Slime Molds

Kingdom Protoctista
• MYXOMYCOTA
• Kelas slime molds:
– Plasmodiophoromycetes—endoparasiticslime molds
– Dictyosteliomycetes—cellular slime molds
– Acrasiomycota—cellular slime molds

– Myxomycetes—plasmodial slime molds

 Slime molds
• An organism that produces a trophic stage
that lacks a cell wall; phagotrophic
• Trophic stages:
– amoebae
– plasmodia
 Amoeba or plasmodium?

• Amoebae are
uninucleate
• Plasmodia are
multinucleate
• Both lack cell
walls, engulf food,
and can multiply

http://www.planet-pets.com/plntamba.htm
 Cellular Slime Molds
• Two phyla
– Dictyosteliomycota (dicytostelids)
• Primarily in soil
– Acrasiomycota (acrasids)
• On dead plant parts, tree bark, dung and soil
• Trophic stage comprises uninucleate cells
(myxamoebae) that aggregate
 Dictyostelids
• Three genera, 50 species
• First discovered in 1869 by Oskar Brefeld
• Dictyostelium discoideum isolated by Kenneth
Raper (1935)
– important model organism for study of
cytokinesis, signalling, chemotaxis, phagocytosis,
motility, cell sorting, cell-type determination
– See DictyBase http://dictybase.org/dicty.html
http://web1.manhattan.edu/fcardill/plants/protoc/dicty.html
 Dictyostelium life cycle
• Free-living, uninucleate
haploid myxamoebae
with filose pseudopodia
emerge from spores

www.image1.com/images/ timelapse-movie.gif
 Dictyostelium life cycle
• Myxamoebae aggregate
in response to chemical
signal (cAMP);
aggregating amoebae
adhere end-to-end

www-biology.ucsd.edu/labs/ loomis/agg-stream2.jpeg
 Dictyostelium life cycle
• Pseudoplasmodium
(non-feeding stage),
also called slug, formed
of 10- to 50,000
individual amoebae
encased in cellulose
sheath
• Migrate in response to
temperature, light,
relative humidity

www.germany-info.org/relaunch/ education/new/edu_genome.html
 Life cycle continued

• Culmination results in
formation of sorocarp

http://niko.unl.edu/bs101/pix/dd1.gif
Spores

Cells in anterior
direct the
pseudoplasmodium,
but are destined to Cells in posterior
become stalk cells will become
spores

Cellulose
sheath
secreted by Direction of movement
amoebae of pseudoplasmodium
 Dictyostelid life cycle

http://www.zi.biologie.uni-muenchen.de/zoologie/dicty/dicty.html
Plasmodial Slime Molds
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/chromista/chromistasy.html

Ribosomal RNA phylogenies place slime molds as unrelated, early

branching eurkaryote lineages
 Baldauf and Doolittle, 1997. PNAS 94
(22): 12007-12012

Actin, elongation factor, and β-tubulin phylogenies place the plasmodial and
cellular slime molds as a monophyletic group close to Animal + FungI
 Myxomycota
• Myxomycetes--5 orders, 13 families, 62
genera, 800 species
• Characterized by plasmodium
– Engulfs bacteria, fungal spores, small pieces of
organic matter
 Physarum life cycle
meiosis

microcyst karyogamy

Synchronous mitotic divisions

macrocyst
 Stages in Life Cycle
• Spores (2nn)
– 4-20 µm, pigmented
ornamented; meiosis in
spore = 4 nuclei; 3
degenerate
 Stages in Life Cycle

• Myxamoebae (n)
– feed, divide, convert to
swarm cells, function as
gametes; form
microcysts under
adverse conditions

www.uoguelph.ca/~gbarron/ MISCE2002/myxamo2.jpg
 Stages in Life Cycle
• Swarm cells (n)
– 1-4 anterior whiplash
flagella, amoeboid
posterior; feed
(absorption and
engulfment), function as
gametes
– can’t undergo cell
division

http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/wong/Bot201/Myxomycota/S
warm_Cells2.jpg
 Stages in Life Cycle
• Zygote (2n)
– Formed by fusion of myxamoebae or swarm
cells; enlarges through synchronous nuclear
division
• Plasmodium (2n)
– Multinucleate, wall-less protoplasm

Photo by Stephen Sharnoff

http://www.plant.uga.edu/mycology-
herbarium/myxogal/Physros3.jpg
 Stages in Life Cycle
• Sporophore (2n)
– Entire plasmodium is
converted into
sporophore(s)
• Sclerotium or
macrocyst (2n)
– Resistant stage formed
by plasmodium
Sporocarp—stalked or sessile

May have columella 

 Plasmodiocarp
– Sporophore developing
along veins of
phaneroplasmodium;
takes on reticulate shape
of veins
Photo by Stephen Sharnoff
Liceales-- Pale or brown spores, capillitium and lime absent,
pseudocapillitium may be present

