Surprisingly, the ability to 'copy the original' of the slime mold

Although there is no brain, single-celled organisms such as mucus are able to communicate what they have learned to each other.

This is not a fungus, although its name is Yeast , it is not an animal or a plant but is actually a single-celled organism .

This strange mucus is a bit like a moss on the trees. Although there is no brain structure, it has the ability to learn to adapt to the environment.

This is the result of research published by the Center for Biological Awareness Research (CNRS, Toulouse III University - Paul Sabatier). Recently, the same research team published more surprising results, this mucus fungus is capable of conveying what it learns to other mucous mushroom cells if they come together.

Mucus is a single-celled organism.

Imagine that you have the ability to associate with someone, absorb their knowledge and then split and turn that knowledge into yours. This transient sound seems like a scene in Hollywood's X-Men movie, but with the slime mold, they really have that ability.

The slime fungus, called Physarum polycephalum , is a single-celled organism that lives in a forested environment, under tree canopy. CNRS scientists Audrey Dussutour and David Vogel successfully cultivate the fungus in the laboratory and train them to move through harmless but permeable substances such as coffee or salt on the way to get food.

Both taught more than 2,000 slime mushroom cells to know that salt is not dangerous by passing them through a salt-covered bridge to get food. And these individuals of slime mold know how to go through salt crystals on the way by dissolving them. This group is called the Experience group.

A group of 2,000 other mucilage cells is passed through a salt-free bridge to get food, which is marked as the Innocent group, as opposed to the Experience group.

After a period of training, the team combined two groups into a third group called a mixed group. Mucous fungal cells of all three groups must cross the salt bridge to be able to get food, and as a result, the mixed cell group moves as fast as the experience group, faster than the naive group.

This demonstrates the knowledge of the harmlessness of salt that has been shared from the experience group to the naive group when they are combined. Regardless of the combination of three or four cells, only one cell of the experience group is needed, the remaining cells are transmitting information.

These cells are trained in the laboratory.

To check whether the transfer of information actually took place, the group was divided into two small groups, a 1-hour mixed group and a 3-hour mixed group to perform the salt bridge experiment again.

As a result, only cells in the 3-hour mix group can pass through salt while naive and mixed 1-hour cells are slowed by avoiding salt on the way. The results showed the ability of mucus mushroom cells to learn.

When viewed with a microscope, the team found that after three hours of incorporation, a vein was formed at the contact points between cells. This vein is definitely the place to exchange information of cells together.

The form of transmitting this information is the challenge that the team needs to clarify, and should check how much information can be transmitted at once. If A cell can avoid salt and B cells can avoid coffee, when combining whether both knowledge can be transmitted?

While the biological problems of the algorithm still have to be determined, this study provides insight into the primitive mechanisms of decision making and shows that the basic principles of making decision, information processing and shared awareness among biological systems is extremely diverse.