The baffling intelligence of a single cell (2024)

The Baffling Intelligence of a Single CellThe story of E. coli chemotaxis By James Somers and Edwin Morris I want to tell the story of a beautiful phenomenon in biology. In some sense it’s the prototype of much of the activity of life. The phenomenon is the way in which an individual cell of E. coli forages for nutrients. This process, known as “chemotaxis”—the “chemo-” for chemical and the “taxis” from the Greek τάξις, for tactics—is intelligence in one of its most eleme