Dictydium

Lycogala Photo by Stephen Sharnoff

Trichiales--Pale spores (yellow, orange or red) and abundant, conspicuous
capillitium

Trichia

Arcyria
Physarales--Purplish-brown spores, usually with abundant and
conspicuous lime on or in sporophore

Badhamia

Leocarpus Fuligo
Stemonitales--Violet-brown spores, lime absent

Lamproderma

Diachea
Photo by Stephen Sharnoff

Stemonitis
 Ceratiomyxales--Exosporous sporophores; probably belongs in
protostelids (one genus, Ceratiomyxa)

Photo by Stephen Sharnoff Photo by David Geiser

Fungus-like Protista
Myxomycota, Myxomycetes, true "Slime Molds", Plasmodial slime molds

The plasmodial slime molds are a group of fungus-like organisms usually

present and sometimes abundant in terrestrial ecosystems. The myxomycete
life cycle involves two very different trophic (feeding) stages, one consisting of
uninucleate amoebae, with or without flagella, and the other consisting of a
distinctive multinucleate structure, the plasmodium. Under favorable conditions,
the plasmodium gives rise to one or more fruiting bodies containing spores.
The spores germinate to produce the uninucleate amoebae.

The vegetative stage is essentially a multinucleate mass of protoplasm (called

a plasmodium) composed of numerous diploid nuclei. Depending on the
species, the plasmodium may be only a few millimeters in diameter to large
pizza-sized slime molds. Plasmodia typically occur in cool, moist, shady places
such as within crevices of decaying wood and in leaf litter on the forest floor.
The plasmodium moves like a giant amoeba, flowing over the surface as it
ingests organic matter, such as dead leaves and wood. It may be brightly
colored, such as the yellow Physarum polycephalum. Slime molds are
important heterotrophs in the decomposition of dead organic matter in
temperate and tropical forests.
The transformation of the plasmodium into spore-bearing "fruiting bodies" or
fructifications can occur within hours. The fruiting bodies produced by
myxomycetes are somewhat suggestive of those produced by higher fungi,
although they are considerably smaller (usually no more than 1-2 mm tall).

The life cycle of a slime mold begins with a haploid spore which is produced
inside the fructification. The germinated spore can transform into an amoeba.
Myxamoeba divide into large populations. Two myxamoeba cells may join
together in a cellular fusion (plasmogamy) followed by nuclear fusion
(karyogamy). The combining of their cell contents (protoplasts) represents a
very primitive form of sexual reproduction. The fusion of two haploid cells
results in a diploid zygote which transforms into a developing plasmodium. As
the diploid nuclei divide, the plasmodium grows larger and larger, slowly
moving (creeping) along the forest floor and feeding like a giant amoeba.

There are approximately 1000 recognized species of myxomycetes. The

majority of species are probably cosmopolitan, but a few species appear to be
confined to the tropics or subtropics and some others have been collected only
in temperate regions.
Acrasiomycota, cellular slime molds

Cellular slime molds spend most of their lives as separate single-celled

amoeboid protists, but upon the release of a chemical signal, the individual
cells aggregate into a great swarm. Cellular slime molds are thus of great
interest to cell and developmental biologists, because they provide a
comparatively simple and easily manipulated system for understanding how
cells interact to generate a multicellular organism.
Cellular slime molds, the second major group of slime molds, exist as minute
"amoeba" during their growth phase. Each amoeba contains a single nucleus.
The amoebae crawl through dung, soil, rotting mushrooms, decaying leaves
and other organic material at an average speed of 1 mm per hour. When
conditions are right, all the amoebae in an area join together to create a
pseudoplasmodium, a "fake plasmodium".
Dictyostelium discoideum Genome Project
Dictyostelium discoideum, a soil-living amoeba, is an excellent organism for the
study of the molecular mechanisms of cell motility, signal transduction, cell-type
differentiation and developmental processes. Genes involved in any of these
processes can be knocked-out rapidly by targeted homologous recombination.
Since Dictyostelium is haploid, mutants are readily isolated. The determination
of the entire information content of the Dictyostelium genome will be of great
value to those working with this organism directly, as well as to those who
would like to determine the functions of homologous genes from other species.
        The hereditary information is carried on 6 chromosomes with sizes
ranging from 4 to 7 Mb resulting in a total of about 34 Mb of DNA, a multicopy
90 kb extrachromosomal element that harbours the rRNA genes, and the 55 kb
mitochondrial genome. The number of genes in the genome is about 12,500
and many of the known genes show a high degree of sequence similarity to
homologues in vertebrate species.
        The Dictyostelium discoideum genome project is an international
collaboration. We are pleased to announce the completion of the genome
sequence of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum (Eichinger et al.,
Nature 435, 43-57, 2005). DNA microarrays of about 6.000 Dictyostelium
genes are constructed.