Princeton University scientists discovered that bacteria react to changes in their surroundings and they anticipate and prepare for them.

"What we have found is the first evidence that bacteria can use sensed cues from their environment to infer future events," said Saeed Tavazoie, an associate professor of molecular biology, who conducted the study along with graduate student Ilias Tagkopoulos and postdoctoral researcher Yir-Chung Liu.

While higher animals can learn new behavior within a single lifetime, bacterial learning takes place over many generations and on an evolutionary time scale,

This finding may help to develop strains of bacteria to clean up environmental contamination.

The findings, reported in the June 6, 2008, issue of Science, challenge the prevailing notion that only organisms with complex nervous systems can anticipate changes in their environment.

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