Re: How are slime molds like and different from protozoans and fungi?

Dear Shelly,
About Slime Molds at the Smithsonian Website

"They're not animals and they're not plants, and biologists want to know a lot more about them" http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/phenom_mar01.html

Previously Slime Molds were classified as fungi (Myxomychophyta group), but in the recent years they have been put up into their own separate group consisting of 3 main groups; 1. Plasmodial slime molds; 2. Cellular slime molds and 3. Labyrinthulomycota.

You can check these websites for details; http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/protista/slimemolds.html, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold

Also Slime molds (Dictyostelium) are used in various types of genetic research; http://dictybase.org/

And in Robotics research: ( http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11749/)
"To gain an understanding of how the nimble behaviour of organisms can be duplicated in made-for-purpose devices we are exploring the use of biological cells in robot control. This paper describes an experimental setup that interfaces an amoeboid plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum with an omnidirectional hexapod robot to realise an interaction loop between environment and plasticity in control.

And also it has been discovered that the slime molds can "solve" maze puzzles; http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s189608.htm

I hope this will answer your question, and happy reading!

Shashank