How can slime mould grow and navigate like a highway network?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the growth and navigation behaviors of slime molds, particularly in relation to their ability to form efficient networks akin to highway systems. Participants explore various aspects of slime mold biology, including their cellular structure, movement, and potential cognitive abilities, while referencing experimental observations and theoretical models.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants question how slime molds grow without undergoing mitosis, suggesting they remain single-celled yet can extend and form networks.
  • Others argue that slime molds consist of multiple nuclei without cell membranes, allowing simultaneous mitosis.
  • A participant describes slime molds as a collective term with taxonomic complexities, noting their classification has evolved over time.
  • There is mention of a mathematical chemotaxis model that describes slime mold dynamics, with some uncertainty about its direct application to slime molds.
  • One participant proposes that slime molds may follow simple rules to efficiently connect resources, drawing parallels to other biological systems like neurons and ant colonies.
  • Questions arise about the mechanisms behind slime molds' ability to regroup after separation and whether this indicates a step towards more complex organisms.
  • Some participants express interest in the "smart behavior" of slime molds, speculating on potential circadian influences and their ability to learn or adapt to environmental conditions.
  • There are references to altruistic behaviors observed in slime molds, such as sacrificing some individuals to ensure the survival of the species during harsh conditions.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a range of views on the nature of slime molds, their classification, and their behaviors, indicating that multiple competing perspectives remain without a clear consensus.

Contextual Notes

Some claims about slime mold behavior, such as cooperation and learning, depend on specific definitions and interpretations that are not universally agreed upon. The discussion includes references to various studies and models, but the applicability of these to slime molds is not fully resolved.

Who May Find This Useful

This discussion may be of interest to those studying biology, particularly in the fields of microbiology, ecology, and evolutionary biology, as well as individuals curious about the cognitive and behavioral aspects of non-neural organisms.

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http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527426.300-designing-highways-the-slime-mould-way.html

I watched a bbc programm about the decay of food. Slime mould was mention and they showed how when they layed out oat flakes in the pattern of major cities, it could link these in the shortest possible route. It did this by growing itself out. Above is a link to a new scientist article on this. So it grows. I always thought growing was essentially mitosis of cell. But it is and remain single celled, so mitosis has not occurred. How does it grow out like this?
 
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I thought slime mold was made up of more than one cell...multiple nuclei without cell membrane between them. All of the nuclei undergo mitosis simultaneously.
 
Biosyn is correct. Slime molds can actually move over surfaces by extension. Slime molds are a collective term. They actually have all kinds of taxonomic "issues", that other Eukaryota do not have, and are currently dumped into a tentative bin called Unikonta.

Slime molds have always been sort of "out there" and beyond our classification schemes. When I learned Myxomycota (old classification ) 50 years ago , they were considered fungi. Now they are protists and are kind of set off into their own little world.

They reproduce by creating zillions of sporangia, all at one time. Some "single cell" species mass together briefly into a multinucleate blob of protplasm to do this, then form sporangia. Other species spend most of their time as a big multinucleate glob, kinda like a super gigantic cell, as big as 20-30cm across. Then they sporulate. They are all over the place in moist temperate zones, most people don't know them when they see the larger ones. Some Fuligo species (another lumping ground) look like vomit. If you pull them apart, they will go back together, veeery slowly. If you do that too many times, they dry out, and become sporangia.

They live on saprophtyic bacteria that grow on decaying organic material.

They are all just cooler'n all get out. I love 'em.
 
stephanwally said:
this may grow due to the nut rations and get bigger son and healthy ,some thing which is effective for this is http://lifestreamhealth.com.au/

I don't understand how this has anything to do with slime mold.

It's advertising some "Super Mineral" but the description is of an HTC phone. Hahaha...fail. In fact, the whole website you linked us is a failure.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkVhLJLG7ug
 
There's a mathematical chemotaxis model [STRIKE]for slime molds[/STRIKE] that I've always found interesting in terms of the dynamics: the solutions can decay from chaotic into both periodic and homogenous.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167278910002617

Spatio-temporal chaos in a chemotaxis model
Kevin J. Paintera, Thomas Hillenb
Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena
Volume 240, Issues 4–5, 15 February 2011, Pages 363–375

~I guess it's supposed to be a more general chemotaxis model. Not sure why I equated it to slime molds in my memory, maybe the behavior of aggregating cell bodies?

~~ok, it does mention slime molds, just by latin name!
 
