Meet The Blob

[TBRS1]

The "Computers, Science & Technology" section is a bit light on the squishy, oozey bio-sciences. Let me alter that a bit by inroducing The Blob.

The Blob is a slime mold that goes by several names. In school they call it "Physarum," at home it is named The Dog Vomit Slime Mold. If you want to be nice, you could call it "Witches Butter."

When it is warm and damp out, you can capture your own, but, since it is December, I bought a scletata - a chunck of slime mold in suspended animation, attached to a bit of coffee filter. You can see the original scletata in the above photograph. This is what the sclerata looks like under my 'scope:

I put it in a damp petri dish and a few hours later it had already begun to slither about:

Pretty quickly it begins to fan out, hunting for food:

When it finds something to eat, the fans ooze back into the general mass of the slime mold, leaving optimized connections between multiple food sources and the main bulk of the slime mold:

Fun slime mold facts - slime molds have no brains, or even a central nervous system, yet they can figure out how to run mazes. They have no brains or nervous system because, even though the slime mold is larger than the American penny in the photo, the slime mold is one single large cell that can crawl around.

Normally, a cell has a single nucleus, but the slime mold is able to pull off the trick of being a huge single cell by having thousands of nuclei.

If I cut my slime mold apart, I wll have a bunch of genetically identical slime molds that can go off and live happily alone, but if the pieces ever meet again, they will fuse and become one single slime mold again.

Due to the way the slime mold fans out while hunting, then collapses into an optimized food transport network, slime molds can be used to map out the most efficient networks between cities by placing food on a plate in locations that correspond to cities on a map, usng light (slime molds avoid light) to represent barriers like lakes or mountains, and letting the slime mold do the work.

Crazy little slime mold!

 

[Neonatal RRT]

I enjoyed my mycology classes back in the day. People have little idea of just how important molds and fungi are in our environment, the relationships they have with the animal and plant kingdoms.

Interesting life forms, for sure.

 

[Misery]

I cant not add this to the topic:

 

[TBRS1]

I cant not add this to the topic:

I will forever more refer to chromosomes as "a book of spells," and myself as a "science hippy."

I love True Facts (except the one about the frog that gives birth through its back), but I hadn't seen the Slime mold show.

 

[Aspychata]

This reminds of my neighbors, they have no brains, but l am sure they can run mazes, drink beer, and be total jerks.
Edit: they can run thru mazes with beer cans in both hands.

 

[Outdated]

People have little idea of just how important molds and fungi are in our environment, the relationships they have with the animal and plant kingdoms.

This is something a lot of people here are being incredibly slow to accept. A lot of Australian trees have symbiotic relationships with fungii, but they need to be correctly matched. Different species of tree require different species of fungi. Those fungii also rely on being partnered with their specific breed of tree.

This is why so many rewilding projects fail. If an area has been cleared of trees and used as grazing land for a lengthy period of time then the fungi trees rely on are gone. And if there isn't enough shade and the ground gets too hot from the sun then the fungi can't be reintroduced.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

The slime molds that interested me were the Acrasiales, cellular slime molds. When two cells fuse the fused cell pulses cyclic AMP. Other cells home in on that and forms into a slug that crawls along before sprouting a fruiting body. I wanted to use them as a model for developmental genetics.

 

[TBRS1]

This is something a lot of people here are being incredibly slow to accept. A lot of Australian trees have symbiotic relationships with fungii, but they need to be correctly matched. Different species of tree require different species of fungi. Those fungii also rely on being partnered with their specific breed of tree.

This is why so many rewilding projects fail. If an area has been cleared of trees and used as grazing land for a lengthy period of time then the fungi trees rely on are gone. And if there isn't enough shade and the ground gets too hot from the sun then the fungi can't be reintroduced.

This is a part of the reason for the failure of the "Biosphere 2" project back in '79, '80. They tried to do it without any understanding of the interactions between micro and macro organisms.

It was shortly afterward that scientists began investing time, cash, and brainpower in understanding soil microbes. Now, it's "Duh! Of course stuff too tiny to see makes a difference..."

 

[Outdated]

It was shortly afterward that scientists began investing time, cash, and brainpower in understanding soil microbes. Now, it's "Duh! Of course stuff too tiny to see makes a difference..."

The thing is, orchid breeders have known about this relationship since the 1960s, so have market gardeners and fruit growers. That's what a university education does for you.

 

[Judge]

I just remember Steve McQueen fighting the "Blob". And the Japanese fighting the "H-Man".

Scared the hell outta me as a kid....lol.