Love, Amoeba-Style

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?