Do bacteria derive benefits by living in diverse communities? How is this important for ecological balance? Jithin Sunny, a PhD scholar in the Department of Biotechnology, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, Tamil Nadu, has often wondered about the philosophical takeaways from his research on bacterial population study. Together with Bins Sebastian, assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy, Madras Christian College, Chennai, he discusses a vital question ‘Can an invisible yet significant group of living organisms give us lessons on our society and the interactions within?’

In this next article in our series on interdisciplinarity, we explore how a physicist and biologist duo (Ambarish Ghosh, Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore and Deepak Saini, Department of Molecular Reproduction, Development and Genetics, IISc, Bangalore) combined their expertise to create a nanomotor system that can be precisely and accurately manoeuvred inside biological cells.