http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/slime-molds/
Searching for Network Laws in Slime
Brandon Keim
Dictyostelium discoideum is a single celled amoeba that is better known as “Slime Mold”. This amazing organism is currently being studied to solve several biological mysteries that scientists are eager to find solutions to. When this “Slime Mold” runs out of food, millions of these combine into one slug like creature and then they wander around the environment in search of nutrients. Once nutrients have been found, they form a mushroom like figure, scatter as spores and the process repeats itself. Researchers hope to find answers through unique and mysterious processes like these. Biologist Ted Cox thinks that the same dynamics that govern the Slime mold, likely explain how calcium levels during the beating of a heart are regulated. Also, the fluxes that regulate ones mood through transmitters are likely to behave in a certain way.
Cox also has a theory on how these amazing organisms find food. He says that before the slug-like organism searches for food, it has to form. Forming, according to Cox, “inevitably causes damage” to other organisms around and also other essential cellular systems. This process is called, “altruistic cooperation”, which is a current topic that fascinates Biologists today. Biologist Joan Strassman believes there are “social interactions” going on in the organisms in our skin. She believes that this can tell us how microbes interact with each other.
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