A post about humans, trees, anthropomorphism, mycorrhizal mycelium and quorum sensing.
As a young Prince, King Charles III famously hugged a tree. It is not recorded what was said by either Prince or tree, or whether his act was met with arboreal approval or dismissal. However, according to his aides, he continues the practice publicly every time he plants a commemorative sapling.
We now know that trees enjoy two-way communication (if not with Kings) certainly with the symbiotic mycorrhizal mycelium (fungus threads) that envelop and enrich their roots. Here they exchange water, nitrogen, carbon and other minerals, with each other and with the tree’s progeny. Additionally, chemical messages pass via the fungus to communicate information of threats or abundance, suggesting that the process is heuristically reactive rather than mechanical.
Within the human body, indigenous bacteria (of which we have trillions outnumbering human cells 10-1) do very similar things. Cell to cell communication is facilitated by both prokaryotes and eukaryotes (single cell and multi-cell organisms), the former clubbing together using quorum-sensing circuits to enable them simultaneously to secrete signaling chemical molecules that communicate precise information – just as do murmurations of birds in the air, warrior ants on the march or bioluminescent plankton in the sea.
Go to any football, rugby or tennis match and you will see the same phenomenon acted out by a human audience, resulting in synchronized signals that convey pleasure or dismay. If at that very moment you were to take a microscope to the human body you would see why – the same bacterial microorganisms are busy synthesising autoinducing proteins that communicate their collective feelings and intention.
All I can say is that tonight when I took dousing rods to my eighty year old thirty three leafed Aspidistra, there was an immediate energetic resonance between the two. I did not enquire further of the plant, but I do recall, according to Feng Shui experts, that placing an Aspidistra in the main entryway of one’s home can collect an abundance of positive energy.
Maybe, rather than seeking to anthropomorphise trees by talking to them, or worse by felling them in their prime for profit, we should observe and revere them for the energy that they clearly share both with us and the world on which we depend?
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Ageing Effortlessly 
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The discovery of intercellular communication among bacteria has led to the realization that bacteria are capable of coordinated activity that was once believed to be restricted to multicellular organisms. The capacity to behave collectively as a group has obvious advantages, for example, the ability to migrate to a more suitable environment/better nutrient supply and to adopt new modes of growth, such as sporulation or biofilm formation, which may afford protection from deleterious environments. The “language” used for this intercellular communication is based on small, self-generated signal molecules called autoinducers. Through the use of autoinducers, bacteria can regulate their behavior according to population density. The phenomenon of quorum sensing, or cell-to-cell communication, relies on the principle that when a single bacterium releases autoinducers (AIs) into the environment, their concentration is too low to be detected. However, when sufficient bacteria are present, autoinducer concentrations reach a threshold level that allows the bacteria to sense a critical cell mass and, in response, to activate or repress target genes. Most of the bacteria thus far identified that utilize quorum-sensing systems are associated in some way with plants or animals. The nature of these relationships can be either amicable, as characterized by symbiotic bacteria, or adversarial, as seen with pathogenic bacteria. There are numerous bacteria that have components of a quorum-sensing system for which the phenotype regulated remains an enigma. Similarly, there are bacteria known to regulate a specific phenotype via quorum sensing for which one or more of the regulatory components have thus far eluded identification. In this review we give examples of pathogenic relationships, focusing on organisms for which many of the facets of their quorum-sensing systems have been elucidated. https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/iai.68.9.4839-4849.2000
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