This is another fascinating demonstration of pushing the envelope of scientific knowledge with new observations, experiments, and tools. Galileo did it with a telescope and by publishing the first recognizable modern scientific paper 400 years ago. And Esther Lederberg did it over 60 years ago when she freely shared samples of and methods for replica plating bacterial cultures.

But this isn’t why the article is extremely informative.
It serves as a metaphor for open access, science, data. More fundamentally, it shows the power of sharing in adverse circumstances. How it betters both parties. How harnessing the results of community effects is awesome.

By sharing resources - be it necessary metabolic machinery to sustain life or scholarly expertise and knowledge - we help promote growth, development, improvement. Think about these bacteria for a minute: they are among the smallest, most basic units of life on Earth. Any given species relies on massive numbers to keep in existence.
And yet it was evolutionarily favorable to evolve sharing mechanisms when entirely different species are struggling. The flip side to this is that a species’s members who didn’t evolve this trait died out.

Think about that the next time a student or colleague asks for help.