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Bacteria and — Circuit Boards?
Back when I was going to school (one-room schoolhouse, uphill both ways in the snow, all that kind of thing), we were told in biology class that cells were simple. As science and technology progressed, it turns out that cells are not simple at all. For that matter, even though bacteria are simple, they have more complexity than was expected.
Bacteria have to adjust to their environments to survive, and scientists who designed a digital version of a portion of a certain metabolism. They use relay switches and other specialized engineering to connect. To cling to evolution despite the complexity of all creatures great and small requires enormous blind faith. Scientists studying bacteria are amazed, but even more amazing is the Creator's mind. He did the precise engineering for not only something that small, but for us, and even the entire universe.
Bacteria sometimes face a rough life. At about a tenth the size of most plant and animal cells, they have no layer of skin to protect them. Environments can change quickly and if microbes don't have the right tools to adapt, they won't last long. Bioengineers modeled three interdependent aspects of a metabolic system that bacteria use to thrive in ever-changing environments, revealing an underlying array of interrelated parts that they described as "underappreciated."
When biologists seed a fresh batch of sugary broth with C. acetobutylicum bacteria, the first thing those microbes do is harvest the sugar's energy and multiply—their simple method of reproduction. Since no sewage treatment system exists nearby, their organic acid wastes build up around them. But that's no problem for well-equipped bacteria.
When acids mount up, the bacteria switch on a different internal factory that assimilates those wastes and actually converts them into something useful. Sounds simple from a birds-eye view, but when top scientific minds try to make such a system, they discover that bacterial metabolism is far from simple.
To read the rest, click on "Bacteria Metabolisms Are Like Computer Circuit Boards".
