Evolutionary paths of electric oscillators

Abstract

The endogenous electrical signals play an important role in information processes occurring in living systems. They are found in living beings of different evolutionary levels from prokaryotes to multicellular eukaryotes. We hypothesized that the presence and variety of endogenous oscillators in individual organisms are connected with the way they survive, i.e. totally dependent on the community or partially independent of it. To test the hypothesis, we recorded electrical activity from individual cells and their communities in experiments with the earliest evolutionary beings, prokaryotes: cyanobacteria Oscillatoria terebriformis, Geitlerinema sp. and Halothece sp., the unicellular eukaryotes: yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and ciliates Paramecium caudatum, as well as from shellfish Helix pomatia and H. lucorum. The experimental results suggest that the variety of oscillators in the individual, the properties and functions that they perform, may provide a key to understanding the individual/social organization of living systems.