http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/2009/04/10#slime-molds <P>Like almost everyone else who comes to this from a mathematical background, I am particularly interested in <em>Dictyostelium</em>. Depending on one's point of view, this is either a single-celled amoebae which can cooperate to form structures ensuring better dispersal when food gets scarce; or a differentiated multicellular organism where forming a new organism doesn't require merging two gametes, but many, without a notion of sex. Or it's an excitable medium. <P>See also: <a href="development-bio.html">Developmental Biology</a>; <a href="excitable-media.html">Excitable Media</a>; <a href="pattern-formation.html">Pattern Formation</a>; <a href="self-organization.html">Self-Organization</a> <ul>Recommended: <li><a href="j-t-bonner.html">John Tyler Bonner</a> <ul> <li><cite>The Cellular Slime Molds</cite> <li><citE>The Social Amoebae: The Biology of Cellular Slime Molds</cite> [<a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8952.html">Blurb, ch. 1</a>. My <a href="../weblog/algae-2009-02.html#bonner">mini-review</a>] </ul> <li>Owen M. Gilbert, David C. Queller and Joan E. Strassmann, "Discovery of a large clonal patch of a social amoeba: implications for social evolution", <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2009.04108.x"><cite>Molecular Ecology</cite> <strong>18</strong> (2009): 1273--1281</a> [<a href="http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~evolve/pdf/2009/gilbert_MolEcol2009.pdf">Reprint</a>] <li>Satoshi Sawai, Peter A. Thomason and Edward C. Cox, "An autoregulatory circuit for long-range self-organization in <em>Dictyostelium</em> cell populations", <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature03228"><cite>Nature</cite> <strong>433</strong> (2005): 323--326</a> </ul> <ul>To read: <li>Richard H. Kessin, <cite> Dictyostelium: Evolution, Cell Biology, and the Development of Multicellularity</cite> [<a href="http://www.cambridge.org/0521583640">Blurb</a>] <li>Wouter-Jan Rappel, Alastair Nicol, Armand Sarkissian, Herbert Levine and William F. Loomis, "Self-Organized Vortex State in Two-Dimensional <em>Dictyostelium</em> Dynamics," <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/patt-sol/9811001">patt-sol/9811001</a> </ul>