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FRAGMENT FROM NATURE is the last of two weekends considering the curious mind of the slime mold, who have no brain and no nervous system. Like trained platyhelminthes fed to their untrained companions, there is evidence of memory traces in fused slime molds. Some undetermined chemical that carries very specific and complex information. Enjoy this lovely creature. View in LinkedIn

CONTRARIAN VIEW. "Thus, August Weismann may have been wrong not only because molecular turnover is inevitable in all cell lineages but because the alleged immortality of the germ plasm takes place only under conditions of periodic genetic recombination. By themselves gametes and the germ plasm are not an immortal lineage." (L. Haflick, contrarian). https://lnkd.in/esfPTAR View in LinkedIn

IMMORTAL DAMAGE? "It is proposed here that somatic stem cell maintenance mechanisms lead to preferential accumulation, rather than disposal, of damaged stem cells. On the other hand stringent selection in the germline renders this lineage seemingly immortal." https://lnkd.in/gNUQf4C View in LinkedIn

APPROXIMATE FIDELITY. "A closer approximation to fidelity is that each zygote in the lineage contains the same genetic information as does its precursors following fertilization. This is dubious because of the occurrence of mutations, one of the few universal properties of life." (L. Haflick, contrarian). https://lnkd.in/esfPTAR View in LinkedIn

ORIGIN OF GERM LINE. "The molecular events that trigger the separation of the germ line from the soma in the early embryo are still largely undefined." http://www.reproduction-online.org/content/revreprod/5/2/93.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

ELECTRICALLY CONDUCTING TUBES. “The slime mold is capable of sensing tactile, chemical, and optical stimuli and converting them to characteristic patterns of its electrical potential oscillations. The electrical responses to stimuli may propagate along protoplasmic tubes for distances exceeding tens of centimeters, as impulses in neural pathways do.” https://lnkd.in/gC3MaMJ View in LinkedIn

MIND MELD. “Our world is filled with sensory inputs that we experience and share. But imagine yourself stripped of sight, sound, taste or smell. How would you learn from others? How would you teach what you know? You couldn't simply push your brain, with all its knowledge, into another's head. Yet, this is essentially what slime molds do. By fusing together, they share information. And, as the authors have shown, as more individuals fuse, the faster they learn.” http://jeb.biologists.org/content/220/7/1166.1 View in LinkedIn

MEMORY TRANSMISSION. “When the team fused a habituated slime mold with an unhabituated one, they found that the unhabituated individual gained the salt habituation of the other. Something, as yet unidentified, thus carried durable memories from one individual to another.” http://jeb.biologists.org/content/220/7/1166.1 View in LinkedIn

MOLECULAR MEMORIES. “Habituation and recovery may not seem especially advanced. However, they require a form of basic learning coupled to a type of memory. Given this, the team reasoned that this physical memory could potentially be transmissible. When slime molds meet each other they can undergo cellular fusion, whereby the two formerly independent individuals join forces to form a larger single entity. If fused cells can share nuclei and cytoplasm, why not their memories too?” http://jeb.biologists.org/content/220/7/1166.1 View in LinkedIn

THE LEARNING TEST. “Few people would look towards slime molds as the poster-child of intelligence. Yet, over several decades of work, these multi-nucleate bags of goo have been found to be capable of surprising feats of cleverness. They can navigate complex mazes, optimize nutritional challenges and even find their way through a miniature version of the Tokyo subway system; they show swarm, or collective, intelligence. But can they learn?” https://lnkd.in/gK2jtCA View in LinkedIn