BEFORE YOU BECAME YOU, your entire being was wrapped up in just two cells: your mothers egg and your fathers sperm. Yet the dance between these two resulted in an embryo, a ball of cells that differentiated into specialized cells that would grow to become your heart, your gut, your fingers, and all your other parts. The

The reason for such cooperation comes down to a cellular form of intelligence, says evolutionary biologist and physician William B. Miller, Ph.D. Hes co-author of the book, The Sentient Cell: The Cellular Foundations of Consciousness, published in January 2024, which proposes a radical new way of thinking about some of lifes tiniest components.

Miller is among a small but growing group of scientists who believe we should no longer think of cells as passive robots that automatically follow a code of instructions, carrying out orders from our genome like mindless drones. Instead, they say, the roughly 37 trillion cells that make up our own bodies are consciousand that life and consciousness began at the same time.

Its a revolutionary idea, Miller tells Popular Mechanics, but assuming cells have a form of consciousness can give us a better understanding of complex processes. These include cellular communication and decision-making, and even the motivation behind an embryonic cell specializing into a specific organ. While its not widely accepted among scientists, this concept of existential consciousness will profoundly transform the way we approach cellular bioengineering problems like tissue regeneration, provide a different perspective on finding cures for diseases like cancer, and even help us survive on Mars, Miller says.

Now, in a May 2024 paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, Miller and his fellow authors argue that random chance did not govern the concept of natural selection; thats what the 1850s naturalist Charles Darwin, known for establishing the theory of evolution, thought. Instead, the authors contend that a form of cellular consciousness actually drove lifes evolutionand its the reason behind all of lifes existence.

CONSCIOUSNESS, AT THE LEVEL OF THE CELL, cannot produce a human beings own, complex thoughts, feelings, and sensations; a cell doesnt have the capacity for abstract thought. But heres how it does work, says Miller: Imagine a typical situationdaylight in a cells environment hits the cells external membrane and passes through it. The cell measures that light signal internally, forming a piece of information about the light. Because it has to analyze it internally, that becomes an experience as the cell analyzes the light to support the state it prefers to be in [to fulfill its function], Miller says. While that example is of a bacterial cell, all cells absorb various data from their surroundings, analyze them, and make decisions about the actions they should take, such as producing a hormone, or moving in a particular direction, perhaps toward the light.

From early in lifes history, cells of all kinds have combined their skills to further a common goalto keep on living and reproducing. Cells have formed colonies. Its very much like a city that we humans might engineer. It has nutrient channels, an outside and an inside, a collective metabolism, Miller says. For example, microbes collaborate with each other. Theyre codependent, trading resources as well as competing. In order to make this ecology flourish, each of these cells is taking intelligent action. Theyre communicating with one another, and both individually and collectively deploying resources. Thats problem solving and decision making. Thats cognitive action, and its one element of consciousness, he says.

Its still a hard concept to swallowthat bacteria and other microorganisms are conscious on any level. To animals like us, consciousness is due to a complex nervous system.

However, Miller and his fellow authors see this higher, human form of consciousness as a natural property our cells createtogether with the more than 10 trillion essential microbes that are a part of our bodies. Every aspect of the consciousness that Im experiencing is a simultaneous aggregation of the consciousnesses of all of my body cells and all of those microbes working in tandem, coordinating so seamlessly that I feel like Im one individual, he says.

Before exploring that idea further, its important to understand one thing: We are holobionts, because we consist of our own host cells and the ones we live with in symbiosis, or mutual cooperation. In particular, we live in symbiosis with a bacterial, viral, and fungal population of cells. In other words, our cells and our microbes mutually benefit one another.

The evolutionary science of the hologenomethat we co-evolved with our microbiomesays that evolution led those first cells to continue forming different kinds of habitats in order to survive and thrive; hence, the development of plants, animals, and fungi. Were a constellation of habitats, says Miller, who spent decades studying the human microbiome and has written several books on the hologenome. He compares human bodies to a successful engineering project for ever more complex groupings of diverse cells living together and adapting to changing environments over millions of years. A form of cellular consciousness has been with us since life first emerged, 3.5 billion years ago. They were able to multiply into abundant varieties of bacteria, amoeba, and then more complex organisms because of their particular awareness. Today, your brain, microbiome and the cells of your gut work together as a community of cells to create your sense of consciousness.

