How do they do that? It seems that they have the same kinds of (or similar) proteins that our muscle cells have. These protein filaments can contract and make the cytoplasm move. It looks a lot more complicated than that to me, but that has always been the draw of these "wee beasties"... they act in what seem to be very complex ways.
You can see the same kind of thing happen without a microscope if you look at a plasmodial slime mold. Plasmodial slime molds are also protists, like the amoeba, but they fuse together and make what is essentially a really big cell that has a lot of nuclei in it. You can watch these things flow around without a microscope... and I still find it so exciting to watch that I wanted to share it with you.
In this You Tube Video you can see a slime mold start out in one lump and spread out to cover nearby objects... flowing in a complex-looking, fascinating, and slightly disgusting way.
Links:
Actin and Myosin in Nonmuscle Cells (from an online cell biology text)
You and 30 of your closest friends could culture your own slime mold for less than $1.00 each.
An Abstract from a paper about the toxicity of ethanol and some other chemicals on Plasmodial Slime Molds.
Word of The Day
Cytoplasm: The jelly-like contents of a cell.
Cytoplasm: The jelly-like contents of a cell.
3 comments:
Ack!
I watched the YouTube video of the Physarum.
Sorta like a Frankenstein Egg Yolk on crack.
I remember in 6th grade, when I first learned that water has microorganisms in it. ("Wee Beasties!")
It grossed me out so much I couldn't stand to drink water for awhile.
Even these days, I prefer drinking bottled water that's been "steam distilled"... under the hopeful thought that the steam has killed all the creepy crawly things.
Yes.
I'm a wuss. :)
I guess I hadn't really looked at it from that perspective. I probably shouldn't tell you about all the things that live on a healthy human being's skin, huh?
I am not going to watch the video right now. Because my stomach is already on the quezy side of life...
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