Practice question

Dictyostelium is classically termed cellular slime mold to distinguish it from plasmodial slime molds forming multinucleate syncytia. Vegetative amoebae live singly ingesting soil bacteria, but upon starvation thousands chemotax and aggregate into motile grex resembling slug. Grex later culminates into stalked fruiting body releasing dormant spores. Term slime mold captures both mucoid trail during migration and mold-like aerial fruiting structure, highlighting facultative multicellularity that fascinated early developmental biologists studying cell adhesion, chemotactic signaling, proportion regulation, and altruistic cellular differentiation during survival morphogenesis and dispersal.