Main content

Solving the riddle of how bacteria see

Let's talk about slime...or 'single-celled pond slime' to be exact. Biologists say they have the answer to a centuries-old mystery of how bacteria sense light and move towards it. The entire organism acts like a tiny eyeball. Despite being just three micrometres in diameter, the photo-synthetic bacteria was found to use the same physical principles as the eye of a camera or a human, which according to researchers, probably makes them the ''world's smallest example of such a lens''. Conrad Mullineaux is a Professor of Microbiology at Queen Mary University, London and co-author of the study.

(PHOTO CREDIT: A view from a microscope of bacteria lit from the side - Professor Conrad Mullineaux)

Release date:

Duration:

3 minutes