Slimy new way of transport designed by Japanese

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDDec 29 2011

Japanese researchers are inspired by a brainless primeval organism – yellow amoeboid slime, to devise the ideal transport network design.

Amoeboid yellow slime mould has been on Earth for eons, living a distinctly un-high-tech life, but scientists say it could provide the key to designing bio-computers capable of solving complex problems.

Toshiyuki Nakagaki, a professor at Future University Hakodate, says the organism organises its cells to create the most direct route through a maze to a source of food. He explained that cells appear to have a kind of information-processing ability that allows them to optimise the route along which the mould grows to reach food while avoiding stresses, like light, that may damage them. The mould even appears to be able to 'remember' dangers and avoid them.

Nakagaki said humans are not the only living things with information-processing abilities. The long-lived organism - it's been around for hundreds of millions of years - appears to have evolved to deal with dangerous environments. It's a task that would be beyond the capability of many advanced computers and software packages - and a level of 'information processing' that most of us wouldn't believe a single-celled organism would be capable of.

Nakagaki said, “Simple creatures can solve certain kinds of difficult puzzles. If you want to spotlight the essence of intelligence, it's easier to use these simple creatures.” The slime moulds are not intelligent as we understand it, but by flexibly responding to stresses such as light, and adapting, they are able to solve navigation problems that would baffle computers.

Nakagaki has already demonstrated that the moulds can 'design' a railway network similar to Tokyo's by using this primitive navigation system - research which won him the Ig Nobel prize in 2010. The Ig Nobels are a spoof prize given out for 'improbable research' - intended to honor, 'achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.'

Now other Japanese researchers aim to build on Nakagaki's research - and create computer algorithms that simulate the primitive navigation used by the moulds. “Ultimately, I'm interested in creating a bio-computer by using actual slime molds, whose information-processing system will be quite close to that of the human brain,” said Masahi Aono of Riken, a science research institute in Saitama. By using this mechanism as the basis, it could lead to an entirely new kind of computing.