CAVE BACTERIA: A PRIMER ON MOVILE AND VILLA LUZ

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DID YOU SEE THE GOOGLE ADSENSE ADS ON THE RIGHT?

1) WHY DO I NEED BOTH ANDRONES AND BACTORGS IN "WE SHARE"?
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Hi everybody, I hope that, by now, you're more than slightly interested in intelligent cultures of neurons and thinking bacteria, i.e. as I call them in my novel, "Andrones" and "Bactorgs". As you know, Andrones live in a lab but Bactorgs live in a deep cave. Building on what we discussed before, this post will thus be devoted to one subject:

bacteria in caves

but before, in this introduction, I'd like to discuss a question which has been nagging me for some time:

• I have to deal with Andrones (cultured neural networks) and bactorgs (bacterial organisms). That's a lot of science to cover. Life would be simpler for me if I could focus on only one of these, neurons or bacteria. Why do I need both?

Well, in the novel, I need a lot of interactions (sometimes, almost linguistic) between humans and bacteria. For that, I need a chain of plausible mechanisms and events allowing these distant species to communicate and the best way I found was to have andrones as messengers between bactorgs and humans.

Andrones will be contaminated by bacteria and viruses sent by the bactorgs and this will influence their behaviour. On one hand, andrones will have learned from us how to communicate with humans (i.e. exchanging simple messages). On the other hand, bactorgs will be able to receive chemicals and perhaps electrical messages from andrones, interpret them and react accordingly. Putting the two together, bactorgs will influence the messages andrones send to us... We will be able to communicate bidirectionally... for the best and for the worst.

Now let's come to the main subject of this post: bacteria living in caves.

2) CAVE BACTERIA: STRANGE METABOLISMS AND ECOSYSTEMS
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We will now discover that our bactorgs have to live in caves and you will meet now the researchers whom I call the "Ladies of the Dark". Four scientists specialized in cave geology and bacteria: Louise Hose, Penny Boston, Diana Northup and Annette Summers Engel.




Penny Boston (University of New Mexico)

















Annette Summers Engel
(U. of Louisiana)









Diana Northup (U. of New Mexico)













Louise Hose (University of Texas) and National Karst Research Center












Question: First things first, why do my bactorgs have to live in caves?

Bactorgs are the real heroes in the novel. They represent the main scientific breakthrough, the discovery of a thinking proto-brain , a non human organism, who is at the same time an ecosystem and an individual (parts of it are disposable and serve as food for other or for its slave animals, part of it, the core ones are its brain and memory. As you will read someday, it is bactorgs who feel threatened by us and by changes in their environment, react by wreaking havoc everywhere in Provence, reach a truce with us and finally set up a difficult but cooperative peace treaty with humans.

But where on earth could such a community reside, unknown to us for eons and still reaching a high state of genetic development?

As far as the thriller aspect of WE SHARE is concerned, this is nice because, as a caver myself, I know that a lot of drama and adventures may be built around caving expeditions. Good material for a thriller. Moreover, we know for a fact that there are bacteria underground,at least up to seven kilometers deep in earth's crust. It has been said that the total mass and diversity of this deep underground life far exceeds our small... surface life.

Even better, close to us, at depths of a few hundred meters, bacterial communities have been found in some caves by our ladies of the dark (and other people too of course but I epitomize these four). These communities thrive in unbelievable conditions: no oxygen but sulfur, methane and CO2; very acidic environment (strong Ph below 1 ... acidic indeed, absolutely corrosive), choking with H2S. These caves have developed complete ecosystems based on bacteria. Worms, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, mites and many other species eat the bacteria and have adapted to the dark and lack of oxygen and light. This is the stuff of nightmares. Good for a novel, specially if the bacterial community is at the same time a thinking bactorg and the primary source of food for the ecosystem which it also enslaves.


Cave bacteria: There in the dark, they form enormous bacterial mats, multi-species slime biofilms making sulfuric acid to carve the cave walls and find their food which is simply the rock itself. Each biofilm is a community and contains many sub-colonies and species, all interacting.

Here are our families and towns of bactorgs. They grow and they provide food for all sorts of insects and animals feeding on them and forming a complete and strange ecosystem without oxygen, originating from the distant past (millions of years ago) when our atmosphere was not oxygen-based but methane and sulfur based. They have adapted to support modern (but strange and changed) insects. Don't get me wrong, I am not inventing here, these ecosystems do really exist (more about it later)!

Question: In "WE SHARE", I will have to invent ways in which such communities maintain their genetic diversity and innovation potential. We know that, in the lab, bacterial colonies grow, become senescent and die. How can we invent a plausible mechanism in order for our bactorgs to avoid this and stay alive as evolving communities for millions of years. How to avoid accumulation of genetic errors, ecosystem tiredness and, to put it bluntly, if they evolve some form of rudimentary consciousness, why don't they get bored to death?

