4. Cellular Slime Molds

The cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum is a simple organism with only a few cell types. This simplicity allows students to ask sophisticated questions and obtain results that are relatively easily interpreted.

In this chapter, students are first given a detailed description of the organism’s life cycle and instructed on how to culture the organism.

They are then given experimental procedures for:

Labeling with vital dyes
Transecting, grafting and disaggregating the grex
Disrupting cyclic AMP levels
Behavioral studies