{"id":52046,"date":"2022-08-31T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/?p=52046"},"modified":"2025-04-08T10:42:50","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T08:42:50","slug":"spotlight-embl-slime-mould-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/picture-of-the-week\/spotlight-embl-slime-mould-image\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotlight: A giant in action"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A comet, a flower, or a sea creature?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Actually, none of the above. This blob (scientific name Physarum polycephalum<\/em>) is a single, giant cell which contains tens of thousands of nuclei sharing a single cytoplasm. Actomyosin contractions allow this slime mould to \u201cexpand\u201d rapidly, at the rate of centimetres per hour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The different colours in this picture represent different time points, which, when superimposed, show us the extent of the cell\u2019s growth. This single-celled slime mould is large enough to be photographed by a mobile phone \u2013 the image above has been taken with a smartphone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A similar image taken by Mikus won the British Society for Cell Biology 2022 image competition<\/a> back in April. The original culture was provided by Karen Alim, TU Munich.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Physarum polycephalum, a single, giant cell containing tens of thousands of nuclei is large enough to be photographed with a phone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":52054,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17591],"tags":[527,64,13676,43,4686,11022],"embl_taxonomy":[19201],"class_list":["post-52046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-picture-of-the-week","category-science-technology","tag-biological-imaging","tag-cell-biology","tag-dey","tag-heidelberg","tag-nucleus","tag-spotlight","embl_taxonomy-dey-group"],"acf":{"featured":true,"show_featured_image":false,"field_target_display":"embl","field_article_language":{"value":"english","label":"English"},"article_intro":"

This beautiful image of the giant slime mould Physarum polycephalum<\/em> was captured using a smartphone by EMBL predoctoral fellow Felix Mikus.<\/p>\n","related_links":[{"link_description":"Dey Group","link_url":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/groups\/dey\/"},{"link_description":"British Society for Cell Biology Image Competition 2022","link_url":"https:\/\/bscb.org\/image-competition-2022\/"}],"source_article":false,"in_this_article":false,"press_contact":"None","article_translations":false,"languages":""},"embl_taxonomy_terms":[{"uuid":"a:3:{i:0;s:36:\"302cfdf7-365b-462a-be65-82c7b783ebf7\";i:1;s:36:\"64999cc4-9a7c-4fea-8339-0e2acc990e08\";i:2;s:36:\"af4ad533-c1c7-43aa-b7a7-1336c1394406\";}","parents":[],"name":["Dey Group"],"slug":"dey-group","description":"What > Cell biology and biophysics > Dey Group"}],"yoast_head":"\nSpotlight: A giant in action | EMBL<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Physarum polycephalum, a single, giant cell containing tens of thousands of nuclei is 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