Cheating amoeba

Over the years my kids have heard me harp against cheating and watched my disappointed facial expression if they convey they think it's okay to cheat. So of course, when I read the following federally funded research, I smiled: not in a "I told you so" way, but just 'cause it's kinda funny - cheating and amoeba's? Still, I want to pass along the observation - of cheater resistant amoeba dominating - to whoever might be reading, and am hoping my kids may be among the readership. [Kids, I hope you're grinning, and that you know I'm grinning.]

"Somewhere there's an amoeba community just trying to make a life for itself (preferably on some rotting vegetation, or on a forest floor) -- doing the usual amoeba things -- eating, reproducing. But when food supplies begin to run out, everyone comes together as a group to try to find a new food source.

Collectively the group is known as a slime mold, though they're neither slimy nor moldy. They're just a big ol' moving clump of amoebas or amoebae (either one's correct) going toward a light source, since light means food. As the clump reaches the destination, some of the amoebae must sacrifice their lives, turning into a dead cellulose stalk. The other amoebae pile on and release spores to be carried from that high point to other locations by outside forces, like wind or insects.

New research out of Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine is taking a careful look at "cheaters" in the community. The kind of amoeba whose gene codes tell them to avoid being up front where they might have to die for the cause, and to actually push others up to the front.

You'd think that logically the cheaters would prosper. But a small percentage of the amoebas refuse to be pushed around. Over successive generations these cheater resistant amoebae came to dominate -- keeping the cheaters in place, and forcing them out of the reproductive chain. Even nature doesn't like a cheater."

{"The Discovery Files" covers projects funded by the government's National Science Foundation.}