From ScienceDaily:
Without touching and without electrical or chemical signals, individual Spirostomum can coordinate their ultrafast contractions so closely that groups of them appear to shrink simultaneously — a reaction to predators that makes them release paralyzing toxins in sync.
“There are many different ways of communication in biology but this is really a new kind of signaling between cells that we’re trying to understand,” said Arnold Mathijssen, a postdoctoral scholar in the Prakash lab and lead author of the paper. “It’s possible this is more universal than we’ve described so far and is a way many different kinds of organisms communicate.” …
“The first cell contracts and generates a flow, which triggers the second and that one triggers the third. So, you get this propagating trigger wave that passes through the whole colony,” described Mathijssen. “These are big, long-range vortex flows and the velocities of the communication rise up to meters per second — even though each cell is only 1 to 4 millimeters long.” Paper. paywall – Arnold J. T. M. Mathijssen, Joshua Culver, M. Saad Bhamla, Manu Prakash. Collective intercellular communication through ultra-fast hydrodynamic trigger waves. Nature, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1387-9 More.
Amazing how often so many life forms have just gotten lucky and tumbled into exactly what they needed via pure randomness.
Before you go: DNA uses “climbers’ ropes method” to keep tangles at bay It all just swished into place among unthinking cells billions of yours ago. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. Go tell it on the mountain.
DNA as a master of resource recycling
The amazing energy efficiency of cells: A science writer compares the cell to human inventions and finds that it is indeed amazingly energy-efficient.
In addition to DNA, our cells have an instruction language written in sugar Of course, it all just tumbled into existence and “natural selection” somehow organized everything. As if.
Cells find optimal solutions. Not just good ones.
Researchers build “public library” to help understand photosynthesis
Wait. “The part of the plant responsible for photosynthesis is like a complex machine made up of many parts, … ” And machines just happen all by themselves, right? There is no information load to account for; it just evolved by natural selection acting on random mutation the way your Android did!
In Nature: Cells have “secret conversations” We say this a lot: That’s a lot of information to have simply come into being by natural selection acting on random mutation (Darwinism). It’s getting not only ridiculous but obviously ridiculous.
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Researchers: Helpful gut microbes send messages to their hosts If the strategy is clearly identified, they should look for non-helpful microbes that have found a way to copy it (horizontal gene transfer?)
Cells and proteins use sugars to talk to one another Cells are like Neanderthal man. They get smarter every time we run into them. And just think, it all just tumbled into existence by natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism) too…
Researchers: First animal cell was not simple; it could “transdifferentiate” From the paper: “… these analyses offer no support for the homology of sponge choanocytes and choanoflagellates, nor for the view that the first multicellular animals were simple balls of cells with limited capacity to differentiate.”
“Interspecies communication” strategy between gut bacteria and mammalian hosts’ genes described
Researchers: Cells Have A Repair Crew That Fixes Local Leaks
Researchers: How The Immune System “Thinks”
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Researcher: Mathematics Sheds Light On “Unfathomably Complex” Cellular Thinking
How do cells in the body know where they are supposed to be?
Researchers A Kill Cancer Code Is Embedded in Every Cell