IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v407y2000i6803d10.1038_35035159.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Maze-solving by an amoeboid organism

Author

Listed:
  • Toshiyuki Nakagaki

    (Bio-Mimetic Control Research Center, RIKEN, Shimoshidami
    Local Spatio-Temporal Functions Laboratory, RIKEN)

  • Hiroyasu Yamada

    (Bio-Mimetic Control Research Center, RIKEN, Shimoshidami
    Local Spatio-Temporal Functions Laboratory, RIKEN
    Research Institute for Electronic Science, Hokkaido University)

  • Ágota Tóth

    (Department of Physical Chemistry University of Szeged)

Abstract

The plasmodium of the slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a large amoeba-like cell consisting of a dendritic network of tube-like structures (pseudopodia). It changes its shape as it crawls over a plain agar gel and, if food is placed at two different points, it will put out pseudopodia that connect the two food sources. Here we show that this simple organism has the ability to find the minimum-length solution between two points in a labyrinth.

Suggested Citation

  • Toshiyuki Nakagaki & Hiroyasu Yamada & Ágota Tóth, 2000. "Maze-solving by an amoeboid organism," Nature, Nature, vol. 407(6803), pages 470-470, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:407:y:2000:i:6803:d:10.1038_35035159
    DOI: 10.1038/35035159
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/35035159
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/35035159?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tero, Atsushi & Kobayashi, Ryo & Nakagaki, Toshiyuki, 2006. "Physarum solver: A biologically inspired method of road-network navigation," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 363(1), pages 115-119.
    2. Stamatios C Nicolis & Natalia Zabzina & Tanya Latty & David J T Sumpter, 2011. "Collective Irrationality and Positive Feedback," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(4), pages 1-6, April.
    3. Shin Watanabe & Atsuko Takamatsu, 2014. "Transportation Network with Fluctuating Input/Output Designed by the Bio-Inspired Physarum Algorithm," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(2), pages 1-11, February.
    4. Xiaoge Zhang & Andrew Adamatzky & Felix T. S. Chan & Sankaran Mahadevan & Yong Deng, 2017. "Physarum solver: a bio-inspired method for sustainable supply chain network design problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 254(1), pages 533-552, July.
    5. Julian M L Budd & Krisztina Kovács & Alex S Ferecskó & Péter Buzás & Ulf T Eysel & Zoltán F Kisvárday, 2010. "Neocortical Axon Arbors Trade-off Material and Conduction Delay Conservation," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(3), pages 1-25, March.
    6. Gao, Cai & Yan, Chao & Zhang, Zili & Hu, Yong & Mahadevan, Sankaran & Deng, Yong, 2014. "An amoeboid algorithm for solving linear transportation problem," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 398(C), pages 179-186.
    7. Takatomo Mihana & Yuta Terashima & Makoto Naruse & Song-Ju Kim & Atsushi Uchida, 2018. "Memory Effect on Adaptive Decision Making with a Chaotic Semiconductor Laser," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2018, pages 1-8, April.
    8. Andrew Adamatzky & Olivier Allard & Jeff Jones & Rachel Armstrong, 2017. "Evaluation of French motorway network in relation to slime mould transport networks," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 44(2), pages 364-383, March.
    9. Guangzhi Han & Haifeng Jiang & Liansheng Lu & Shanshan Ma & Shuo Xiao, 2018. "Physarum-inspired multi-parameter adaptive routing protocol for coal mine hybrid wireless mesh networks," International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, , vol. 14(2), pages 15501477187, February.
    10. Ohnishi, Teruaki & Okada, Osami & Shirakata, Hirofumi, 2013. "Morphological similarity of road networks and cracks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(18), pages 4127-4133.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:407:y:2000:i:6803:d:10.1038_35035159. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.