Does anyone have any other strains or genetic variations?

[Evan Brown]

I'm looking into trying to get my hands on other strains of slime molds, or unique strains of P. Polycephalum. Does anyone have anything they'd be willing to share? 

[ian]

I'll send you everything I have. If anyone has stuff I don't I'll gladly have more! 

[Evan Brown]

Really!? That's incredible, Thank you! I'll be sure to return the favor if I come up with any interesting variations, which I'm going to try my hardest to do lol.

[RyChu]

Just out of curiosity (bc I'm new to slime molds), do you intentionally develop new strains or do they just...happen?

[Evan Brown]

So I haven't made spores yet so I'm not the best to answer, but I'm sure Ian will have some information on this. There are different species of slime mold, and the most common reproduced method is through sclerotium therefore all slimes from the same source are genetically identical.  By raising from spore you can get some interesting mutations that are unique from the parent which everyone has a copy of. There's a post on the breeding project, that's all about intentionally trying to create slimes with interesting mutations.

[RyChu]

For P. polycephalum, can you get a new variation by letting two different variations merge?

[ian]

You've got to let them form spores so they've gone through meiosis, hatch the spores then persuade the resulting amoebae to get busy. It's a lot less effort than it sounds.