Word: polycephalum
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...life is protoplasm, the basic stuff of living cells. An intriguing characteristic of all raw protoplasm is its "streaming"-a flow like watery jelly. For some years Dr. William Seifriz, professor of botany at the University of Pennsylvania, has cultured an exceedingly primitive, golden yellow slime mold called Physarum polycephalum, just about the lowest observable form of life. In its streaming he has clocked a major rhythm of about 45 seconds (TIME, Dec. 6, 1937). Rather like a primordial heartbeat, this pulse may be the ancestor of all real heartbeats...
Slime molds are among the most primitive of living things. Six years ago one of them, a golden yellow mold long known to botanists as Physarum polycephalum, was successfully cultured indoors by Dr. Frank Leslie Howard of Rhode Island State College. Later he turned his molds and his methods over to Dr. Seifriz. Ever since his student days at Johns Hopkins and in England, Germany, Switzerland and France, William Seifriz had hankered for generous supplies of "naked proto-plasm." Physarum polycephalum filled the bill. In a lyrical moment Dr. Seifriz called it a "great big glorious handful...
Last summer Dr. Seifriz overwhelmed with gratitude his friends at the Pasteur Institute by taking across the Atlantic a bowlful of Physarum polycephalum. Well might they be pleased with such a thing to study for this mold in many ways is the lowest visible form of life. Bacteria are smaller than the mold cells but their claim to superlative primitiveness is "questionable" and they are harder to study. Amebas are also simple bits of protoplasm, but they have something which Physarum lacks-a contractile vacuole (cavity) which squirts body fluids to the outside...
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