The microbphilosophiser

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 surface. 

PNAS 2005, 102(31), 11036

I always get exited to see under the microscope, the beautiful architectures they make at the micrometer scale. When I got in to the literature, I learnt about a variety of processes involved in such architectures and they are governed with certain laws. The ability of them to communicate with each other, the brilliant design they adapt, sharing of labor, etc. made scientists to propose the biofilms as a multicellular system. Altruism, canibalism, fractricide are few example behaviors people have studied in biofilm systems. As I said earlier, philosophy is a product of the processes involved in a social or communal living; we can lean philosophy from these microorganisms which are also adapting to a communal form of living and so here I write microbphilosophy. 

I am not a very regular blogger. I do blog occasionally and most of them were in my native language (Tamil). This is a blog where I would like to experiment my English together with an interactive sharing of scientific and philosophic insights both from literature and personal experiences. Through this blog, I expect not only to share but also enrich the understanding of  biology and life in a better way. I would like to welcome the participation of the readers of this blog to catalyze this process and make the learning joyful.