Friday, March 19, 2021

Dictyostelium discoideum, A Slime Mould

 A friend donated to me a culture of Dictyostelium discoideum, a cellular slime mold. I have had great fun watching its various stages right through to forming fruiting bodies. Ours were fed on oats but 'in the wild' they live on the bacteria in soil.They first exist as separate single-celled amoebae, but after consuming all the bacteria in their area they proceed to stream together to form a multicellular organism. These features make them a valuable tool for studying developmental processes and also for investigating evolution of multicellularity. Long thought to be a type of fungus, it has recently been shown that slime molds in fact bear no relation to fungi. They are now classed as Mycetozoa. (Images taken with a USB powered microscope)





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