Science Snippets
Sly Little Slime Molds - Episode 1
By Fred Baer
April, 2004
One day I was talking with Slim, a slime mold of my acquaintance. I was saying that since we were both multi-celled creatures, we were practically brothers when compared to the single celled creatures such as bacteria and amebas. Slim hooted at me and said that for such a complex creature, I certainly had some simple ideas.
Being slammed by a slime mold destroyed all my feeling of brotherhood but left my curiosity in intact. “What do you mean by that?” demanded I.
“Take a close look at me,” directed Slim.
“I’m looking and you pretty much look as you did when I got here,” observed I. You look like colorless gelatin that has not quite set but which has been poured on a log. Or you look like a much oversized, flat ameba that, instead of staying in pretty much one lump, is putting out streamers of itself, slowly oozing around in a way that gives me the willies. I doubt that you weigh more than an ounce or so, but that is more than enough to tell me you are a multi-celled creature such as myself.”
“No, no,” ordered Slim, “take a close look.”
Fortunately, while sweeping some granola bars into my daypack, I also had absent-mindedly swept in a laboratory grade microscope. I took a closer look, expecting to see a bunch of cells, each with an outer membrane surrounding a bunch of translucent goop plus a dark cell nucleus. I did see a bunch of cell nuclei and lots of goop but no membranes dividing things up. As Slim slowly extended a branch of himself, goop and nuclei flowed into the branch.
“Shazam,” marveled I. “I guess my ideas were a bit simple. Are you one big cell or a bunch of cells that are unusually friendly?” inquired I.
“Biologists refer to me as a true, or acellular, slime mold, spake Slim. That lets them duck the question. And sorry about the oozing giving you the willies, but I'm pursuing bacteria, which taste delicious though not at all like chicken”
“This has certainly been an eye opener,” admitted I. “Not the part about biologist ducking the question but your construction. I doubt there is anything else like you.”
“Not so,” corrected Slim. “Certain algae are essentially a giant cell with many nuclei. And in your own muscles, the individual muscle fibers are made by the joining of many muscle cells into a single, long strand with many nuclei. Go on and dig one out and look at it under your microscope.”
“Uh, maybe later,” temporized I. “I really should be getting home.”
“Don’t rush off yet,” called Slim. “There’s more to my story. For example, right now I am in the form known as a ‘plasmodium’. (If a biologist can’t duck an issue, he will obscure the matter with a long Greek or Latin word.) Should I encounter another plasmodium, we can merge into a single, larger plasmodium.”
“Doesn’t that get a bit confusing for you?” queried I.
“No,” explained Slim, “it always works out. We are truly two become as one. It puts human marriage to shame and doesn’t involve all that human hanky-panky.”
“Weird indeed!” exclaimed I, turning to go. I did not want Slim inviting me once again to dig out one of my muscle fibers.
“Wait, wait,” begged Slim, “it gets weirder. Right now I’m in my plasmodium stage, but eventually food or moisture will get short. If that happens quickly, I form a thick wall about myself and try to ride things out while in a kind of suspended animation. If the change is slower, I put up a bunch of little stalks with globes on top. These globes contain individual, all by their lonesome, cells. Well actually they are spores, a kind of heavy-duty cell. These spores get released and carried by the wind for miles and miles. If they come down in a good area, they more or less hatch into ameba-like things, feeding and repeatedly dividing – each division produces two critters from one. If conditions are not so good, the spores can wait years and years until conditions get better.
“Weirder, indeed,” professed I. “But what happens to you and what happens to the ameba things?”
“I die,” sighed Slim. “There’s no avoiding it. But it’s the kiddies that count. From time to time, two ameba-like things will fuse together (our version of hanky-panky) and then they will become a small plasmodium. While growing, areas of the plasmodium will do something like an ameba dividing, except you get two nuclei from one but the goop stays together. No splitting into individual cells.”
“Amazing,” blurted I. “I hate to sound speciesist, but you certainly know a lot for a slime mold.”
Slim moved about a bit and, from somewhere, produced a tiny Mensa membership card.
“Goodness,” wondered I (getting most of the straight lines), “what’s your local group?”
Now there is no way a slime mold can smile, but Slim somehow conveyed the impression of a ‘gotch ya’ smile. “We call ourselves Border Slime,” allowed Slim.
“Sorry I asked,” grumped I.
“Hey, don’t go off angry,” ejaculated1 Slim. “It’s just our little joke. And there are about 500 varieties of us acellular slime molds with various sizes, colors and tricks. Why not interview the others? I’m sure everyone wants to know about the Dog Vomit slime mold.”
“Waste of time,” opined I, “The slimes…er, members of my local group have short attention spans. I doubt they’ll manage to read this far. If they do manage, they will probably know more about acellular slime molds then they care to.”
“No doubt,” agreed Slim, “but we have some cellular slime mold relatives. While they do have funny accents, they also have a really neat trick that we true slime molds don’t have.” He pointed with a goopy appendage that he had just formed. “If you walk over there you can meet some of them.”
“Maybe in the next episode,” semi-promised I.
“Why not now?” questioned Slim. “You can use the rest of this page.”
“Two reasons,” stated I. “First reason is that short attention span business I mentioned. This article has been more than a snippet.”
“And the second reason?” asked Slim.
“I want to leave room so that the editor will have to try to come up with a suitable drawing for this episode,” laughed I.
1Gentle reader, please check your dictionary before phoning me about this word. Of course, if you do call, we might enjoy the intercourse, but I’d rather not be queried.
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