text: John Rennie | Freelance Journalist | Muck Rack
  As seen in: Freelance, Scientific American, WIRED Magazine, ZDNet, IEEE Spectrum, National Geographic Travel, Quanta Magazine
  Science writer/editor for @QuantaMagazine, @SciAm @AccessScience, TWC's Hacking the Planet & more. NYU SHERP, Beakerhead SciComm. Opinions = my own — at most.
  By John Rennie, Lucy Reading-Ikkanda
  wired.com — Intelligence is not a quality to attribute lightly to microbes. There is no reason to think that bacteria, slime molds and similar single-cell forms of life have awareness, understanding or other capacities implicit in real intellect. But particularly when these cells commune in great numbers, their startling collective talents for solving problems and controlling their environment emerge.
  quantamagazine.org — Another type of behavior demonstrated by biofilms growing under laboratory conditions is spiral migration, demonstrated in the time-lapse video below of Bacillus mycoides. These bacterial cells grow in long chains or filaments that curl either clockwise or counterclockwise. The specific advantages of this spiraling movement are still under investigation, according to Chimileski, but they must be considerable because B. mycoides excels at taking over available environments.
  wired.com — The human brain is routinely described as the most complex object in the known universe. It might therefore seem unlikely that pea-size blobs of brain cells growing in laboratory dishes could be more than fleetingly useful to neuroscientists. Nevertheless, many investigators are now excitedly cultivating these curious biological systems, formally called cerebral organoids and less formally known as mini-brains.
  @tvjrennie — 9,279 followers, 26,627 tweets
  RT @KnvulS: Reminder to newly-graduated #SHERPies (and other freelancers out there) that you should pitch some health and genetics stories…
  RT @aetiology: Could have at least included my name in this, @GeneticLiteracy, since you have it listed as "authored" by someone e… https://t.co/tFKU1wPXZ0
  RT @QuantaMagazine: What is space? Peel back the layers of space-time in our interactive experience: https://buff.ly/2EEFPkO https://t.co/Nbw0buxkTG