Baator

(a)Slime Mold Spreading over the Maze


(b)The dead end route is decayed, and a pipe is left on the route connecting the inlet and outlet.


(C)Then longer connecting routes are eliminated.

Discovery of the Ability of Myxomycetes to Detect the Shortest Route of Labyrinth
A research team from RIKEN(the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research) and Hokkaido Univ. has discovered that a single cell organism Myxomycetes of ameba organism has the ability to find the shortest route in a labyrinth. The research result was published in the September 28 issue of the U.K. journal "Nature."

A higher organism acts by processing information using its neuro-system, but the information processing ability of a simple organism deficient of neuro-system has not been elucidated. This time, researcher Toshiyuki Nakagaki at RIKEN Frontier Research System and Lecturer Hiroyasu Yamada et al. at Hokkaido Univ., Electronic Science Res. Inst., have tried to elucidate the matter using Myxomycetes.

A group of plasmodium of Myxomycetes was placed on a labyrinth made on a Agar piece, and food was placed on both sides of inlet and outlet of the labyrinth. The Myxomycetes which had initially spread in all the routes gradually deformed, and finally formed a broad line connecting the inlet and outlet in the shortest way, and ate the food.

Myxomycetes forms a pipe which is used for pumping substance by repeated contracting movement of a cell. It was clarified that, by skillfully combining physicochemical properties such as the rhythm and pattern of the above contracting movement and morphogenesis for pipe, Myxomycetes is exerting high information processing ability to solve a labyrinth by the shortest route.

PS В ЖЖ нашлось всего три поста про миксомицеты, причем три из них - мои.