Note from Sergey - the research isn't tight here yet, that's for you to do! I just wanted to show you what a post you write on this could feel like from a UI perspective.
Quantifying the information budget of a single bacterium is still a moving target. The figures compiled here translate the best data available—scattered across many species and experiments—into a common unit: bits per 30-minute generation of a mid-log E. coli. Some channels are now well characterised, others remain sketchy, and all are conditional on laboratory conditions that may differ sharply from the wild.
The purpose of a common framework is not precision but clarity: it lets us see which limits—diffusion, energy, or genomic burden—become critical first.
Bacteria can launch millisecond membrane-potential waves by transient potassium efflux. Mechanism and ecological role are active research areas. Existing reports suggest up to bits per pulse and as many as pulses per generation under stress—numbers that still carry wide error bars.
Information per generation: bits
Auto-inducers diffuse freely and bind LuxR-family receptors or two-component kinases. For well-studied receptors the usable dynamic range is about bits, and biochemical reset times permit roughly independent read-outs per generation in a well-mixed culture. These values are supported by multiple titration studies and are among the better-constrained figures on the page.
Information per generation:
Conjugative plasmids use a type-IV secretion system to transfer single-stranded DNA to a recipient. A typical payload is bits (80–150 kb). In rich media, microscopy and plating assays find about successful transfers per donor cell per generation. Mechanism and energetic cost are well understood; natural frequencies vary over roughly two orders of magnitude.
Information per generation:
Competent cells import extracellular DNA via a pseudopilus–ComEA/EC pore. Mean fragment sizes are around bits, while uptake frequencies can be as low as events per generation. Both numbers depend strongly on species and environmental cues, making this channel one of the least certain.
Information per generation:
Temperate phages occasionally mis-package host DNA. Capsids can carry up to bits, and effective delivery frequencies are roughly events per generation in current environmental surveys. Intermediate probabilities—capsid survival, successful recombination—remain poorly quantified.
Information per generation:
Some Gram-positives form 30–130 nm tubes that link neighbouring cytoplasms. Representative cargo estimates centre on bits per exchange, with participation frequencies near per generation. Quantitative flux data are sparse, so the uncertainty here is high.
Information per generation:
Gram-negative bacteria shed lipid vesicles that can encapsulate enzymes, small RNAs, or DNA fragments up to ~20 kb ( bits). Effective delivery frequencies to receptive cells are tentatively placed at per generation; direct single-cell tracking is still needed.
Information per generation:
With the midpoint of current literature estimates, a single cell would intercept about bits of external information per 30 min—roughly % of its 7 Mbit genome. Conjugation dominates because plasmids are large, while fast but low-bit channels such as quorum sensing and electrical pulses provide frequent state updates. Each channel encounters a different limiting factor: diffusion for chemicals, ATP budget for pili and nanotubes, or genomic dilution for massive DNA cargo.
These numbers will tighten—and may shift—when future experiments report time-resolved electrical codes, vesicle hit rates, or energy budgets under natural stresses. Until then, they should be read as provisional coordinates on a map whose edges are still being surveyed.
Key references: Prindle 2015 · Pai & You 2009 · Virolle 2020 · Hausner & Wuertz 1999 · Mortier 2014 · BNID 104446 · Dubey & Ben-Yehuda 2011 · Bitto 2017