There's obviously no blood-brain barrier for bacteria so I wonder how they protect themselves from being affected by surrounding metabolites or hijacked by competing organisms.

Here's the paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...

I'd love a copy of the pdf - my school login's not working right now.

Just append 'sci-hub.org' to the domain name of a journal article URL to get it for free: http://www.nature.com.sci-hub.org/nature/journal/vaop/ncurre...

Amazing, thanks.

Bacteria have their own protection mechanisms. That being said, your question belies an assumption. Is it not brain-like if it's damaged/attacked? The blood-brain barrier is a structure the human brain has developed that provides a kind of protection. Things still get through and affect the human brain. So the idea of "protection" is a matter of vector, intensity, and the nature of the interaction being "protected". e.g. If a pain receptor is no longer registering due to an opiate, has the brain been disrupted?

You can always tweet #icanhazpdf :-)

[1] https://twitter.com/hashtag/icanhazpdf

I actually went to undergrad with the lead author - he lived right down the hall from me and was a chemical engineer. I wonder what incentivized him to switch to biology?

Not sure if anyone in the know is reading and wants to comment on this, but even if bacterial cells are exchanging messages, do they have connections back to other specific cells or are they just broadcasting to the local soup? If it's the latter, then it's definitely not going to function like neurons.

The latter. According to the article the 'like neurons' part just means that they use ion channels to communicate. You could argue that the title of the article is slightly misleading, but then again this is an article that talks about 'charged ions'.

From the abstract of the paper (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...)

"[...] ion channels conduct long-range electrical signals within bacterial biofilm communities through spatially propagating waves of potassium. These waves result from a positive feedback loop, in which a metabolic trigger induces release of intracellular potassium, which in turn depolarizes neighbouring cells. Propagating through the biofilm, this wave of depolarization coordinates metabolic states among cells in the interior and periphery of the biofilm."

I don't quite understand biology, but the similarities exist in objects of different scales may be another proof to show that the universe is programmed by programmer who reuses many functions.