Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:17:21 BST CiteULike: brembs' Tagkopoulos http://www.citeulike.org/user/brembs/author/Tagkopoulos CiteULike.org en-gb Copyright © 2004-2008 citeulike.org http://www.citeulike.org/user/brembs/article/2773606 <i>Science (8 May 2008), 1154456.</i><br /><br />We question whether homeostasis alone adequately explains microbial responses to environmental stimuli, and explore the capacity of intra-cellular networks for predictive behavior in a fashion similar to metazoan nervous systems. We show that in silico biochemical networks, evolving randomly under precisely defined complex habitats, capture the dynamical, multi-dimensional structure of diverse environments by forming internal models that allow prediction of environmental change. We provide evidence for such anticipatory behavior by revealing striking correlations of Escherichia coli transcriptional responses to temperature and oxygen perturbations--precisely mirroring the co-variation of these parameters upon transitions between the outside world and the mammalian gastrointestinal-tract. We further show that these internal correlations reflect a true associative learning paradigm, since they show rapid de-coupling upon exposure to novel environments. 10.1126/science.1154456 Anticipatory Behavior Within Microbial Genetic Networks Ilias Tagkopoulos Yir-Chung Liu Saeed Tavazoie doi:10.1126/science.1154456 Science (8 May 2008), 1154456. 2008-05-08T21:24:02-00:00 2008 Science 1154456 degeneracy