Bacteria Screams While Dying:Warning To buddies! But How Do They Identify it as a Signal of Danger?

A study author suggests that “Swarms of bacteria may collectively cultivate different sub populations as an evolutionary survival strategy — if new antibiotics kill the vulnerable members of the swarm, their deaths will help to protect the rest.” 

That implies that bacteria have a sort of collective mind, doesn’t it?

In any event, a sort of intelligence seems instantiated in bacteria. The study authors are right to raise the question of whether treating them as simple blobs that can be killed by the right chemicals really works.

In What Ways Are Bacteria Intelligent? As antibiotic resistance grows, researchers are discovering that these microbes are not just single, simple cells. We must understand the surprisingly complex ways bacteria “think” in order to keep them in check.

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"In space, no one can hear you scream." a dialogue from seminal sci-fi film, Alien. But apparently that's not quite the case in the microscopic realm where viruses and bacteria thrive.
Swarming bacteria "scream" when they die, warning neighboring bacteria of danger.

 

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These death shrieks aren't audible rather, they are chemical alarms that the bacteria broadcast while on the verge of death, an action known as necrosignaling.
Through necrosignaling, bacteria alert their swarming neighbors to the presence of a deadly threat, and save the majority of the swarm (a bacterial colony that's on the move). When confronted by a threat such as antibiotics, the bacteria's chemical death cries can provide survivors enough time to acquire mutations that convey antibiotic resistance, scientists reported in a new study.

These chemical-based signals kick in when the colony is under attack by a solid round of antibiotics. The advanced cry of the dying might be enough to allow survival and generate mutations fast enough to mutate into a more antibiotic resistant form, thus saving their buddies from certain doom.

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Billion-strong bacterial swarms occur when certain types of bacteria, like E. coli, join together and use their whip-like flagella to navigate as one entity over solid surfaces. In the past, scientists have observed that these mega-swarms are more resistant to antibiotics and were aware that dead bacteria deliver nutrients to surviving bacteria within the swarm. But this study is the very first time an active chemical signal has been revealed.

"While this resistance is physiological, it gives other bacteria time to acquire mutations that would eventually lead to genetic resistance from antibiotics. Interfering with necrosignaling should enhance the efficacy of antibiotics and reduce the occurrence of drug-resistant strains.

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This life-saving periplasmic protein component known as AcrA acted like an emergency signal, letting survivors in the bacterial swarm know to start pumping the lethal antibiotic out of the cells using unique molecular machines called efflux pumps.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a major obstacle in modern medicine due to the simple fact, that once a bacterium becomes resistant to a variety of antibiotic medications, it becomes progressively more difficult to treat serious infections in humans and animals. Now that a single mechanism which these hardy swarmers utilize to survive antibiotic contact has been revealed, researchers can move forward in exploring ways to target and eliminate that process with specialized therapeutic drugs.
Many clinically important bacteria go through phases of their infection cycle outside the host in harsh environments where swarming would increase their chances of acquiring antibiotic resistance through necrosignaling. With better understanding of this process we may be able to halt it.

This was the thing researchers found out, but apart from that there are many possibilities or doubts one should think of.

This behavior is called “quorum sensing”, the language bacteria use to communicate. It appears that bacteria are multi-langual and have active intra -species and inter-species communication. Quorum sensing is the regulation of gene expression in response to fluctuations in cell-population density. Quorum sensing bacteria produce and release chemical signal molecules called autoinducers that increase in concentration as a function of cell density.

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The article conveys that the swarming bacteria release a chemical as a neurosignal, which is considered as screeming, but does this screeming mechanism is developed by the bacteria not depending on antibiotics, or it is the result of evolution due to antibiotics.

>Yet another question comes to mind is how do the rest of bacteria are able to catch the signal and guessed it correct, as a signal to run away from antibiotic. It might be a simple reflexive behaviour of rest of the bactria free of antibiotic dependency. And since it is not a verbal conversation or behavior, enforcement the activity may not be the possiblity.

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According to me, the activity of surviving bacteria are adding face value to the dying bacteria. The behavior of surviving bacteria are reinforcing the value of dying bactria showing that they are giving signals to escape.

But here I suppose that as a histological behaviour, the screeming of bacteria is developed as a persistent natural refluxive action of being killed as result of antibiotic. Subsequently, over time, surviving bacteria evolved to escape the circumstances of the impending massacres, by being the surviving bacteria that did successful  escape behaviors.

Ananthanarayan and Paniker's Textbook of Microbiology Tenth edition with booklet

I suppose that evolution doesn’t just happen on the individual level, but on a group level as well. Bacteria procreate themselves through division.  So it stands to reason that most of the bacteria near any given individual bacteria would likely be “related”.  It may not always be the case, but often enough to affect group evolution if one group were to have developed this trait while a nearby group had not.  In this case evolution isn’t just “survival of the fittest” because the trait is displayed by the one doing the dying.  However, that bacterial already passed along that gene, or at least inherited it from the nearby group.  Though this trait doesn’t help the individual survive, it does help the group survive, thus, helping the trait to survive.

So in a nut shell, would say that this does not look like full blown verbal behavior, to me. But it might well depict a component of how verbal behavior has developed over the course of all species evolution.

But this takes mind towards empathy behavior, which has developed across many mammals, showing positive impact on language development. Empathy does a lot to show and help group survivers. What’s more, the scientists realized that subpopulations of swarm bacteria were genetically variable; some were more susceptible to the antibiotics than others. 

Ananthanarayan and Paniker's Textbook of Microbiology Tenth edition with booklet

Isn’t that just genetic drift which is how evolution occurs and is common all sub populations of all living things? There’s an implied connection to the “screams” of the dying. Bacteria orient based on the chemical gradient in the environment, so we can see how they can move away from the chemical signals of those that are dying. I wonder what the chemical signal is. If the antibiotic breaks the cell wall then any of the molecules that are normally inside might act as a signal. But if the antibiotic does something to the molecular machinery, then I wonder how the signal can even be manufactured.

I believe that this theory is still incomplete and needs more deep study. Since many answers are yet to reveal.