True Facts: The Smartest Slime

True Facts: The Smartest Slime

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merch: https://ze-true-store.myshopify.com/
patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truefacts

Patreon patron Peggy Casey came up with the scarecrow joke!!!
Bea Leiderman- https://www.instagram.com/bealeiderman/
Dr Simon Garnier, New Jersey Institute of Technology
Dr Audrey Dussutour, CNRS – Universite Paul Sabatier
Dr Bernard Jenni
Dr Edvin Johannesen, Natural History Museum Oslo
Benedikt Pleyer: https://www.youtube.com/NomadicNostoc
Dr Kathie Hodge, Cornell University
Kent Loeffler, Cornell University
Sarah Lloyd, National Herbarium of Victoria (MEL)
https://www.instagram.com/sarah.lloyd.tasmania/
Alison Pollack
https://www.instagram.com/marin_mushrooms/
Dr Fred Spiegel, University of Arkansas
Dr Steven L. Stephenson, University of Arkansas
Cornell Center for Fungal Biology
Swarm Lab, New Jersey Institute of Technology
https://www.theswarmlab.com/
Nanolive.ch
https://www.youtube.com/c/NanoliveChLookinginsidelife
Anna Grinčuka
https://www.youtube.com/@annagrincuka3277
TIB – https://www.tib.eu/en/

Adamatzky, Andrew et al. (2012). Are motorways rational from slime mould’s point of view?. International Journal of Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems – IJPEDS. 28. 10.1080/17445760.2012.685884.

Boisseau, R. P., Vogel, D., & Dussutour, A. (2016). Habituation in non-neural organisms: evidence from slime moulds. Proceedings. Biological sciences, 283(1829), 20160446. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.0446

Boussard, A. et al. (2019). Memory inception and preservation in slime moulds: the quest for a common mechanism. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 374(1774), 20180368.

Chen B,et al. Three-dimensional positioning and structure of chromosomes in a human prophase nucleus. Sci Adv. 2017 Jul 21;3(7):e1602231. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1602231. PMID: 28776025; PMCID: PMC5521992.

Dussutour, A. et al. (2010). Amoeboid organism solves complex nutritional challenges. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(10), 4607–4611. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0912198107

Jabr, F. How brainless slime molds redefine intelligence. Nature (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2012.11811

Harold W. Keller, et al., Chapter 1 – The Myxomycetes: Introduction, Basic Biology, Life Cycles, Genetics, and Reproduction, Myxomycetes, Academic Press, 2017, Pages 1-40, ISBN 9780128050897, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-805089-7.00001-9.c

Kramar M, Alim K. Encoding memory in tube diameter hierarchy of living flow network. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Mar 9;118(10):e2007815118. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2007815118. PMID: 33619174; PMCID: PMC7958412.

Mitsch, J. (Director) 2021. The Blob: A Genius Without a Brain.

Nakagaki, T., Yamada, H. & Tóth, Á. Maze-solving by an amoeboid organism. Nature 407, 470 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35035159

Oettmeier C, Döbereiner H-G (2019) A lumped parameter model of endoplasm flow in Physarum polycephalum… PLoS ONE 14(4): e0215622. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215622

Orvieto, R et al. Do human embryos have the ability of self-correction? Reprod Biol Endocrinol. 2020 Oct 6;18(1):98. doi: 10.1186/s12958-020-00650-8. PMID: 33023576; PMCID: PMC7539487.

Ray, Subash et al.. (2019). Information Transfer During Food Choice in the Slime Mold Physarum polycephalum. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 7. 10.3389/fevo.2019.00067.

Reid, Chris R. Tanya Latty, Collective behaviour and swarm intelligence in slime moulds, FEMS Microbiology Reviews, Volume 40, Issue 6, November 2016, Pages 798–806, https://doi.org/10.1093/femsre/fuw033

Reid, C. R., Latty, T., Dussutour, A., & Beekman, M. (2012). Slime mold uses an externalized spatial “memory” to navigate in complex environments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 109(43), 17490–17494. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1215037109

Sperry, M. M., Murugan, N. J., & Levin, M. (2022). Studying Protista WBR and Repair Using Physarum polycephalum. Methods in molecular biology , 2450, 51–67. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2172-1_3

Tafakori, V. Slime molds as a valuable source of antimicrobial agents. AMB Expr 11, 92 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13568-021-01251-3

Tero, A., Takagi, S., Saigusa, T., Ito, K., Bebber, D. P., Fricker, M. D., Yumiki, K., Kobayashi, R., & Nakagaki, T. (2010). Rules for biologically inspired adaptive network design. Science (New York, N.Y.), 327(5964), 439–442. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1177894

Vogel, D., & Dussutour, A. (2016). Direct transfer of learned behaviour via cell fusion in non-neural organisms. Proceedings. Biological sciences, 283(1845), 20162382. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.2382

Zhu Liping, et al. 2018Remarkable problem-solving ability of unicellular amoeboid organism and its mechanismR. Soc. open sci.5180396180396. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.180396

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39 Responses

  1. Ze Frank says:

    Keep learning at https://brilliant.org/zefrank Get started for free, and
    hurry—the first 200 people get 20% off an annual premium subscription.

  2. A Laughing Wolf says:

    ZeFrank’s way of describing things is better than any nature documentary I’ve seen

  3. Savanna- 𝙾𝚙𝚎𝚗 𝙼𝚢 𝙿𝚛𝚘𝚏𝚒𝚕𝚎 says:

    The little interruptive conversations between ZeFrank and Jerry never cease to be funny, I want to hear Jerry for once

  4. Momo says:

    It’s impressive how it’s 100% education and 100% comedy. They don’t cut into eachother at all, perfect fusion cuisine of the two.

  5. TransNightWalker says:

    I did science fair projects with slime molds back in the early 2000’s, including seeing if they could navigate mazes for food. Unfortunately, my ability to build slime mold proof mazes was not good enough and the dang things cheated and just grew over the walls to go straight over to the food. I love these bizarre and wonderful little things.

  6. MichaelC Copeland Sr says:

    Bringing smiles to people is truly noble work. And Ze does it while educating us. Thank you, Ze.

  7. ann vogelpohl says:

    When you started read the DNA sequences, I busted out laughing and have to pause to recover and type this. That was brilliant. Thank you!

  8. Vakna says:

    I love you ZeFrank, usually laugh my ass off, definitely makes breaks at work more enjoyable lmao.

  9. Daggeravowal says:

    I chose a course involving microbiology for my degree, but I don’t really have anything I want to do in life, so I just went with something that was fun in high-school. Going with the flow, in other words.
    I love your videos, especially these recent ones to do with micro-organisms, and they make me feel like I picked the right field after all. These are such fascinating lifeforms.

    • Markus Gorelli says:

      Perhaps you can learn videography too so you can generate more material for zefrank to narrate. 😁🥰

  10. Bee says:

    I love this man. When I was a teenager, I got stuck in a bad bout of depression. Didn’t shower for almost a month, couldn’t really move out of bed and barely ate. He would make these videos just sitting and talking to you and talking about life lessons and thoughts that you’d think alone in your room. Those videos helped me get out of bed and start showering and getting back to life. When I feel myself slipping back into that I go and find the teddy bear videos and older ones. I wish he’d still make those videos.

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