Cells of the cellular slime mould D. discoideum were allowed to form into spherical aggregates, by shaking vegetative cells as a suspension in phosphate buffer. In such conditions, grex polarity is never established and surface sheath is not formed (Loomis, 1975 a). Despite the absence of such characteristics of normal development, differentiation of prespore cells, as tested for by immunofluor...

Collective movement occurs in living systems where the simple movements of individual members of a population are combined to generate movement of the collective as a whole, displaying complex dynamics which cannot be found in the component parts themselves. The plasmodium stage of slime mould Physarum polycephalum displays complex amoeboid movement during its foraging and hazard avoidance and ...

Shortest path is among classical problems of computer science. The problems are solved by hundreds of algorithms, silicon computing architectures and novel substrate, unconventional, computing devices. Acellular slime mould P. polycephalum is originally famous as a computing biological substrate due to its alleged ability to approximate shortest path from its inoculation site to a source of nut...

A supply chain is a system which moves products from a supplier to customers. The supply chains are ubiquitous. They play a key role in all economic activities. Inspired by biological principles of nutrients’ distribution in protoplasmic networks of slime mould Physarum polycephalum we propose a novel algorithm for a supply chain design. The algorithm handles the supply networks where capacity ...

Many biological systems require extensive networks to transport resources and information. Biological networks must trade-off network efficiency with the risk of network failure. Yet, biological networks develop in the absence of centralised control from the interactions of many components. Moreover, many biological systems need to be able to adapt when conditions change and the network require...

Plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum is a large single cell visible by unaided eye. It shows sophisticated behavioural traits in foraging for nutrients and developing an optimal transport network of protoplasmic tubes spanning sources of nutrients. When placed in an environment with distributed sources of nutrients the cell ’computes’ an optimal graph spanning the nutrients by growing a network ...

Path planning is a classic problem in computer science and robotics which has recently been implemented in unconventional computing substrates such as chemical reaction-diffusion computers. These novel computing schemes utilise the parallel spatial propagation of information and often use a two-stage method involving diffusive propagation to discover all paths and a second stage to highlight or...