&&
|
The classes of Myxogastria and Dictyostelids show very interesting properties as part of their respective life cycles. The first ones grow in a plasmodial stage
to giant single-celled but multinucleated organisms, while the latter ones aggregate from single celled amoeba into a differentiated multicellular sporangium.
I used quantitative image analysis to describe and distinguish different phenotyopes of plasmodial expansion.
[1] C. Westendorf, C.J. Gruber, K. Schnitzer, S. Kraker and M. Grube, Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, 51(34), 344001 (2018) |
|
|
Acellular slime mold. A Badhamia utricularis plasmodium explores
a Petri dish. The background is removed such that only the expanding plasmodial network is
visible.
|
Currently we study the transition to multicellularity as part of the life cycle of Dictyostelium discoideum. We apply automated microscopy to record aggregation clusters of D. discoideum ameba with reasonable magnification and a large (stitched) field of view. The image quality is further improved by artificially flattening the aggregation cluster to a quasi 2D state. |
|
Aggregation mound stage of cellular slime molds. Within this stage, the
individual ameba of Dictyostelium discoideum have already formed a loose aggregate. The mound was recorded through a 60x objective in multiple
tiles. Left: DIC microscopy. Right: Fluorescence microscopy of an actin label. The two small insets show the zoom in on
the central region.
|
|