Farming amoebae carry around detoxifying food
Thursday, April 21, 2016 - 09:01
in Biology & Nature
Humans aren't the only farmers out there. Five years ago, the Queller-Strassmann lab at Rice University, now at Washington University in St. Louis, demonstrated that the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum—affectionately nicknamed "Dicty"—can maintain a crop of food bacteria from generation to generation, giving these farmers an advantage when food is scarce.