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slime mold
noun
: any of a group (such as Myxomycetes) of organisms formerly held to be lower fungi but now often considered protists that exist vegetatively in usually moist habitats as mobile plasmodia and reproduce by spores
Examples of slime mold in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Inspired by that experiment, the same researchers then piled oat flakes around a slime mold in positions and quantities meant to represent the population structure of Tokyo, and the slime mold contorted itself into a very passable map of the Tokyo subway system.
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Rowan Jacobsen, Scientific American, 1 Feb. 2024
When researchers from Japan and Hungary placed a slime mold at one end of a maze and a pile of oat flakes at the other, the slime mold did what slime molds do, exploring every possible option for tasty resources.
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Rowan Jacobsen, Scientific American, 1 Feb. 2024
The team engineered yeast chimeras that had apoptotic enzymes from across the eukaryotic world: from mustard plants, slime molds, humans and the parasite that causes leishmaniasis.
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Quanta Magazine, 6 Mar. 2024
From a slime mold measuring just one millimeter tall to a moth resting on a window, the images honored in the Close-Up Photographer of the Year contest draw attention to nature’s little details and spotlight tiny animals that most people would probably walk right past.
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Carlyn Kranking, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 Jan. 2024
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These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'slime mold.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
First Known Use
1880, in the meaning defined above
Dictionary Entries Near slime mold
Cite this Entry
“Slime mold.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slime%20mold. Accessed 22 Aug. 2024.
Kids Definition
slime mold
noun
: either of two groups of organisms that reproduce by spores and form slimy masses composed of amoeboid cells that fuse to form a giant cell with many nuclei or that gather tightly together without fusing
Medical Definition
slime mold
noun
: any organism of the group Myxomycetes
called also myxomycete
More from Merriam-Webster on slime mold
Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about slime mold
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