Micro(be)philosophy!!

When they had to talk, they say 'me', then recognize 'you' and then also learn 'we'; yes, these are the words the bacteria speak among themselves. It was my turn to present an article in the journal club here in our department this week. This time, I choose to talk about 'quorum sensing'; the name in "our" language to address their (bacterial) language. Isn't an intresting topic to talk about? after-all, all we are fond of gossips and in this case the ‘bacterial gossips’! It was an 2009 article in ‘PloS biology’ journal from Bonnie L. Bassler's group who at the first place reported the quorum sensing in the bacteria, vibrio fischeri. It was an amazing experience to learn and share about this incredible system of these tiny little single celled bugs. This particular article is about vibrio harveyi and would like to write here a few things I learnt over reading the article (over a late working night infact :(! ). Quorum sensing, in short

NDM-1 (New Delhi Metallo-1) is the hard talk now in the global medicine industry. NDM-1 is a new MBL (metallo beta lactamase, enzyme that can help bacteria from being killed by beta lactum antibiotics like penicillin) which has been reported from India (ANTIMICROBIAL AGENTS AND CHEMOTHERAPY, Dec. 2009, p. 5046–5054). This new trait doesn’t show a lot of similarity with the already known MBLs. Some quote this as “super bug”, next to MRSA (Methicilin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus); am not convinced with terming it as a superbug rather it might infact make a bacteria, a super bug which will be resistant to ‘most’antibiotics’, as the media says.  Am sceptical too about the phrase “most antibiotics” as what includes the ‘most’? The article which reported the NDM-1 containing plasmids in two different organisms ( Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli ) present data for their susseptibility to fluoroquinolones and colistin. Chromosomally encoded MBL was first reported in 1991 in Japan

I introduce myself as a Philosophiser; who is not a 'philosopher' (I, certainly not), but love to see things in a philosophical point of view. I would argue that philosophy is a product of the processes involved in social living and so, can be applied to organisms adapting to a colonial living at any level. Ok, now what is microbphilosophy? The answer is, as a biologist, the very exiting thing I get to work with is the microbes and I would like to view microbial life in a philosophical prespective. I see the microbes as the philosophers. But, how? Nature 2007, 445 ,533 As I work with these little bugs, I got fascinated about how these single celled organisms organize themselves for a communal living, the so called biofilms. These are surface associated microbial communities enclosed in a self synthesised polymeric matrix. We encounter biofilms at every walk of our life starting from our very essential habit of brushing the teeth to remove the biofilm formed on the tooth sur