anyway, apparently to punish freeloaders.”
Read more on IFLScience.
