Dicty
May 17, 2016 12:51 PM   Subscribe

Dictyostelium discoideum - dicty to its friends - has long been recognized as the world's most fascinating slime mold. A (previously) has a good introduction from a decade ago. You might be fascinated by their life cycle, which goes from individual cells, to animal-like slug, to plant-like fruiting body. You might be fascinated by their starvation-prompted altruism, in which most cells give up their lives so that a few can reproduce, and cheaters are punished. You might be fascinated by the way they farm and protect their crops. (Or maybe the farmed bacteria are farming them; it's hard to tell.) Or you might be fascinated by a brand new study about the DNA nets they use to trap and kill pathogens.
posted by clawsoon (17 comments total) 49 users marked this as a favorite
 
"I collect spores, molds, and fungus"
posted by mikelieman at 1:29 PM on May 17, 2016 [6 favorites]


Yes, I am fascinated.
posted by brambleboy at 1:33 PM on May 17, 2016


As always, resistance is futile; you will be assimilated (and some of you will become spores at the top of the stalk! Yes, you lucky ones!)
posted by yhbc at 2:02 PM on May 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


I always manage to talk one of my students that wants to write about "the evolution of altruism in humans" into writing about Dicty instead. Way more interesting than humans. Thanks, clawsoon!
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 2:26 PM on May 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


Awesome post, thanks!
posted by metaBugs at 2:58 PM on May 17, 2016


These are common contaminants on my agar plates, and I never have the heart to throw those plates out while the slugs are crawling around.....
posted by acrasis at 3:36 PM on May 17, 2016 [3 favorites]


brb, figuring out the best way to have pet slime molds
posted by foxfirefey at 4:59 PM on May 17, 2016


Agar plates, apparently. Y'all two should talk.
posted by Spathe Cadet at 5:20 PM on May 17, 2016 [3 favorites]


clawsoon: "Dictyostelium discoideum - dicty to its friends - has long been recognized yt as the world's most fascinating slime mold."

Jeez, way to throw shade at Physarum polycephalum!
posted by Chrysostom at 6:14 PM on May 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


You should do a Physarum polycephalum FPP. Slime mold throwdown!
posted by clawsoon at 6:25 PM on May 17, 2016


Bless you, internet commerce!
posted by foxfirefey at 9:00 PM on May 17, 2016


Neutrophil DNA traps
posted by benzenedream at 10:04 PM on May 17, 2016


And the slime molds I knew in my Nethack days were mostly delicious.
posted by fredludd at 11:32 PM on May 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


Mine mostly tasted like see-invisible potions.
posted by sebastienbailard at 11:37 PM on May 17, 2016


benzenedream: Neutrophil DNA traps

It's interesting that the senior scientists on the dicty paper say, when interviewed, that the similarity with humans is probably convergent evolution, while the paper itself suggests
a fundamental and functional conservation between S cells [in dicty] and neutrophils [in humans], including the use of TIR domain-containing proteins as signal transducers for the LPS stimulus, the use of NOXs for ROS generation and the common use of ROS as signalling molecules to trigger ET generation. This is the first report demonstrating that DNA-based cell-intrinsic defence strategies evolved about 1 billion years ago...
So which is it, I wonder? A defense conserved for a billion years, or convergent evolution by organisms separately solving problems of multicellularity?
posted by clawsoon at 6:37 AM on May 18, 2016


Oh, wait... in the interview, it looks like it's the senior scientists themselves disagreeing, Kuspa vs. Soldati, though they don't point it out to the interviewer (probably someone from Baylor PR department) and the interviewer doesn't figure it out for themselves.
posted by clawsoon at 6:41 AM on May 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


One thing I missed: In the slug stage, some of the Dicty cells specialize as immune cells which circulate within the slug, engulfing invading bacteria and sequestering poisons or toxins, eventually eliminating these from the slug.

If I do ever quit my job to pursue my passions, Dicty will be a tempting pursuit.
posted by clawsoon at 2:18 PM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


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