One, two, ... 20,000 slime mold cells.The next time proud parents go on about how their young child has learned to count, point out that a single-cell organism, Dictyostelium discoideum, can do the same or better. If starved starve v. starved, starv·ing, starves v.intr. 1. To suffer or die from extreme or prolonged lack of food. 2. Informal To be hungry. 3. To suffer from deprivation. , D. discoideum cells aggregate into mushroom-like structures. The top part, the fruiting body, then floats away in search of a more nutrient-rich environment. This survival strategy depends on accurate counting, notes Richard H. Gomer Gomer (gō`mər), in the Bible. 1 Wife of the prophet Hosea. 2 Son of Japheth and eponym of a people, probably the Cimmerians. Gomer Hosea’s wanton wife. [O.T. of the Howard Hughes Institute at Rice University in Houston. If an aggregate contains many fewer than 20,000 cells, its stalk stalk (stawk) an elongated anatomical structure resembling the stem of a plant. allantoic stalk won't be high enough for the fruiting body to fly very far. If the aggregate contains too many cells, the stalk buckles This article is about the comic strip. For the fastener, see Buckle Buckles is a comic strip by David Gilbert about the misadventures of a naïve dog. Buckles debuted on March 25, 1996. . Gomer's team found that D. discoideum secretes a small protein, countin, that helps cells sense how many relatives are around them. When the cells can't make countin, they can't gauge the number of cells in the starvation-induced aggregate. The mushroomlike structure gets too big and collapses. |
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