Every now and then I take a moment at the Loom to marvel anew at the sophistication of a certain microbe. Today, I direct your attention to a report in New Scientist on E. coli that has been engineered to solve Sudoku puzzles. Frank Swain, the author, makes a good point: if E. coli is allowed to spread out the task among millions of individual microbes, it can tackle bigger problems. Let’s just hope that all the E. coli in our guts don’t figure this out on their own…
Originally published November 4, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.