“How Slime Molds Make Decisions”
Scientists began with a question on how slime mold easily makes complex decisions that affect its survival,
such as what way to go to reach its food source. Now, it's important
to know that slime mold is a single cell without a brain, so how do
they make these decisions? Well, to help them better understand
scientist used time laps see the growth process. Slime mold grows and moves
very slowly, and if the scientists tried to study the mold with their naked eye
they would have missed the whole growth process. They estimated that
it would take 24 hours in order for it to make a centimeter of
change, so time laps showed to play a very important part in their experiments. From their
experiments they observed that when the slime mold gets hungry they
send out multiple thin branches to scope out it's surroundings, each
branch going a different way. The way they know which way to go is from those small branches. The slime mold pulses due to it having a cytoskeleton and motor proteins that causes it to pulse. The pulsing is their form of communication basically saying a certain branch didn't find anything, but one
branch did so it tells all the branches to go that
certain direction toward the food source. The way they found all of this out was when they put a piece of slime mold in the middle of a petri dish and placed food in a corner and once the branches found the food it would pulse and all of the other branches began to move toward the food.
Experiments didn't stop after finding out how slime mold communicates. Their findings lead to more possibilities and
they began another set of experiments to try and trick the slime mold
to grow a certain direction by poking the outer membrane of the
slime mold of a certain branch. They estimated to take about a year
in order to gather the necessary data to see if it would
work. Their main point they are trying to prove with this new
experiment is to find out if it is either physical or chemical
components they use to communicate. Once their data is all together
they will be able to move forward and ask more complex questions and
try and figure those out. They weren't really specific on what other questions they wanted answered from either outcome.
I like learning about new and random
things such as this. I am not really big on slime molds or anything
like that, it was just their original question about how slime mold can make complex decisions
when it doesn't even have a brain, that caught my attention. I am actually
really curious to find out what they come up with from their second
experiment with slime mold. I want to know if their findings are
correct, and if so, I would want to know where they get their single
celled intelligence from.
-A.Gomez
Source: Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/how-slime-molds-make-decisions/
Source: Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/how-slime-molds-make-decisions/
I think this is a really cool topic. I work with a company that cleans up hazardous materials such as asbestos, lead, and ... mold. I think it's cool being able to learn a little bit more about some of the stuff that I work with on a daily basis. I new that mold would "grow" before, but I hadn't ever really thought of it as being alive, or that it would have the ability to move. And like you said, I also think its really intriguing how something without a brain can make decisions like that.
ReplyDeleteWS
This is a very cool and interesting topic of study and i wonder what implications and uses this has in other forms of research. Overall i liked the article and blog post and i have a new perspective on Slimy mold.
ReplyDelete-Jacob C
It makes me wonder if other single cells without brains can make decisions. C.W.
ReplyDeleteOne question I had is why the "slime"? I've heard of mold before, but never have heard of slime mold. I wanted to know more about this simply because I like to learn about things that I haven't heard about and expand my knowledge on the topic.
ReplyDeleteSkyler H.
Hey skyler. That is a great question. It's called a slime mold, because it looks and feels just that. If you look up a picture of slime mold, you will be able to see that, and mold is usually known to being fuzzy or spots on wall.
DeleteA.G
This blows my mind. I understand how the branches work and all that but i still struggle to comprehend how that is controlled. I dont understand how non thinking organisms do things. From plants to slime mold it is something that just does not make sense! How is a signal sent? or is it not a signal?
ReplyDeleteKH
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DeleteThe video said that pumping/contractions are the way they communicate. Supposedly it is very similar to how our muscles work!
DeleteMatt N.
According to the article, it says that they send pulses to communicate whether it has received food or not. This will help it determine which way it needs to move in order to reach the food. It is remarkable how it is smart enough to send out small branches instead of trying to move the entire organism. What an intelligent type of mold!
DeleteNP
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ReplyDeleteThis article is super interesting to me. It is hard for me to understand how something without a brain can communicate so looking deeper into this study it is really cool to see how they determined that slime mold communicates. I find the slime mold to be pretty cleaver in it’s endeavor to find food.
ReplyDelete-Mindy C.
This is another article that relates to the article on bees feeling optimistic. Behavioral theory would group us (humans) and slime mold together. I don't think that slime mold actually makes decisions, it just reacts to stimulus. Humans, however, are much more complex and we actually make decisions.
ReplyDelete-BG
This is very interesting, seeing how something such as slime molds can move when they have no brain telling them what or how to function. Taking 24 hours to move a centimeter is crazy.- D.B.
ReplyDeleteThis article is very intriguing! I wonder if plants's vines work the same way when looking for something to climb. I also wonder if this has any correlation, or any information that could compare to mushroom spores. I have read that mycelium is a network that is as complex as our own brain network. It would definitely be amazing to come back and see what they find out about if they use physical or chemical components to communicate. Regardless of the answer, so much information can branch off of the conclusion to this research.
ReplyDeleteSummer R.
This article is awesome! Although, slime mold doesn't have a brain, it can still seek out food. I found it interesting that when it is hungry, it sends out branches or scouts. These small branches will then pulsate if it didn't receive any food. It is amazing to see something that doesn't have a brain, still finds a way to thrive in its environment. It proves that it has a desire to live.
ReplyDeleteNP
Definitely an interesting article. Was there a bigger reason why they wanted to study slime molds? Is this research going to serve a higher purpose? I wonder if they find out how single celled organisms "think" without a brain, would there be medical benefits, etc.
ReplyDeleteR.T.
this has me wanting to do my own experiments... on single celled organisms. if other organisms do similar things, or if these cells can do more then what has been see so far.
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