We are a rich, wonderful, delightful environment for cells, he says. So, we bear a resemblance to the first biofilm [microbial colony]. We are one end result, along with every other creature that can be seenwe are a particular solution to a set of biological cellular problems.

The authors of The Sentient Cell arent alone in hypothesizing that our microbes, the bacteria and viruses in us, have a great deal to do with our consciousness. Various studies show that our own cells communicate with our microbiome, and that our brain, gut, and microbiome are deeply entangled, forming a complex system. Besides being responsible for our health, these complex interactions contribute to our higher level consciousness, according to a 2020 paper in the peer-reviewed Inquiries Journal.

HOWEVER, NOT ALL SCIENTISTS who study the biology of life are convinced that cells are conscious. Cells respond to both chemical and physical signals, including pressure from surrounding cells. The cells of a developing embryo know, for example, when their number has grown to 400. At this exact point, the group begins to separate into three axes that determine the bodys final orientation: front and back, left and right, up and down. They know how to differentiate themselves into the tissues that will become your organs and other parts. Cells are the architects of the organism, cell biologist Alfonso Martnez Arias, Ph.D., tells Popular Mechanics.

His work shows that a persons genome is a toolbox for the cell to use as it may. Yet we cannot presume that a cells behavior is due to consciousness, says Martnez Arias, who spent 40 years at the University of Cambridge researching how a fertilized egg can become an individual with billions of specialized cells.

While cells exhibit behaviors that you could call a sort of intelligenceresponding to other cells and their environmentthe crux of the problem is that its hard to define consciousness, he says. With cells, there is some kind of computation going on, with an output that can be predicted. I think increasingly, there is evidence that cells have capacities that are not encoded in the genome. For instance, the ability to pick and choose from the toolbox of genes that give us our ultimate characteristics. Through experiments, researchers have been able to study cell responses to different chemical and physical stimuli, such as exposing them to a chemical compound that would cause the cells to produce a different compound. So we are able to communicate with them, but we do it badly. But I think we are learning their alphabet, were learning their language, Martnez Arias says. He hopes that continuing such investigations will lead us someday to knowing what makes cells tick.

Conventional resistance to labeling cells as conscious comes from defining consciousness from a human point of view, Miller believes. We compare our own consciousness to the capacity of other animals, such as the mosquito or the lion. And the more you look, the more you realize that our form of consciousness, with its own intelligence, is different from other animals, [so our view is skewed]. A cells consciousness is more elemental, a simpler form of cognition, he says.

Heres a practical reason to treat cells as conscious, Miller says: Once we realize that cells are creative and intelligent problem-solving materials, we can treat them as partners in designing better biomedical therapies and solutions. By studying their motivations and decision-making, well find more ways to manipulate cells, such as interrupting their processes. For example, cancer cells communicate with each other and with non-cancer cells in the body. We are finding promising cures for some cancers that break down the communication cancer cells use in their efforts to propagate and form tumors. This type of directed immunotherapy leaves patients own healthy cells undamaged, unlike chemotherapy, or radiation, which damages healthy cells too.

Were already taking advantage of cell behavior to engineer microbes that eat plastic. Such creative solutions in the future wont be possible if we treat cells as robots without preferences, Miller says. Well even understand how to explore space better. For example, the radiation levels on a journey to Mars are too high to survive. One of the solutions could be figuring out a way to strengthen our cells against dangerous radiation. Miller believes a study of how cells themselves could engineer an adaptation to radiation would help.

Before joining Popular Mechanics, Manasee Wagh worked as a newspaper reporter, a science journalist, a tech writer, and a computer engineer. Shes always looking for ways to combine the three greatest joys in her life: science, travel, and food.

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Every Single Cell in Your Body Could Be Conscious, Scientists Say. That Could Rewrite Everything We Know About ... - Popular Mechanics