Chemotaxis
Chemotaxis provides the model for organizational navigation under uncertainty.
The organism with the best sensors wins. But only if those sensors connect to action.
Return to E. coli swimming through your gut. It has one goal: find glucose. But it can't see glucose, can't smell it, can't sense it at a distance. All it can do is measure the current concentration, remember what it measured a second ago, and decide: is this better or worse?
If glucose is increasing - if the bacterium is swimming toward the source - it keeps going straight. If glucose is decreasing, it stops, tumbles (rotating its flagella in opposite directions, spinning randomly), and picks a new direction.
This is chemotaxis: directed movement along a chemical gradient. The bacterium never "knows" where the glucose is. It just keeps comparing "now" to "just now" and adjusting. It's a biased random walk that, over time, moves up the concentration gradient.
The mechanism is astonishingly sophisticated. E. coli has five types of chemoreceptors (MCPs - methyl-accepting chemotaxis proteins) embedded in its membrane, each sensitive to different molecules. When an MCP binds glucose (or another attractant), it changes shape. This shape change affects a protein called CheA. In the absence of attractant, CheA adds phosphate groups to CheY. Phosphorylated CheY tells the flagellar motor: "Tumble." When attractant binds, CheA stops phosphorylating CheY. Without phosphorylated CheY, the flagellar motor defaults to: "Keep swimming straight."
This is how a single molecule changes behavior.
But here's the subtle part: the system adapts. If glucose concentration stays constant (even at a high level), CheA eventually resets. The bacterium starts tumbling again. This prevents the cell from getting locked into "keep going straight" mode if it happens to be in a uniformly high-glucose patch. The system only responds to change - rising or falling concentration - not to absolute levels.
This temporal comparison (now vs. a moment ago) is fundamental to how organisms sense the world. You don't see light - you see changes in light. You don't hear sound - you hear changes in air pressure. Receptors adapt to constant stimuli, resetting their baseline so they can detect the next change.
E. coli's gradient sensing is more sensitive than you might think. It can detect a concentration difference of 0.1% over its 2-micrometer length. That's like you detecting a temperature change of 0.037 degrees Celsius between your fingertip and your palm.
Business Application of Chemotaxis
Chemotaxis provides the model for organizational navigation under uncertainty. Like E. coli, companies can't see where opportunities lie - they can only compare 'now' to 'just now' and adjust. Netflix's A/B testing, continuous metric monitoring, and rapid iteration exemplify organizational chemotaxis: sense, act, measure, adjust. The key insight is that organisms don't need perfect maps - they need tight feedback loops that bias movement toward improvement.