slime mold decisions: remembering food location (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, June 01, 2021, 18:33 (1269 days ago) @ David Turell

More amazing responses:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-slime-molds-remember-where-they-ate/?utm...

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, revealed that when parts of P. polycephalum come in contact with a food source, they release a substance that softens the tube network's gel-like walls, making them widen from their inherent internal pressure. The slime mold moves by expanding along wider tubes and pruning narrower ones—so the enlarged tubes effectively record past food locations, as they influence the organism's overall direction of growth even after the food is gone.

The researchers do not yet know what the softening substance is, but by modeling changes in tube diameters, they found it is likely a soluble material that spreads by flow and diffusion. The team suggests this mechanism could also be common in other “living flow networks,” such as vertebrate vascular systems. (my bold)

Kramar and Alim “have pinned down nicely a mechanobiological mechanism for slime mold behavior implementing something like memory,” says University of Bremen physicist Hans-Günther Döbereiner, who was not involved in the study. Future research into a slime mold's ability to carry out complex tasks, he says, will require an examination of “molecular signaling, material properties and flow patterns of the cellular fluid regulating its behavior.”

Comment: Note my bold. Not enough research is yet accomplished to identify the substance or how it is biochemically triggered. I assume it is all coded in the DNA