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Tuesday, December 11, 2012

I Dig Slime Molds


Slime mould
Photo by Lorraine Phelan
There are a few types of slime molds in this world.  I spoke of one years ago as an undergraduate.  I was discussing entropy at the time ~ how things tend to fall into chaos.  They spend their lives as individual cells but when motivated to reproduce they form into one collective being and work together to make spores.

 The other type which I spoke of today can have millions of nuclei in their one celled slimy body, which allows them to do some advance thinking like figuring out the fastest way through a maze.  Think of all those nuclei communicating like all those neurons in your brain.  Cool stuff, which is why ~ I spoke of them today in my bio class and that always makes me happy.



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3 comments:

  1. kdoyleDecember 12, 2012 at 3:22 PM

    It's amazing how much complexity is present in even the simplest organisms.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Valerie KamikuboDecember 12, 2012 at 4:42 PM

    kind of like the Borg of the mold world, I guess :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousDecember 12, 2012 at 9:07 PM

    Sounds like they get very worked-up.

    ReplyDelete

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