A very interesting article. There is also a piece in TED on the same subject: Discovering Bacteria's amazing communication system

And one of the few times we look after these organisms is when we have crook gut - we pump in the yogurt, or the tablets with the blue thingies that do the same thing.
And we wash a lot of them off. Often a good thing.

It is interesting and informative. On a different level it does urge familiar questions about ontology and language usage.

consider Horizontal gene transfer and the complexity of our eco-system becomes even more awsome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer