[13] P. vortex is a social microorganism: when grown on under growth conditions that mimic natural environments such as hard surfaces it forms colonies of 109-1012 cells with remarkably complex and dynamic architectures (Figure 1).

[16][17][18][19] P. vortex is marked by its ability to generate special aggregates of dense bacteria that are pushed forward by repulsive chemotactic signals sent from the cells at the back.

[19] Communicating with each other using a variety of chemical signals, bacteria exchange information regarding population size, a myriad of individual environmental measurements at different locations, their internal states and their phenotypic and epigenetic adjustments.

The sequencing results were validated using a custom designed Agilent microarray expression chip submitted to EMBL-EBI [ArrayExpress: E-MEXP-3019 which represented the coding and the non-coding regions.

The analysis also unveiled the P. vortex potential to produce a wealth of enzymes and proteases as well as a great variety of antimicrobial substances that affect a wide range of microorganisms.

The possession of these advanced defense and offense strategies render Paenibacillus vortex as a rich source of useful genes for agricultural, medical, industrial and biofuel applications.

[29] The comparative genomic analysis further revealed that these three Paenibacillus species also have the highest “Social-IQ” score among all 500 sequenced bacteria, over 3 standard deviations higher than average.