Dr. Ben Larson

random subset of the population that's making this choice.

And we really don't know what they're specifically using to make that decision, what sort of underlying cell machinery makes that transition happen.

But nevertheless, it's maintained at this relatively low level.

So maybe it's a risky decision.

We don't really know.

There's more that we don't know than that we do know at this point, I think.

Yeah, so it seems unlikely that there's a genetic basis.

Like you said, it's in this clonal population.

So it's genuinely a mystery.

I mean, it could have to do with RNA levels, with protein levels, with other, you know, physiological levels in the cell.

And it may be very hard to find that, you know, what flips that switch.

But one little piece of information that we do have is that, okay, so it's an extremely small subset.

There's maybe, you know,

only up to 5% of the population that we ever see in this cannibalistic form.

It may be that more cells are sporadically trying to become these giants.

So the first sign that the cannibals are going to show up is that basically the mouth of the cell gets much bigger.

So before the cell body scales up, there's a bigger mouth that can maybe accommodate these large prey items.

And I think that these cells that are sort of an intermediate phase, they're very bad at hunting.

And so it ensures that there is this population density that's high enough that even a bad hunter can catch a prey item.

And so it may be a very rare event that these big mouthed but small cell body cells can capture a prey item.