ACTION SPECTRA FOR SUPEROXIDE GENERATION AND UV AND VISIBLE LIGHT PHOTOAVOIDANCE IN PLASMODIA OF <i>Physarum polycephalum</i>

Ueda, Tetsuo; Mori, Yoshihito; Nakagaki, Toshiyuki; Kobatake, Yonosuke

doi:10.1111/j.1751-1097.1988.tb02884.x

Cited by 36 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…A part of the rectangular region was then illuminated with cold white light (Luminar, Hayashi Co., Japan). The illumination gives rise to the intracellular production of reactive oxygen, which is avoided by the organism [4]. As a control, the plasmodium was either uniformly illuminated (bright control) or not illuminated (dark control).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Minimum-Risk Path Finding by an Adaptive Amoebal Network

et al. 2007

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

When two food sources are presented to the slime mold Physarum in the dark, a thick tube for absorbing nutrients is formed that connects the food sources through the shortest route. When the lightavoiding organism is partially illuminated, however, the tube connecting the food sources follows a different route. Defining risk as the experimentally measurable rate of light-avoiding movement, the minimum-risk path is exhibited by the organism, determined by integrating along the path. A model for an adaptive-tube network is presented that is in good agreement with the experimental observations. Introduction.-The plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum is an amoebalike organism with a body made up of a tubular network through which nutrients, signals, and body mass are transported. Studies of this organism have shown that it is able to determine the shortest path through a maze as well as ''solve'' other geometric puzzles [1][2][3]. In a maze, a starved organism forms a tube that connects food sources (FS) placed at the two exits of the maze via the shortest path, while nearly the entire protoplasm of the amoeba gathers over the two FS. The organism meets its physiological requirements in adopting this shape by absorbing nutrients from the FS as rapidly as possible while maintaining sufficient connectivity to permit intracellular communication. Such behavior in a primitive organism of this kind may offer insights into the evolutionary origins of biological information processing.Here we give the plasmodium a new type of task involving optimization behavior. Two separate FS are presented to the organism, which is illuminated by an inhomogeneous light field. Because the plasmodium is photophobic, tubes connecting the FS do not follow the simple shortest paths but form according to the illumination inhomogeneity. We report on the behavior of the organism under these conditions and discuss its physiological significance. We also propose a mathematical model for the cell dynamics and present a computational algorithm for its problem solving.Organism and methods.-The plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum, which regenerated from the sclerotia in ca. one-half day in the dark (25 C), was used in the experiments. A plastic film was placed onto a 1% agar gel, leaving a rectangular area (1 2 cm 2 ) of the gel uncovered. A few pieces (0:5 1 cm 2 ) of the regenerated plasmodium were placed in the rectangular area, and the preparation was placed in the dark for a few hours. The

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Minimum-Risk Path Finding by an Adaptive Amoebal Network

et al. 2007

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Because plasmodia are not sensitive to light near 600 nm the shuttle-streaming can be monitored through the change in light absorbance concomitant with the thickness variation. To blue light, however, the plasmodia show negative phototaxis and blue or white light can therefore be used as stimuli [30]. In combination these two facts allow for an optical interface to the plasmodium.…”

Section: Plasmodium Properties Used In the Robot Controllermentioning

confidence: 99%

Robot Control: From Silicon Circuitry to Cells

Tsuda

Zauner

Gunji

2006

Biologically Inspired Approaches to Advanced Information Technology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Life-like adaptive behaviour is so far an illusive goal in robot control. A capability to act successfully in a complex, ambiguous, and harsh environment would vastly increase the application domain of robotic devices. Established methods for robot control run up against a complexity barrier, yet living organisms amply demonstrate that this barrier is not a fundamental limitation. To gain an understanding of how the nimble behaviour of organisms can be duplicated in made-for-purpose devices we are exploring the use of biological cells in robot control. This paper describes an experimental setup that interfaces an amoeboid plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum with an omnidirectional hexapod robot to realise an interaction loop between environment and plasticity in control. Through this bio-electronic hybrid architecture the continuous negotiation process between local intracellular reconfiguration on the micro-physical scale and global behaviour of the cell in a macroscale environment can be studied in a device setting.

show abstract

“…The movement of the plasmodia was monitored by the following method. The plasmodia were illuminated from below with an infrared ray (λ ∼ 950 nm), the wavelength of which is harmless for the plasmodium, 8 and the transmitted light image was observed by time laps video camera, and analyzed on a personal computer. The place of the frontal tip of a migrating plasmodium was detected by subtracting the background image.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indecisive Behavior of Amoeba Crossing an Environmental Barrier

Takagi¹,

Nishiura²,

Nakagaki³

et al. 2007

Topological Aspects of Critical Systems and Networks

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We report here a new kind of behavior that seems to be 'indecisive' in an amoeboid organism, the Physarum plasmodium of true slime mold. The plasmodium migrating in a narrow lane stops moving for a period of time (several hours but the duration differs for each plasmodium) when it encounters the presence of a chemical repellent, quinine. After stopping period, the organism suddenly begins to move again in one of three different ways as the concentration of repellent increases: going through the repulsive place (penetration), splitting into two fronts of going throught it and turning (splitting) and turning back (rebound). In relation to the physiological mechanism for tip migration in the plasmodium, we found that the frontal tip is capable of moving further although the tip is divided from a main body of organism. This means that a motive force of front locomotion is produced by a local process at the tip. Based on this finding, a mathematical model for front locomotion is considered in order to understand the dynamics for both the long period of stopping and three kinds of behavior. A model based on reaction-diffusion equations succeeds to reproduce the experimental observation. The origin of long-time stopping and three different outputs may be reduced to the hidden instabilities of internal dynamics of the pulse, which may be a skeleton structure extracted from much more complex dynamics imbedded in the Physarum plasmodium.

show abstract

ACTION SPECTRA FOR SUPEROXIDE GENERATION AND UV AND VISIBLE LIGHT PHOTOAVOIDANCE IN PLASMODIA OF Physarum polycephalum

Cited by 36 publications

References 28 publications

Minimum-Risk Path Finding by an Adaptive Amoebal Network

Minimum-Risk Path Finding by an Adaptive Amoebal Network

Robot Control: From Silicon Circuitry to Cells

Indecisive Behavior of Amoeba Crossing an Environmental Barrier

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About