Year: 2022

ORIGIN OF GERM LINE. "The molecular events that trigger the separation of the germ line from the soma in the early embryo are still largely undefined." http://www.reproduction-online.org/content/revreprod/5/2/93.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

IMMORTAL DAMAGE? "It is proposed here that somatic stem cell maintenance mechanisms lead to preferential accumulation, rather than disposal, of damaged stem cells. On the other hand stringent selection in the germline renders this lineage seemingly immortal." https://lnkd.in/gNUQf4C View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE is the last of two weekends considering the curious mind of the slime mold, who have no brain and no nervous system. Like trained platyhelminthes fed to their untrained companions, there is evidence of memory traces in fused slime molds. Some undetermined chemical that carries very specific and complex information. Enjoy this lovely creature. View in LinkedIn

BIO-ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. “Maze traversal in Physarum can be modeled as a simple decision tree, optimized by ant algorithmics. This provides a simple explanation for apparently anomalous information processing by a single-celled organism. The mechanism can be viewed as a biological implementation of straightforward artificial intelligence techniques.” https://ukacc.group.shef.ac.uk/proceedings/control2008/papers/p246.pdf View in LinkedIn

MAZE TESTS. “The ability to traverse a maze is a standard test of intelligence and behavior in animals: maze learning has been used for many years in psychology to test the intellectual abilities of small mammals and other animals.” https://ukacc.group.shef.ac.uk/proceedings/control2008/papers/p246.pdf View in LinkedIn

DECEPTIVE SIMPLICITY. “It came as some surprise when researchers discovered that an evolutionarily simple slime mold, Physarum polycephalum, consisting nominally of a single cell, was able to compute a near optimal path through a maze.” https://ukacc.group.shef.ac.uk/proceedings/control2008/papers/p246.pdf View in LinkedIn

BRAINLESS MEMORY. “Spatial memory enhances an organism’s navigational ability. Memory typically resides within the brain, but what if an organism has no brain? We show that the brainless slime mold Physarum polycephalum constructs a form of spatial memory by avoiding areas it has previously explored.” http://www.pnas.org/content/109/43/17490.full View in LinkedIn

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE. “We provide a unique demonstration of a spatial memory system in a nonneuronal organism, supporting the theory that an externalized spatial memory may be the functional precursor to the internal memory of higher organisms.” http://www.pnas.org/content/109/43/17490.full View in LinkedIn

BIOCOMPUTING. “Slime mold is a living prototype of amorphous biological computers and robotic devices capable of solving a range of tasks of graph optimization and computational geometry.” http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6482606/ View in LinkedIn

PROCESSING INFORMATION. “Life is characterized in terms of information processing and single-celled organisms show remarkably advanced information processing capabilities. A neural network with inter-cellular connections is not necessary for biological computation, which may have implications for brain studies.” https://ukacc.group.shef.ac.uk/proceedings/control2008/papers/p246.pdf View in LinkedIn