Regardless of its size or complexity, all biological societies depend on the communication between their participants. Being a group of individuals in a society or a group of cells in a tissue, communication is mandatory to ensure survival and homeostasis.

 

The improvement of the linguistic skills along evolution allowed human beings to better understand each other, and therefore to cooperate, which represented a crucial step in the establishment of today’s society. In the animal kingdom communication is essentially dependent on sounds and body postures, being vital for the exchange of information about food, predators and mating. Even at the microscopic level, communication between cells is the basis for the evolution of multicellular organisms. In this type of language, words and gestures are replaced by chemical signals that cells can sense and transduce. Complex signaling networks between cells and with their environment orchestrate not only cell fate decisions but also life and death choices. When this equilibrium is perturbed by communication misunderstandings between cells, pathological conditions can arise, compromising the whole organism survival.

 

It was this fascinating idea about each member of a biological community living in the context of the others, constantly sending and receiving information in a dynamic equilibrium, that brought the name of this year’s GABBA symposium, Communicating Life. We therefore intend to explore these interactions, giving several examples from simple single-cell organisms to complex human behaviors, as a way to understand life and even ourselves.

 

We are very pleased to invite you to join us in the discovery of Communicating Life.

 

 

The GABBA 17th Edition students