Plasmodium of Physarym polycephalum is an ideal biological substrate for implementing concurrent and parallel computation, including combinatorial geometry and optimization on graphs. We report results of scoping experiments on Physarum computing in conditions of minimal friction, on the water surface. We show that plasmodium of Physarum is capable for computing a basic spanning trees and manip...

Microplasmodia of the slime mold Physarum polycephalum form a small link degree transportation network in a percolation transition in order to forage. We model this transition analytically within the configuration model of graph theory utilizing all partaking types of nodes. Quite generally, we find that at the percolation transition the formation of a small link degree network is topologically...

Plasmodia migrate towards those situations which increase the frequency of their alternations in streaming, and away from those which decrease the frequency. Therefore peristalsis-like waves in Physarum move in the direction opposite from the net movement of the organism. The mechanism is fundamentally related to other known types of chemotaxis.

Slime mould Physarum polycephalum is large single cell with intriguingly smart behaviour. The slime mould shows outstanding abilities to adapt its protoplasmic network to varying environmental conditions. The slime mould can solve tasks of computational geometry, image processing, logics and arithmetics when data are represented by configurations of attractants and repellents. We attempt to map...

Nuclei in G2 phase of the slime mold Physarum polycephalum, when transplanted, by plasmodial coalescence, into an S-phase plasmodium, failed to start another round of DNA synthesis. In the reciprocal combination, S-phase nuclei in a G2-phase host continued DNA synthesis for several hours without appreciable decrease in rate. It is suggested that the beginning of DNA replication is determined by...

mRNA editing in three sequences of Physarum polycephalum is analyzed. Once fixed the edited peptide chain, the nature of the inserted nucleotides and the position of the insertion sites are explained by introducing a minimum principle in the framework of the crystal basis model of the genetic code introduced by the authors. PACS number: 87.10.+e, 02.10.-v LAPTH-812/00 physics/0009063 September ...

Slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a large single cell visible by unaided eye. We design a slime mould implementation of a tactile hair, where the slime mould responds to repeated deflection of hair by an immediate high-amplitude spike and a prolonged increase in amplitude and width of its oscillation impulses. We demonstrate that signal-to-noise ratio of the Physarum tactile hair sensor aver...