slime moulds

a group of organisms with characteristics of both fungi and animals. Cellular slime moulds can exist as individual amoeboid cells feeding on bacteria and fungi by PHAGOCYTOSIS. Under unfavourable conditions, an individual cell secretes cAMP, which attracts other cells towards it, so that the cells aggregate to form a single structure. This becomes enclosed in a slimy sheath (slug). Spores are formed and germinate when conditions become favourable, to form single amoeboid cells. Plasmodial slime moulds are acellular and exist as a mass of protoplasm with many nuclei, which moves like a giant amoeba (see MYXOMYCOTA). Slime moulds are grouped in the kingdom PROTISTA in the five kingdom CLASSIFICATION system. However, they have been grouped in the MYCOTA in some classifications. In modern classifications they are in the DOMAIN EUCARYA.

Collins Dictionary of Biology, 3rd ed. © W. G. Hale, V. A. Saunders, J. P. Margham 2005

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References in periodicals archive

In some conditions, slime moulds switch to a completely different form and their colourful reproductive bodies appear on the surface of rotten wood, plant debris or earth and this is what the visitor spotted at Castle Eden Dene.

Rare slime mould is found at nature site

The slime moulds are not intelligent as we understand it, but by flexibly responding to stresses like light, and adapting, they are able to solve navigation problems that would perplex computers.

Slime mould may become basis of future 'bio computers'

"The sense of smell has been observed in many creatures, even yeasts and slime moulds, but our work shows for the first time that a sense of smell even exists in lowly bacteria.

The smelly truth is out; Bacteria can sniff out their opponents

Jeff Hasty at the University of California, San Diego, and his team took elements from a natural communication system used by bacteria and slime moulds known as quorum sensing to design engineered bacteria that glow in synchrony.

Scientists engineer bacteria to glow in sync

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