So, here are our Bactorgs, deep in some caves in Provence. As I told you, they are modeled on the bacterial communities existing in two really existing caves Movile cave in Romania and Cueva de Villa Luz in Mexico. The next post will be devoted to these caves. For the moment let's see what our bactorgs will do in them.

Note: in addition to living in these caves, bactorgs will not be isolated. They will communicate with bacteria living in the small cracks of the Provence karst between caves, and even with bacteria in the earth crust and in the surface soil. We might even envision a bacterial super-organism covering the earth....

They will also infect and thus influence (enslave...?) all sorts of insects and animals, some of them (bats, birds, rats, spiders and even humans) living in the outside world. Through them, they will learn about the outside world and act upon it.

How will we observe our bactorgs? By looking at their effects upon infected animals and humans. How will they communicate with us? By infecting the Andrones cultured in an underground laboratory in Provence (You won't believe me but there is really such a lab in Provence - Look "Laboratoire souterrain à bas bruit" or "LSBB, Rustrel" on the web).

Bacterial and virus messengers from the bactorgs will enter the andrones through the micropipets used for chemical stimulations (See last post on Ben Jacob's work). They will then influence the behavior of the andrones and also learn from them. Bactorgs-controlled bacteria will be our interface with the bactorgs communities.

So, that's why I need caves, bactorgs and andrones in my novel. In other posts, we will have to learn a lot more about cave bacteria, their ecosystems and metabolisms. This is where we will meet our "Ladies of the Dark".

As I told you before, Louise Hose (National Karst Research Center, US), Penny Boston and Diane Northup (University of New Mexico) and Annette Summers Engel (Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge) are geologists and microbiologists. They spend a lot of time looking at bacteria in caves. They abseil down deep vertical pits, they crawl in the dark, they swim in underground rivers and they enter chambers in which you have to wear masks to breathe and be careful that droplets of sulfuric acid will not burn you to the bones.

They dare to crawl in bacterial mats and be covered with bugs of all sorts. But they are not only daring explorers. They are first class scientists, studying deeply the geology and ecology of the caves they explore. They do all sorts of geological and biological experiments, for instance, genetic studies and DNA decoding.. I tell you, they are real life adventurers, close to my heart.

They found an amazing diversity of life down there.This is all I need in my novel to make an enthralling world for the bactorgs to live in and for the humans who will enter the cave to experience true wonder. Later we will discuss the works of our ladies of the dark in far more details. Let's just see now three illustrations

This is a set of ...what they call "snottites",yes... like" snot" from your nose ...They are not stalactites of calcite but slimy, flexible biofilms made of billions of bacteria of various species intermixed with gypsum and the extracellular proteine matrix forming the material support of a biofilm. Snottites make drops of concentrated sulfuric acid (look at their bottom) which dissolve the walls of the cave to provide the nutrients needed by the bacteria living on the walls.

This picture is really a snapshot of a small part of a bactorg in its everyday work! Snottites are found in the Villa Luz cave in Mexico. (Photo copyrighted in 2002 by K. Ingham, reproduced with permission)

And another photo...

Down this passage of Villa Luz, the explorers say that there are whole mats of "red goo", a mix of clay decay products, bacteria and rare earth elements. What is the strange metabolism which produced this? Another snapshot on bactorgs. (Photo copyrighted in 2002 by K. Ingham, reproduced with permission)




In the novel, as you know now, bactorgs will have to establish ecological relations with insects and other animals which will use them as a food source (primary trivial ecological role of bactorgs). Bactorgs will also have a second activity: to influence the behaviors of their enslaved insects and other animals (including humans) in subtle ways (close to what is called "enslavement of insects" by ants in ants communities and ants collective brains).


We'll discuss all that and the works of E.O. Wilson on collective brains in ants societies later. For now, just look at the photo hereafter: a snottite enmeshed in a spider's web. You might by now have already guessed: spiders like cavers ( and just like me) just love to be in the dark suspended to little wires... spiders will play an important role in "WE SHARE".


A snottite enmeshed in a spider's web. (Note: they have other photos of insects and midges crawling on snottites).

Not for the squeamish, the fear factor might be high, but for the biologically minded it is pure beauty. (Photo copyrighted in 2002 by K. Ingham, reproduced with permission)





Here is the link of the site you may use as a starting point to enquire about cave bacteria
They call themselves adequately the SLIME group, slime standing for The Subsurface LIfe in Mineral Environment team. Cute...

Enough for today, It's late, the cat is not complaining but I am. The next post will again be devoted to thinking bacteria and later I will tell you more about Villa Luz and Movile.

Let's end up with two little jokes about cavers:
- How do you recognize a good caver? Because he (she) is alive.
- And a more mathematical one: In his (her) life, a caver enters a cave N times and gets out of it alive N-1 times.