Journal
JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL BIOLOGY
Volume 253, Issue 4, Pages 659-667Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS LTD- ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2008.04.017
Keywords
Physarum; natural computing; cell model; amoebic motion; adaptive network
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A cell is a minimal self-sustaining system that can move and compute. Previous work has shown that a unicellular slime mold, Physarum, can be utilized as a biological computer based on cytoplasmic flow encapsulated by a membrane. Although the interplay between the modification of the boundary of a cell and the cytoplasmic flow surrounded by the boundary plays a key role in Physarum computing, no model of a cell has been developed to describe this interplay. Here we propose a toy model of a cell that shows amoebic motion and can solve a maze, Steiner minimum tree problem and a spanning tree problem. Only by assuming that cytoplasm is hardened after passing external matter (or softened part) through a cell, the shape of the cell and the cytoplasmic flow can be changed. Without cytoplasm hardening, a cell is easily destroyed. This suggests that cytoplasmic hardening and/or sol-gel transformation caused by external perturbation can keep a cell in a critical state leading to a wide variety of shapes and motion. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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