Bacterial communication and human communication: what can we learn from quorum sensing?

Communication is a phenomenon that is closely related with life, or better said, with life in society. The terms “communication” and “lack of communication” are part of the common terminology in diverse areas of study, such as the sciences, arts, philosophy, religion, and education. Humans even search for communication beyond our Earthly limits (existence of life on other planets) or in the period after physical death. Communication is equivalent to living in social groups. Life in solitude was characteristic of biblical times, when some early Christians sought seclusion in deserts and even then found it difficult not to communicate with temptation. In the modern age, communication theory has impregnated social life to the extent that even politics are controlled by the media and communication professionals. Traditionally, the process of communication entails an element that emits, a receptor, codes, a medium for transmitting and a message. All these elements are equally important, but the role of the “medium” has reached such predominance that a phrase by Marshall McLuhan has become famous: “the medium is the message”.1 We could say that the message, what is actually being communicated, has lost its protagonism over how and where it is communicated. The development of language in human beings was a key element in our evolution. The possibilities that communication provided enabled humans to overcome other larger, more agile or more numerous vertebrates and to be considered the “king of creation”. This language, which is not a mere social contribution, but, according to the theories developed by Chomsky,2 is instead preprogrammed in the human brain, arises at a certain phase in the maturation of the neuron connections and is able to be perfected and enable such lofty elements of communication as music or poetry.