October 27, 2010  Do Bacteria Age?  Biologists call the aging
process senescence because they simply cannot go on living
without inventing new words that sound far more complicated and
science-y than the ones they are replacing.  When I think about
aging (or senescence, if you think that sounds better, because
you're a snob), I usually consider organisms that go through
different developmental stages because it's easy to see the
aging process:  But bacteria don't go through these stages. They
aren't born as baby bacteria that grow into adult bacteria.
While multicellular creatures grow by adding more cells,
bacteria are single-celled creatures, so they don't grow. A
bacterial cell is and always will be just one bacterial cell
(but that doesn't stop bacteria from multiplying and producing
millions more of themselves). Bacteria also don't have babies
like animals do: to reproduce they split in half and form two
daughter cells.  Since they don't go through the developmental
stages we usually associate with aging