IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-3-642-88343-9_5.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Differentiation in the Cellular Slime Mold

In: Systems Theory and Biology

Author

Listed:
  • Barbara E. Wright

    (The John Collins Warren Laboratories of the Huntington Memorial Hospital of Harvard University at the Massachusetts General Hospital)

Abstract

I have been asked to speak about the cellular slime mold as a model system for analyzing the biochemical basis of differentiation. It is a model system by two reasonable and useful definitions. If one usually thinks of differentiation or morphogenesis as something properly experienced only by organisms at least as complicated as a sea urchin, then the lowly slime mold is only a model, which exhibits behavior closely resembling differentiation. In this context, I shall describe many characteristics of the slime mold which are amazingly similar to, and undoubtedly the ancestor of, differentiation in higher organisms. Of course, if one is a firm believer in evolution and comparative biochemistry, he may consider slime mold behavior quite respectable enough to include in his definition of differentiation. In that event, when we study the slime mold we are not looking hopefully at a model system: we are looking at the real thing!

Suggested Citation

  • Barbara E. Wright, 1968. "Differentiation in the Cellular Slime Mold," Springer Books, in: M. D. Mesarović (ed.), Systems Theory and Biology, pages 115-129, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-642-88343-9_5
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-88343-9_5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-642-88343-9_5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.