Individuals benefit from aggregation as it allows accumulation of the extracellular enzymes that are used to digest food; this in turn increases feeding efficiency.

[10] When nutrients are scarce, myxobacterial cells aggregate into fruiting bodies (not to be confused with those in fungi), a process long-thought to be mediated by chemotaxis but now considered to be a function of a form of contact-mediated signaling.

It has been suggested that the last common ancestor of myxobacteria was an aerobe and that their anaerobic predecessors lived syntrophically with early eukaryotes.

One such analog, known as Ixabepilone is a U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved chemotherapy agent for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer.

[17] Myxobacteria are also known to produce gephyronic acid, an inhibitor of eukaryotic protein synthesis and a potential agent for cancer chemotherapy.