"Using computational modelling, the scientists explained this phenomenon in terms of a combination of two factors. Firstly, salt stress causes a delay in cell division, leading to synchronization of cell cycles; secondly, survival probability depends on the individual bacterial cell's position in the cell cycle at the time of the second exposure. As a result of the cell cycle synchronization, the sensitivity of the population changes over time. Previously exposed populations may be more tolerant to future stress events, but they may sometimes even be more sensitive than populations with no previous exposure."
> Previously exposed populations may be more tolerant to future stress events, but they may sometimes even be more sensitive than populations with no previous exposure
The last caveat undoes the whole research paper; it's not really memory, but a timing issue. All they did was exploit the synced the cell division cycles: they might have chosen the 2-hour mark (or got really lucky) as that was when the cell-division cycle was most (or somewhat) resilient.
This is similar to saying "batching all network writes to only happen in the first 30 seconds of every minute may make your network more resilient to random 5-second disconnections between data centers, or it make make it more sensitive". This is obviously dependent on which part of the cycle the disconnection happens! Maybe I should write that paper...
Yes but can we say human memory is not also (at least in part) a product of timing? Conceivably memory is mediated by synchronizing activity of certain neurons, after all, phase coupled neuronal signaling[0] is an element of brain functioning. Perhaps the bacteria encode information about their environment using low-level phase coupling. Probably not like that at all, it's just a thought.
