Friday, December 16, 2011

Hello Ms. Bacterium, it's a pleasure to meet you

The human body is fascinating. To think, once our ancestors sat in pools of a watery slew. Only single celled organisms at the time of the planet's first life wellspring, we are now composed of trillions of single cells all working in harmony to create one whole being.  A recent discovery by the University of Southern California, may have shed light on how our nervous system eventually developed.

Apparently, bacteria develop strands called bacterial nanowires which conduct electricity along their lengths to other bacteria adjacent to them.  This discovery could lend some evolutionary answer to how cells like our neurons became what they are today.   These bacterial nanowires allow these organisms to work together, communicate, and share energy.  To think, these tiny little bits of life could have been the building blocks of what we now know of as our own personal thinking machines.

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