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Bacteria have no neurons or memories in the human sense. Yet in a new study, researchers at Georgia Tech and Carnegie Mellon University — including School of Physics Associate Professor Shiladitya Banerjee and Postdoctoral Fellow Josiah Kratz — found that individual E. coli cells carried traces of past hardship into the future. When nutrients repeatedly rose and fell, the cells changed how quickly they grew, suggesting that even simple microbes can use experience to prepare for what may come next. 

A new Georgia Tech study found the chemical plume from the 2024 BioLab fire in Conyers, Ga., released bromine, not chlorine, as its dominant compound in the immediate aftermath. This finding stands in stark contrast to early public warnings about the fire, which prompted 17,000 evacuations, closed portions of I-20, and led to overnight shelter-in-place orders for weeks. Nearly two years later, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board is still investigating the fire and chemical release. 

The Georgia Tech paper containing the study was published in the March 2026 issue of Environmental Science & Technology Letters and identified 26 different chemical species in the air following the Sept. 29, 2024, fire at the BioLab facility in Conyers. The authors wrote that the chemically complex plume "exposed millions in metropolitan Atlanta to numerous toxic compounds" and represented the first detailed study of a pool chemical facility fire.