E. coli chemotaxis: the baffling intelligence of a single cell
“E. coli chemotaxis: the baffling intelligence of a single cell” by James Somers Since reading "I should have loved biology", I try to read everything James Somers writes. That essay introduced me to David Goodsell's amazing book The Machinery of Life! and Edwin Morris is a wonderful article about how E. coli bacteria sense and navigate their world, looking for nutrients. Newcomers should find it friendly, but the interactive diagrams alone should make it interesting to anyone.
The article is wide in scope, covering, for instance, receptors, and what it’s like inside the cell. It meanders into bacterial individuality and how we discover these things in biology. The diagrams are pretty good, and some of them are interactive! It ends with an annotated bibliography. Annotated bibliographies are undervalued and should be more popular.
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