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So slime mould is single celled, but never really encountered as a single organism? they always link together into a community. Is my understanding now correct?
 
CellsRcool said:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527426.300-designing-highways-the-slime-mould-way.html

I watched a bbc programm about the decay of food. Slime mould was mention and they showed how when they layed out oat flakes in the pattern of major cities, it could link these in the shortest possible route. It did this by growing itself out. Above is a link to a new scientist article on this. So it grows. I always thought growing was essentially mitosis of cell. But it is and remain single celled, so mitosis has not occurred. How does it grow out like this?

The other guys are right about the nature of the slime-moulds. IF you are asking also about how the mould manages to find the shortest route between 'oat-flake-cities' then I would imagine the following:

- a very simple set of instructions would be enough information to enable an efficient route.
- the branching patterns that link our cities, brain neurons, ant and fungi colonies are all governed by the same 'simple' -as in low information- rules.

Stephen Wolfram and Benoît Mandelbrot have done much work on how complexity can evolve from simple rules/algorithms, I seem to remember a good TED Talk on this.

Slime moulds are incredible organisms, I wonder if the mechanism that SM's use to re-group after being separated is the same/similar to that of choanoflagellates - sponges and the likes - you can put a sponge through a sieve and it will re-form into a branching colony.

Does anybody know much about the mechanisms behind these organisms ability to purposefully re-form into colonies?

I also wonder - after watching that b+w clip on the SM's I realized that they specialise in function when they act as a colony, to become part of a stalk or whatever. Surely this is on the way to a more complex organism? There may be little evolutionary pressure for the SM's to change their lifestyle, but I wonder how far back we have to go to find the last common ancestor of humans/choanoflagellates/slime moulds? I'm sure its billions of years or there abouts...

Experiment? Could we apply evolutionary pressure to a sponge and encourage it to evolve specialist cells instead of being a clone colony? They do this with vats of bacteria and force them to adapt to the available nutrients/Ph whatever.

To me slime moulds, choanoflagellates, echinoderms and cephalopods are some of the most interesting organisms I've heard of. If anybody has good suggestions as to where I can learn more accurate information from, please do share.

Thanks.
 
I'm interested with slime mold too because of its intriguing smart behavior despite being brainless, not even a ganglia. Maybe circadian clockwork? It will be nice if somebody could provide us with accurate information about the marvelous slime mold :-)
 
  • #11
Romulo Binuya said:
I'm interested with slime mold too because of its intriguing smart behavior despite being brainless, not even a ganglia. Maybe circadian clockwork? It will be nice if somebody could provide us with accurate information about the marvelous slime mold :-)

I think this is probably too vague of a question. "Smart behavior" is a pretty loaded term. I don't know about circadian rhythms in slime mold; I don't see anything conclusive in a quick literature search, sorry.
 
  • #12
Some articles in the web said slime mold exhibit "cooperation" because of how they conglomerate and move as one. "altruism" because some of them when condition is harsh die earlier than the others in the process of producing spores to preserve their species. "Ability to learn" knowing and accordingly shield themselves when a scheduled harsh condition is about to come. I inferred that those behavior are due to circadian clockwork that triggers release of certain chemicals. "problem solving ability" in finding the shortest route to food could be explained differently other than 'smartness'.

The links posted by jim mcnamara is much better than the hyped articles that I had read.
 
  • #13
Some articles in the web said slime mold exhibit "cooperation" because of how they conglomerate and move as one. "altruism" because some of them when condition is harsh die earlier than the others in the process of producing spores to preserve their species. "Ability to learn" knowing and accordingly shield themselves when a scheduled harsh condition is about to come. I inferred that those behavior are due to circadian clockwork that triggers release of certain chemicals. "problem solving ability" in finding the shortest route to food could be explained differently other than 'smartness'.

The links posted by jim mcnamara is much better than the hyped articles that I had read.
 
  • #14
Ah, yes. There will always be people who try to interpret behavior at a higher level. Even in humans, interpreting those terms comes down to philosophy: a cynic might define "altruism" in a mechanistic way that fits human behavior just as well as slime molds. Biochemists use "cooperation" to describe binding behavior of molecules.

But it's good to be sceptical when you see such heavy antrhopomorphization in a single article.
 
  • #15
Always considering alternative explanations to given phenomena is the essence of science. Btw, I think that the ability of physarum polycephalum in finding the shortest distance in a maze to reach food if the report is confirmed, could be useful to neuroscientists who are investigating the mystery of axon guidance... just a thought.