Well it's been quite long since I did an article here based on a topic I didn't see from my memes page. Clearly it's due to the lack of time cause of school work that I began my lazy science posts(and the work still remains 😭), but I just had to write about this fascinating piece😃.
Esteemed members of the hive STEM community, say hello to
Blob is an acellular slime mold scientifically known as Physarum polycephalum. It is a protist with different cellular forms and a broad geographic distribution.
The 'acellular' term is gotten from the plasmodial stage of its life cycle. The Plasmodium is a bright yellow macroscopic multinucleate coenocyte(Damn that's a lot of big words 😂) shaped in a network of interlaced tubes.
This part of the life cycle coupled with it's fondness of dark moist environments is probably what caused it to be mistakenly characterized as a fungus.
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Source
Well, blob is a special kind of slime mold that is used for research in different areas of science; motility, cellular differentiation, chemotaxis, cell cycle and cellular compatibility.
Although those are great, the one thing that did bring this blob fame in the science world is it's ability to make decisions....
Yes... It's an Intelligent blob 🧠
This blob has shown it's ability to make simple decisions regarding it's mitotic movements.
Finding the shortest distance between two points and following just that path in different situations.
This decision making skills indeed earned it the title "Intelligent". When discovered, it amazed the research community and brought up questions about decision makings in the basic elements of life.
This ability of blob is especially fascinating due to its tubular network which goes through speedy reorganization, constantly growing and disintegrating it's tubes while lacking an organizing center.
To show the decision making skills, a team of Japanese and Hungarian Scientists decided to test Blob if he could solve the Shortest route problem.
When grown in a maze with oatmeal at 2 spots. Blob retracts from everywhere in the maze, except the shortest route connecting the two food sources.
If put with more than 2 food sources, the network becomes even more complex.
In actuality there was a certain experiment in 2010 where the blob was put in an arrangement of oatflakes placed in accordance to the cities of Tokyo.
The blob then goes on to spread looking for this oats and singles out the shortest distance to find this oatflakes.
The shocking part is that the paths the blob chose, was in accordance to the railway paths build connecting each city in Tokyo, with similar efficiency and cost.😃
Similar experiments have been done using road networks of the United Kingdom, Portugal and Spain.
A remake of the Tokyo Railway Experiment
Another amazing thing about this slime mode is the fact that it remembers stuff 😃
In the Hokkaido University, biophysicists realized something remarkable about Blob. By repeatedly making a test environment of P. Polycephalum dry and cold for 60 minute intervals, the blob appeared to be anticipating the time for the sudden change in temperature by reacting to the conditions even when they didn't repeat the conditions after the intervals. They tried with different times and the blob gave the same effect.
In actuality, its extreme maze solving skills is still a feat of its memory 😃.
In a maze once the blob has spread to all parts of the maze and found it's food, it then retracts, leaving a trail of slime.
This slime reminds the blob that certain areas and corners don't have food and points it in the right way to go 😃.
There are a lot more cool things about the Physarum polycephalum that I don't have time to cover in this post😂.
It has proved to be a real useful organism as it's maze making skills are used to battle real life problems in railway transportation in some parts of the world.
Scientists are still looking out for any more slimy knowledge the blob has to share with us ✨🧠
For any further readings,
🧫 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210223121643.htm#:~:text=Researchers%20have%20identified%20how%20the,it%20has%20no%20nervous%20system.&text=Having%20a%20memory%20of%20past,smarter%20decisions%20about%20the%20future
