Heterocytosis in Cellular Slime Molds

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Abstract
By isolating single spores it was found that five of the strains of Acrasiales maintained in this laboratory were heterogeneous and consisted of more than one cell type. In addition to spores producing wild type fruiting bodies, variants were found which deviated from the wild type in either the morphology of their fruiting bodies, or the morphogenetic process that gave rise to fruiting bodies. In one strain of Dictyostelium mucoroides two cell types persist in ratios of a limited range over a period of many serial subcultures. It was further shown in the case of pure wild type cultures of this strain, that a new cell type arose "spontaneously" during the course of serial subcultures and established itself firmly in the population. The different cell types of a given strain can cooperate to form a common pseudoplasmodium, which because of its cellular heterogeneity has been called a heterocyton. Mixing the amoebae of variants with even small amounts of wild type cells results in the formation of heterocytons that will produce a fruiting body with the wild type phenotype, that is one which produces a normal stalk and sorus. Grafting experiments indicate that whenever wild type cells are involved, the final morphology of a fruiting body has the wild type phenotype.

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