Escherichia coli
Swimming through the human gut at 30 micrometers per second, E.
E. coli serves as the chapter's primary biological example, demonstrating how a single-celled organism with no brain or nervous system makes better real-time decisions than most Fortune 500 companies. Swimming through the human gut at 30 micrometers per second, E. coli detects a 1% change in glucose concentration across its 2-micrometer body length and adjusts behavior within milliseconds.
The bacterium's chemotaxis mechanism - comparing 'now' to 'just now' and adjusting direction accordingly - provides the core metaphor for organizational sensing. E. coli has only five types of chemoreceptors (MCPs), not hundreds. This selectivity isn't a limitation; it's the key to effective navigation. The organism measures what matters and ignores the rest.
The temporal comparison mechanism (sensing change rather than absolute levels) and adaptation (resetting baseline to detect the next change) translate directly to business metrics: leading indicators matter more than lagging ones, and organizations need to detect shifts, not just states.
Notable Traits of Escherichia coli
- Run-and-tumble navigation
- 5 chemoreceptor types (MCPs)
- Detects 0.1% concentration changes
- Temporal comparison sensing
- Adaptation resets baseline
- Baseline mutation rate ~10^-10 errors per base pair per generation
- Can increase mutation rates 100-1000x under stress via error-prone polymerases
- Primary model organism for studying bacterial genetics
- Scale-free metabolic network
- ~80% gene deletions non-lethal under optimal conditions
- Hub metabolites (ATP, NADH) are critical vulnerabilities
Escherichia coli Appears in 2 Chapters
Primary model for stress-induced mutagenesis showing 100-1000x increased mutation rates under starvation.
Explore how bacteria accelerate evolution under environmental stress →Demonstrates scale-free metabolic network with power-law distribution and robustness to random failures.
See how scale-free networks achieve robustness through hub architecture →