John Bonner - Giving slime molds a name (37/59)
91 views · Published 3 July 2017 · 1:31 · Indexed 17 October 2026
Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Science & Technology
To hear more of John Bonner’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoKbjMVfBA0&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzJx77ir9rbTxVC9EnCyfHD Born in 1920, John Bonner is one of the world's leading experts on cellular slime molds. His prime interests are in evolution and developmental biology and he uses cellular slime molds as a tool to understand both disciplines. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2007] TRANSCRIPT: We'd gotten to the point where we knew it was a chemical and so we had to call it something. And we didn't like the idea of calling it Substance X or whatever, so I happened to run across in Spenser's The Faerie Queene that there was a witch, Acrasia, who like Circe who would attract men and transform them into beasts. And this seemed very attractive because the name of the group from which these slime molds come are the Acrasieae or the Acrasiales. So what could be more appropriate than having this witch transform them into practically like, vitalism, or you have a witch that does it all? But anyhow that never became a problem. So it's still called acrasin actually because there are a number of different species of slime molds and they don't always have the same one. And so if it's this one, any attractant you call acrasin.
More from this channel
-
0:44
David Weatherall - Entering medical school
-
1:33
Katharine Whitehorn - Embodying the 'Sluts' article
-
6:55
KG Subramanyan - Mohandas Gandhi's views on art
-
2:22
Baruch Blumberg - The link between some cancers and viruses
-
6:39
Renato Dulbecco - Three Nobels, just one class
-
2:26
Marek Edelman - Different criteria for measuring the value of human life
-
2:45
Jules Engel - So who is responsible for a great animation?
-
5:02
Eugene Garfield - Retractions in citations