How does bacteria sense food?

[deostroll]

It need not be a "bacteria" in question. How do unicellular organisms generally sense food? Or else comment on if sense is the appropriate word to be used in the prevous question...

[mith]

chemotaxis

[MichaelXY]

Mith, you are a venerable fountain of knowledge. Have you considered playing Jeopardy?

[mith]

I'd fail on the pop cultures part. I've probably only seen one whole episode of mash.

[MrMistery]

asides from dave's future in television trivia, a bacteria tastes just like a human smells and tastes: a specific particle binds to a receptor on the surface of the bacteria, initiating a signal transduction pathway that tells it "Hey, there's food round these parts"

[deostroll]

asides from dave's future in television trivia, a bacteria tastes just like a human smells and tastes: a specific particle binds to a receptor on the surface of the bacteria, initiating a signal transduction pathway that tells it "Hey, there's food round these parts"

So this is necessarily a kind of environment change around the cell?

[mith]

sense requires stimulus