Cyanobacteria are ubiquitous photosynthetic microorganisms producing oxygen for approximately every fifth breath we take. Many live in filaments that can reach hundreds of cells and these filaments can coordinate to glide and even reverse direction. Direction reversal requires a sufficient number of cells to coordinate and start pushing in the opposite direction, a mechanism that is not well understood. In a new study just published on eLife we look into these coordinated reversals (experiments and modelling) and show that failure to coordinate leads to the formation of plectonemes (well known to whoever has had a tangled telephone cable…). This work was the result of a collaboration with the groups of our friends Orkun Soyer (who lead the study; U. Warwick), Chantal Valeriani (U. Complutense) and Emanuele Locatelli (U. Padova).