Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have found that bacteria can store and pass on memories of past actions — such as creating infections in humans — for about four to seven generations:

Scientists have discovered that bacteria can create something like memories about when to form strategies that can cause dangerous infections in people, such as resistance to antibiotics and bacterial swarms when millions of bacteria come together on a single surface. The discovery — which has potential applications for preventing and combatting bacterial infections and addressing antibiotic-resistant bacteria — relates to a common chemical element bacterial cells can use to form and pass along these memories to their progeny over later generations.

University of Texas at Austin. “Bacteria store memories and pass them on for generations.” ScienceDaily, 21 November 2023.

They found that iron, easily available across the planet, is the physical basis for the bacterial memory they were studying.

We show unambiguously that the molecular basis of this memory is the levels of available cellular iron. The act of swarming “conditions” the cells with this memory. Given the central role of iron in cellular metabolism, an iron-based memory might offer the advantage of providing a hub connecting various stress responses such as antibiotic survival and biofilms.

Souvik Bhattacharyya, Nabin Bhattarai, Dylan M. Pfannenstiel, Brady Wilkins, Abhyudai Singh, Rasika M. Harshey. A heritable iron memory enables decision-making in Escherichia coli. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023; 120 (48) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2309082120

The bacterium they were studying is the familiar, fast-reproducing intestinal parasite E. coli.

In their media release, the researchers make clear that what E. coli has is not memory in the human sense:

Bacteria don’t have neurons, synapses or nervous systems, so any memories are not like the ones of blowing out candles at a childhood birthday party. They are more like information stored on a computer.

University of Texas at Austin. “Pass them on for generations.”

In short, certain environment conditions trigger a given set of behaviors that the bacterium’s ancestors have used in the past, whether it is swarming or forming a biofilm:

Researchers theorize that when iron levels are low, bacterial memories are triggered to form a fast-moving migratory swarm to seek out iron in the environment. When iron levels are high, memories indicate this environment is a good place to stick around and form a biofilm.

University of Texas at Austin, “Scientists Have Discovered That Bacteria Have ‘Memories,’” SciTechDaily, November 25, 2003

The researchers hope that their findings will help in the design of antibiotics by better predicting likely bacterial behavior.

You may also wish to read: Can cells learn? Can molecules communicate? What we are learning… We are learning that the world of life is full of intelligence that we just did not know about. These discoveries fuel panpsychism at the expense of materialism. But panpsychism’s downfall is that it cannot address an intelligence that is beyond nature.