• The Slime That Smiles

    by Heidi Ar­jes — Have you ever won­dered how in­di­vid­ual fin­gers form? If you have taken a de­vel­op­men­tal bi­ol­ogy class, you know that the hand first de­vel­ops as a mit­ten-like struc­ture with the fu­ture fin­gers con­nected (Fig­ure 1). Later, dur­ing nor­mal de­vel­op­ment, the cells in the ar­eas be­tween the fin­gers un­dergo pro­grammed cell death, and thus…

  • Farmer Joe Dic­tyostelium

    by Elio — The prac­tice of agri­cul­ture is not lim­ited to hu­mans: ants, ter­mites, and snails all grow fungi, and who knows who else do some­thing sim­i­lar. But not many have claimed that such ac­tiv­i­ties are to be found among sim­pler or­gan­isms. Now we have a re­port that slime molds have also…