Dear Biofilms Group,
This note is particularly in response to the recent messages
from Ferhan Ozadali (OSU) and Bob McLean (STSU) regarding biofilm
communications/responses to stress. It is ironic to me that I just
posed this sort of question to my colleague, Paul Stoodley, as to
whether he was aware of any evidence to suggest that interior cells in
cell clusters (biofilms) somehow control/limit cluster growth by
signaling diffusion limitation (stress) to exterior cells. The work of
E.O. Wilson at Harvard on chemical communication by pheromone production
in ants should make us suspect that this communication mechanism
exists.....not to mention "altruistic behavior". We already know about
chemotactic repsonses in bacteria, so this mechanism shouldn't be too
surprising. I clipped two 1995 articles from Science News that should
be of interest to anyone concerned with the topic of biofilm
structure/stress, Vol. 147:136 and Vol. 148:167. Both articles are by
Richard Lipkin and contain references to the work he cites.
Rick Veeh
