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Updated: May 9, 2026
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A Method for Growing Bio-memristors from Slime Mold
Published on: November 2, 2017
Summary
Living slime mold (Physarum polycephalum) can be programmed into bio-computers. These slime mold machines perform computations using environmental gradients, demonstrating potential for novel computing devices.
Area of Science:
- Biocomputing
- Cellular Automata
- Synthetic Biology
Background:
- The acellular slime mold Physarum polycephalum is a single-celled organism with complex emergent behaviors.
- Understanding and harnessing these behaviors can lead to novel biological machines.
Purpose of the Study:
- To demonstrate the creation of computing, sensing, and actuating devices using Physarum polycephalum.
- To program slime mold machines for specific computational tasks.
Main Methods:
- Culturing Physarum polycephalum plasmodium.
- Creating programmable environments using repelling and attracting gradients.
- Observing and analyzing slime mold responses to programmed stimuli.
Main Results:
- Physarum polycephalum can be programmed to perform computations.
- Demonstrated workability on tasks in computational geometry, logic, and arithmetic.
- Successfully created living computing, sensing, and actuating devices.
Conclusions:
- Physarum polycephalum offers a viable platform for developing living programmable machines.
- Slime mold-based devices show potential for unconventional computation and sensing applications.
