Funny how biology makes everything better.

[stellarwind]

I've been hideously mood-swingy since Thursday for reasons I don't feel like writing about in an open entry. And today, during a chem lecture I literally was fighting back tears for the very same reasons. I felt utterly hideous.

Then we had a Cell to Organism lecture and the lecturer mentioned a single-celled organism named Dictyostelium discoideum , which displays a particularly fascinating trait: In conditions of lack of food, huge masses of Dictyostelium flock together and form a mock-multicellular slug-like organism, in which each of the cells serves a different function and the mass crawls off in search of more food sources. When such a 'slug' finds a location where the conditions are right, it transforms into a stalk-like structure with a fruiting body (similar to a mushroom, almost) which scatters spores. As the multicellular critter dissolves slowly, under the right conditions these spores 'sprout' into new single-cellular Dictyostelium , and the cycle begins again.

That was -so- awesome, it made me feel much better almost instantaneously.

... I'm a complete and utter geek.

Comments

[wintersheir]

Heyyyyy, I'd never heard of that before. That's awesome.