WHY DOES SLUG LENGTH CORRELATE WITH SPEED DURING MIGRATION IN DICTYOSTELIUM-DISCOIDEUM

Taking advantage of the fact that static electricity in plastic Petri dishes will produce very long, thin migrating slugs of Dictyostelium discoideum, it was shown that these slugs moved particularly rapidly. This is consistent with the demonstration of Inouye and Takeuchi that speed varies with length for slugs migrating on agar. Based on these observations it is suggested that slug speed is controlled by both the resistance at the tip and some factor that correlates with slug size, such as the concentration of endogenously produced ammonia.