#937 Simple Slime

There’s a more or less common current in our national culture stream to return to simplicity. A yearning for the less complex, the uncomplicated times of old. It may hark back to that simple beatitude uttered during the Sermon of the Mount, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
Or maybe he said “sleek.” You know, it was hard to transcribe speeches in those days. No close-captioning or electronic typewriters, just a guy with a stick and a hunk of clay—or maybe a stylus and papyrus.
It could have been sleek, as in slick, as in slime, because our simple organic cousins are responsible for so much earthlike stuff. Take your bacteria. Couldn’t get much more simple could you? One-celled animals swimming around with odd appendages like cilia and flagellators.
We have learned to expect a couple of bacteria here and there. In our gut, in the cow pasture. Making our yogurt and cheese. But scientists have recently determined that we owe something even more important to bacteria. The rain.
That’s right; scientists have always assumed the microscopic particle that rain needs to coalesce around to precipitate moisture from the atmosphere is dust. Turns out in many cases it’s floating bacteria.
And it seems some of them do it on purpose. The bacterium pseudomonas syringae is a plant pathogen that promotes frost damage on crops. One of its proteins mimics ice’s crystalline structure and helps transform water into ice. Then it can do its damage. It lofts up into the air from one field and travels to another.
Bacteria hitchhiking on clouds.
Uh oh.
On purpose? Who knows?
Scientists have also recently discovered primitive intelligence in slime molds. The researchers subjected slime mold to freezing temperatures at periodic times and zones on a culture dish. The slime mold learned to anticipate the times and not grow towards that zone when a cold snap was due.
By the way, global warming is helping bacteria claim vast new territories. We may return to simplicity whether we like it or not. As we raised up, so shall we fall...
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Slime to slime.
America, ya gotta love it.