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- THE WEEK, Page 26MISCELLANYLove, Amoeba-Style
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- About the only excitement in an amoeba's life is the chance
- to inflict major intestinal distress on unwary world travelers.
- And as every high school student knows, these one-celled blobs of
- protoplasm never get to fool around; they reproduce asexually,
- by splitting in two. But now comes a report in the journal
- Heredity that suggests amoebas are not dull so much as discreet.
- French scientists have looked at the genetic material of species
- of amoebas and found that their genes show the telltale signs
- of sexual mixing. They've never been caught in the act, though,
- so the question is, Will Jesse Helms find some way to label
- amoeba research indecent anyway?
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