Communication is defined as an interaction between at least two living agents which share a repertoire of signs. These are combined according to syntactic, semantic and context-dependent, pragmatic rules in order to coordinate behavior. This volume deals with the important roles of soil bacteria in parasitic and symbiotic interactions with viruses, plants, animals and fungi. Starting with a general overview of the key levels of communication between bacteria, further reviews examine the various aspects of intracellular as well as intercellular biocommunication between soil microorganisms.

Contributions to the foundation of a three-leveled biosemiotics This approach underlines the complementarity of syntactic, pragmatic and semantic rules as a precondition for adequately investigating the language- like structure of the genetic code and the communicative organization of interacting cellular organisms. Guenther Witzany, Helsinki. Umweb, 220 pp. (2006)

The recent literature on whole genome sequences provides abundant evidence for the action of natural genetic engineering in evolution. Discoveries about natural genetic engineering have coincided with rapid progress in our understanding of epigenetic control and RNA-directed chromatin formation.

This is is the first uniform description of all key levels of communication in the organismic kingdoms of plants, fungi, animals and bacteria based on the most recent empirical data. Biocommunication occurs on three levels (A) intraorganismic, i.e. intra- and intercellular, (B) interorganismic, between the same or related species and (C) transorganismic, between organisms which are not related. The biocommunicative approach demonstrates both that cells, tissues, organs and organisms coordinate and organize by communication processes and genetic nucleotide sequence order in cellular and non-cellular genomes is structured language-like, i.e. follow combinatorial (syntactic), context-sensitive (pragmatic) and content-specific (semantic) rules. Without sign-mediated interactions no vital functions within and between organisms can be coordinated. Exactly this feature is absent in non-living matter.

"Glance at Witzany's little book and put it beside standard texts on semio-communication written by those who still favour mechanistic causality in exploring animal behaviour and you can see how far Biosemiotics has come" (Peter Harries-Jones, University of Toronto)