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Biologists studying bacteria collectives, or “biofilms,” have discovered that these so-called simple organisms have a robust memory capacity.
Memory Prints: Researchers used light exposure to print a complex pattern (the old logo for the Geisel Library at the University of California, San Diego, spread over an area slightly smaller than the thickness of a human hair) in a biofilm community, made up of hundreds of individual bacteria, that remembered the initial light stimulus, similar to how neurons form memory.
Working in the laboratory at the University of California, San Diego, Professor Gürol Süel, Chih-Yu Yang, Maja Bialecka-Fornal and their colleagues discovered that light-stimulated bacterial cells remembered the hours of exposure after the initial stimulus. The researchers were able to manipulate the process so that memory patterns emerged.
The discovery reveals striking parallels between low-level, single-celled organisms and sophisticated neurons that process memory in the human brain.
“Even a few years ago, people didn’t think of bacterial cells and neurons as being similar because they are such different cells,” said Süel. “This finding in bacteria provides clues and an opportunity to understand some key features of the brain in a simpler system. If we understand how something as sophisticated as a neuron arose, its ancient roots, we have a better chance of understanding how and why it works in a certain way. “
The findings, described April 27 in the journal Cell Systems, also provide a starting point for scientists to one day design basic computer systems with living organisms like bacteria.
Following Süel’s laboratory’s recent discoveries that bacteria use ion channels to communicate with each other, new research suggested that bacteria may also have the ability to store information about their past states. In the new study, the researchers were able to encode complex memory patterns (video here) in bacterial biofilms with light-induced changes in the cell membrane potential of the Bacillus subtilis bacteria. They found that the optical fingerprints lasted for hours after the initial stimulus, leading to a direct and controllable representation of the resolution of a single memory cell.
“When we disturbed these bacteria with light, they remembered and responded differently from then on,” said Süel. “So, for the first time, we can directly visualize which cells have memory. That is something that we cannot visualize in the human brain. “
The ability to encode memory in bacterial communities, the researchers say, could allow future biological computing by printing complex patterns of spatial memory on biofilms.
“Bacteria are the dominant life form on this planet,” said Süel. “Being able to write memory to a bacterial system and do it in a complex way is one of the first requirements to be able to make calculations using bacterial communities.”
Furthermore, as the researchers note in the study: “Therefore, it may be possible to imprint synthetic circuits on bacterial biofilms, activating different types of stones in separate areas of the biofilm … In general, our work is likely to inspire a new membrane potential- approaches based on synthetic biology and provide a bacterial paradigm for biological systems with memory capacity. “
Reference
Memory encoding based on membrane potential within a microbial community. Chih-Yu Yang et al. Cell Systems, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2020.04.002.
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