Life forms with a nervous system and an immune system can recall experiences of stress such as a past illness. This memory allows the organism to protect itself when facing the same event repeatedly – in the case of illness, for example, by developing antibodies. But do organisms that lack a nervous system, such as plants, fungi, or bacteria, also have some memory of stress? That is the topic now being pursued by ecologists, molecular biologists, and biochemists within Collaborative Research Center 973, which was established in July 2012.