a story lives forever
Register
Sign in
Form submission failed!

Stay signed in

Recover your password?
Register
Form submission failed!

Web of Stories Ltd would like to keep you informed about our products and services.

Please tick here if you would like us to keep you informed about our products and services.

I have read and accepted the Terms & Conditions.

Please note: Your email and any private information provided at registration will not be passed on to other individuals or organisations without your specific approval.

Video URL

You must be registered to use this feature. Sign in or register.

NEXT STORY

Upstaged by slime molds

RELATED STORIES

A serendipitous discovery
John Bonner Scientist
Comments (0) Please sign in or register to add comments

I was sitting in his office one day and talking to his very pretty secretary, and not doing any work, and I just reached above behind me. It's literally true, there were all his theses from previous students. I pulled one out and it was one on slime molds, and I just couldn't believe it. And so I immediately started reading it and it was by Kenneth Raper who got his degree, his PhD, about 10 years earlier than I did, and it was absolutely wonderful. So that's what… And I wrote to Ken and he immediately responded with cultures, and everything else. And at that time, there were only two people in the whole of the world who were working on those cellular slime molds, and it was only that a few others crept in, in the next 10 years or so. But then, the thing that happened was, when molecular biology came into the fore, then instead of having – I had a graph showing this – instead of having five or so papers per annum that were on slime molds, it suddenly went to 120.   It was the beginning of the slime molds, but I think already though, I knew I wanted to work on some organism like that, and I was actually searching for it and there were a lot of good possibilities, but this is the best.

John Tyler Bonner (born in 1920) is an emeritus professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. He is a pioneer in the use of cellular slime molds to understand evolution and development and is one of the world's leading experts on cellular slime molds. He says that his prime interests are in evolution and development and that he uses the cellular slime molds as a tool to seek an understanding of those twin disciplines. He has written several books on developmental biology and evolution, many scientific papers, and has produced a number of works in biology. He has led the way in making Dictyostelium discoideum a model organism central to examining some of the major questions in experimental biology.

Listeners: Christopher Sykes

Christopher Sykes is an independent documentary producer who has made a number of films about science and scientists for BBC TV, Channel Four, and PBS.

Tags: Kenneth Raper

Duration: 2 minutes, 2 seconds

Date story recorded: February 2016

Date story went live: 14 September 2016