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TIME LAPSE of slime mold colony growth over 8 hours, forming a giant fruiting body, a new community structure. https://lnkd.in/gNYfh5m View in LinkedIn

A COLONIAL SLIME MOLD composed of voluntary individuals. https://lnkd.in/gzgbvqF View in LinkedIn

ANT SWARM INTELLIGENCE. “Ant colonies solve mazes using swarm intelligence. Swarm intelligence allows groups of organisms to solve problems that exceed the cognitive capabilities of individuals. Consider the case of an ant colony solving a maze. Many ants begin to walk the maze at random, depositing a trail of volatile pheromones behind them. The ant traffic which happens to flow along the shortest path of the maze can make more return trips (and hence lay more pheromone).” https://academic.oup.com/femsre/article/40/6/798/2400841 View in LinkedIn

SWARM INTELLIGENCE. “The study of collective behaviour aims to understand how individual-level behaviours can lead to complex group-level patterns. Collective behaviour has primarily been studied in animal groups such as colonies of insects, flocks of birds and schools of fish.” https://lnkd.in/gXKQQtM View in LinkedIn

COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR. “Collective behaviour is apparent at all levels of biological organisation; bacteria act together to form rafts, plague-locusts march cohesively in bands, tiny termites build immense, sophisticated structures, swarms of honeybees ‘vote’ democratically for the location of their new home, and flocks of starlings collectively sense the direction of a predator's attack by compression waves propagating through the group.” https://lnkd.in/gxSdyJh View in LinkedIn

EXACTING POSITION. "Cells at the leading edge of any long lineage do not have the identical molecular content as existed in the founding cell. Even in non-dividing cells, molecular turnover must occur leading to the conclusion that, like dividing cells, non-dividing cells also are not molecularly identical after the passage of time." (L. Haflick, contrarian). https://lnkd.in/esfPTAR View in LinkedIn

FORMING NEW STRUCTURES. “The chemical waves of aggregating Dictyostelium are an excellent example of collective pattern formation. Waves induce chemotaxis towards their centres and can be either circular or spiral in shape; cells aggregating at the centre of each shape will ultimately form a spore body.” https://academic.oup.com/femsre/article/40/6/798/2400841 View in LinkedIn

ARGUMENTATIVE POSITION. "There is a tenable argument that the germ plasm is not immortal because molecules at the end of a lineage of zygotes are not identical to those in the founding gametes." https://lnkd.in/esfPTAR View in LinkedIn

VIBRATING SIGNAL. “When the slime mold senses attractants, such as food, via specific binding to receptor molecules presented on the outer membrane surface, the oscillation frequency in the area closest to the food increases, causing cytoplasm to flow toward the attractant. Additionally, binding of attractant molecules to sections of the surface membrane reduces the tension at that section, leading to a difference in internal hydrostatic pressure, such that cytoplasm flows toward the source of attractants.” http://www.pnas.org/content/109/43/17490.full View in LinkedIn

ALL MOLECULES TURN OVER. "In 1891 August Weismann proposed that the germ plasm is immortal. Yet, the repeated replication and repair of DNA results in molecules that do not contain atoms of the same nucleotides present in the DNA of a founding cell." (L. Haflick, the brilliant contrarian, adopting an overly rigid definition of immortality). https://lnkd.in/esfPTAR View in LinkedIn