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Substrate composition directs slime molds behavior

Cells, including unicellulars, are highly sensitive to external constraints from their environment. Amoeboid cells change their cell shape during locomotion and in response to external stimuli. Physarum polycephalum is a large multinucleated amoeboid cell that extends and develops pseudopods. In thi...

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Autores principales: Patino-Ramirez, Fernando, Boussard, Aurèle, Arson, Chloé, Dussutour, Audrey
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6817824/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31659267
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-50872-z
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author Patino-Ramirez, Fernando
Boussard, Aurèle
Arson, Chloé
Dussutour, Audrey
author_facet Patino-Ramirez, Fernando
Boussard, Aurèle
Arson, Chloé
Dussutour, Audrey
author_sort Patino-Ramirez, Fernando
collection PubMed
description Cells, including unicellulars, are highly sensitive to external constraints from their environment. Amoeboid cells change their cell shape during locomotion and in response to external stimuli. Physarum polycephalum is a large multinucleated amoeboid cell that extends and develops pseudopods. In this paper, changes in cell behavior and shape were measured during the exploration of homogenous and non-homogenous environments that presented neutral, and nutritive and/or adverse substances. In the first place, we developed a fully automated image analysis method to measure quantitatively changes in both migration and shape. Then we measured various metrics that describe the area covered, the exploration dynamics, the migration rate and the slime mold shape. Our results show that: (1) Not only the nature, but also the spatial distribution of chemical substances affect the exploration behavior of slime molds; (2) Nutritive and adverse substances both slow down the exploration and prevent the formation of pseudopods; and (3) Slime mold placed in an adverse environment preferentially occupies previously explored areas rather than unexplored areas using mucus secretion as a buffer. Our results also show that slime molds migrate at a rate governed by the substrate up until they get within a critical distance to chemical substances.
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spelling pubmed-68178242019-11-01 Substrate composition directs slime molds behavior Patino-Ramirez, Fernando Boussard, Aurèle Arson, Chloé Dussutour, Audrey Sci Rep Article Cells, including unicellulars, are highly sensitive to external constraints from their environment. Amoeboid cells change their cell shape during locomotion and in response to external stimuli. Physarum polycephalum is a large multinucleated amoeboid cell that extends and develops pseudopods. In this paper, changes in cell behavior and shape were measured during the exploration of homogenous and non-homogenous environments that presented neutral, and nutritive and/or adverse substances. In the first place, we developed a fully automated image analysis method to measure quantitatively changes in both migration and shape. Then we measured various metrics that describe the area covered, the exploration dynamics, the migration rate and the slime mold shape. Our results show that: (1) Not only the nature, but also the spatial distribution of chemical substances affect the exploration behavior of slime molds; (2) Nutritive and adverse substances both slow down the exploration and prevent the formation of pseudopods; and (3) Slime mold placed in an adverse environment preferentially occupies previously explored areas rather than unexplored areas using mucus secretion as a buffer. Our results also show that slime molds migrate at a rate governed by the substrate up until they get within a critical distance to chemical substances. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-10-28 /pmc/articles/PMC6817824/ /pubmed/31659267 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-50872-z Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Patino-Ramirez, Fernando
Boussard, Aurèle
Arson, Chloé
Dussutour, Audrey
Substrate composition directs slime molds behavior
title Substrate composition directs slime molds behavior
title_full Substrate composition directs slime molds behavior
title_fullStr Substrate composition directs slime molds behavior
title_full_unstemmed Substrate composition directs slime molds behavior
title_short Substrate composition directs slime molds behavior
title_sort substrate composition directs slime molds behavior
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6817824/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31659267
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-50872-z
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