This is all very nonsensical. Even though New Scientist isn't exactly a journal I'm still surprised rubbish like this is published in it. I can just imagine serious molecular and cell biologists reading this and feeling insulted. It's an interesting idea but completely unfounded - and seemingly 'intelligent' behaviours in cells can all be explained as part of complex molecular processes in which no sentient life is involved. This guy just sounds like a fairly incompetent scientist who has come up with a crazy idea and has chosen to run with it. Really, it has no basis in science and will lead nowhere.

And I'd like to add that I'm a neuroscientist, and neurons interacting with eachother provides more than enough complexity to explain all the facets of human consciousness.

As an interesting note; there are neurons in the brain which act as 'timing' cells - they help us keep track of time. If you take one of these cells and put it in a petri dish, completely by itself, it will produce action potentials in a cyclical manner, with each cycle lasting 24 hours. Although this seems to show individual intelligence in cells (using the same logic as the guy writing this article), this process has been shown to be a molecular one, and no intelligence is needed. I'm sure we can find similar molecular explanations for other apparantly sentient behaviours in cells.