Year: 2022

MASSIVE BREAKTHROUGH. “It really does look like we’ve stumbled upon the letters or words of a universal nematode language, the syntax of which we don’t yet fully understand.” https://lnkd.in/eSwxdxj View in LinkedIn

SMALL NUMBER OF LETTERS. “In human language, sequence and combination matter. The English alphabet, for example, has only 26 letters, which can be arranged into hundreds of thousands of words. Move just one letter in the word “words” from the back to the front, and you end up with “sword,” something completely different. And on the level of sentences, “Jill ate the chicken” means something very different from “The chicken ate Jill.” Yet those sentences use the same four words.” https://lnkd.in/eQAQ5eZ View in LinkedIn

MODULAR LANGUAGE. “Imagine how complicated our language would be if every word had to have its own unique symbol. You can get some sense of that from Asian languages; written Mandarin Chinese, for example, uses tens of thousands of picture-like characters. However, these characters mostly represent syllables, and still get combined and rearranged in order to form words. Combining and arranging letters or characters allows us to convey many different ideas from a limited set of elements.” https://lnkd.in/eQAQ5eZ View in LinkedIn

PARADIGM SHIFT. “A species of small, transparent roundworms have a highly evolved language in which they combine chemical fragments to create precise molecular messages that control social behavior. In 2008, Schroeder and colleagues had discovered that nematodes use chemical signals as sexual attractants, which provided the first hint that nematodes use chemistry to communicate.” https://lnkd.in/eaB_YWn View in LinkedIn

PHYSICAL LANGUAGE. “What we understand now is that nematodes use complex messages that consist of molecules put together in a modular fashion. They put together different chemical fragments depending on what they want to say." https://lnkd.in/eaB_YWn View in LinkedIn

COMBINATORIAL LANGUAGE. “The researchers found several molecules that tell nematodes to scatter and disperse. These molecules consist of only two building blocks. But adding a third building block called an indole changes the meaning completely: instead of "go away" the message becomes "everybody come here." Nematode messages get even more complex by combining two or more different molecules, just like combining different words in a sentence makes for more complex meaning.” https://lnkd.in/eaB_YWn View in LinkedIn

MUTES AND COMMUNICATORS. “Schroeder and his team used a new analytical method called comparative metabolomics to analyze the chemicals made by worms. By comparing the body chemistry of normal, wild-type worms with the chemistry of worms that have a signaling defect, i.e., "worms that can't talk," the researchers detected molecules that were only present in wild-type worms, but not in "silent" worms. These molecules then turned out to form the "language of the worm." https://lnkd.in/eaB_YWn View in LinkedIn

CHEMICAL LANGUAGE. “These results show that by combining molecules that include different types of chemical building blocks, worms have developed a sophisticated chemical language that they use to organize their communities. The discovery provides a new window into the chemistry of life and suggests that many other animal species including vertebrates may produce similar signaling molecules to control behavior and other biological functions.” https://lnkd.in/eaB_YWn View in LinkedIn

DECODING MOLECULAR CHATTER. “As a next step, the researchers will explore how the worms' nervous system senses and deciphers the different chemical messages. "Understanding the worm's language is just a first step -- we now need to figure out how the worm decodes and makes these molecules.” https://lnkd.in/eaB_YWn View in LinkedIn

WORM SYNTAX. “Scientists already knew that nematodes communicate with each other using chemical signals. This study, however, found that those chemicals have their own syntax, or rules for arranging elements into different meanings. In other words, the worms don't just use one chemical for each possible message. They combine two, three, or more chemicals at a time, and each combination has a different meaning, just like letters and words.” https://lnkd.in/eQAQ5eZ View in LinkedIn