GMU:DIY Biolab “Driver’s License”/slime molds, mycelium

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Related Projects

Saša Spačal

Mycophone_emergence, https://mycophone.wordpress.com/mycophone_emergence/

Mycophone_emergence is an invitation for you to become the explorer of the force of technology, to enter the realm where biological and non biological are no longer anything else but a type of material that technology as dynamic force deals with and manipulates through the hands of human beings.

Martin Howse

Radio Mycelium, http://libarynth.org/parn/radio_mycelium, http://www.psychogeophysics.org/wiki/doku.php?id=mycelial

"Radio Mycelium proposes the construction of a series of experimental situations examining a new networked imaginary, the single organism of the fungal mycelium, in relation to pathogenic, electromagnetic communications."(http://fo.am/radio_mycelium/)

Laura Popplow

Fungutopia, http://www.fungutopia.org/

"As an installation fungutopia shows the different possibilities that mushrooms offer to help to make the world a better place: Mushrooms are open source medicine, food, fertilizer and soil-recovery-method. They can be cultivated quite simply even indoor and are perfect for urban fungiculture. The workshop shows simple techniques to grow mushrooms in cities, whereas the prototype MUSHroom tries to combine Open Source Electronics with Biology to grow even more rare medicinal species year round indoor. As a community-project fungutopia tries to bring together people for urban fungiculture and share knowledge and experience. The Online Community grow.fungutopia.org is the web equivalent of the f2f experience."(http://www.fungutopia.org/index.php?/about/)

Gediminas ir Nomeda Urbonai

Zooetics Pavilion (Psychotropic House at CAC, 2015), http://www.zooetics.net/

"..was inspired by British novelist J.G. Ballard writing about living plant technologies in his collection of short stories Vermilion Sands (1971). In his fictional world Ballard describes a psychotropic house that interacts with its inhabitants and bio-clothes made from hypersensitive plants that respond to their wearers. Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas created a laboratory in the gallery making living material by mixing mycelium (mushroom root) with agricultural waste (sawdust, straw etc)."(https://traceywarrwriting.com/2015/10/15/m-for-mycelium/)

Theresa Schubert

bodymetries, 2013

“In bodymetries visitors can experience virtual slime mould growth on their skin. Visitors enter a semi dark room with a bar table in the center. Some wobbling blobs appear on a small sections of the surface. Visitors are invited to lay their arms onto the desk. The system ‘scans’ it by taking and analysing a picture. The slime mould algorithm starts to grow from the darkest area it can find on the skin.”(http://theresaschubert.com/arts-experiments/art/bodymetries-mapping-the-human-body-through-amorphous-intelligence)


James Whitting, Ben De Lacy Costello, Andrew Adamatzky

Sonification

Towards slime mould chemical sensor: Mapping chemical inputs onto electrical potential dynamics of Physarum Polycephalum Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical. response to BenzylAlcohol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byTJEYHaIIM https://soundcloud.com/lessnullvoid/physarum-sonification

Toshiyuki Nakagaki

Experiments with Physarum polycefalum finding the shortest way to the food source through the maze

3-5 min @ Heather Barnett: What humans can learn from semi-intelligent slime https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UxGrde1NDA

Fungi / mycelium

Gallery

Features

  • Transport of allelochemicals; Allelopathy, a phenomenon where compounds produced by one plant limit the growth of surrounding plants
  • Mycoremediation
  • Mycofiltration

Life cycle

Most fungi grow as mycelium consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae, which are cylindrical, thread-like structures 2–10 µm in diameter and up to several centimeters in length. All together hyphae may form extremely large organisms, as for example Armillaria ostoyae, which occupies 965 hectares os soil found in US Oregon's Blue Mountains (Casselman 2007).

Mycelium/Hyphae

“Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus, consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. A typical single spore germinates into a homokaryotic mycelium, which cannot reproduce sexually; when two compatible homokaryotic mycelia join and form a dikaryotic mycelium; that mycelium may form fruiting bodies such as mushrooms.”(wikipedia)

“One of the primary roles of fungi in an ecosystem is to decompose organic compounds”(wikipedia)

“Turning a backyard compost pile will commonly expose visible networks of mycelia that have formed on the decaying organic material within. Compost is an essential soil amendment and fertilizer for organic farming and gardening. Composting can divert a substantial fraction of municipal solid waste from landfill.”(wikipedia)

"Around 90% of land plants are in mutually-beneficial relationships with fungi. The 19th-century German biologist Albert Bernard Frank coined the word "mycorrhiza" to describe these partnerships, in which the fungus colonises the roots of the plant." (Fleming 2014)

Allelophaty

“The team tested the soil in the cylinders for two compounds made by the marigolds, which can slow the growth of other plants and kill nematode worms. In the cylinders where the fungi were allowed to grow, levels of the two compounds were 179% and 278% higher than in cylinders without fungi. That suggests the mycelia really did transport the toxins.”(ref http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0027195) The team then grew lettuce seedlings in the soil from both sets of containers. After 25 days, those grown in the more toxin-rich soil weighed 40% less than those in soil isolated from the mycelia. "These experiments show the fungal networks can transport these chemicals in high enough concentrations to affect plant growth,” says Morris, who is now based at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.

As a result of this growing body of evidence, many biologists have started using the term "wood wide web" to describe the communications services that fungi provide to plants and other organisms.

Sclerotium

A sclerotium (plural sclerotia, from Greek skleros - hard) is a compact mass of hardened fungal mycelium containing food reserves.

Slime molds (Physarum Polycefalum)

Gallery

Features

“Slime mold is an informal name given to several kinds of unrelated eukaryotic organisms that can live freely as single cells, but aggregate together to form multicellular reproductive structures.”(Wikipedia C)

Slime molds belong to Protista, that is neither animal, nor fungi nor bacteria. They feed on microorganisms.

“When food is in short supply, many of these single-celled organisms will congregate and start moving as a single body. In this state they are sensitive to airborne chemicals and can detect food sources. They can readily change the shape and function of parts and may form stalks that produce fruiting bodies, releasing countless spores”(Wikipedia C)

It is said that slime molds can exhibit some degree of intelligence, like sacrifice or computation of the shortest paths to the nutrition source. See this VIDEO that displays the groth and gives some extra information.


Physarum Polycephalum

Physarum Polycephalum and its life cycle

"Physarum polycephalum, literally the "many-headed slime", is a slime mold that inhabits shady, cool, moist areas, such as decaying leaves and logs. Like slime molds in general, it is sensitive to light; in particular, light can repel the slime mold and be a factor in triggering spore growth."(wikipedia A) It feeds on bacteria, spores and other microbial creatures.

  • Vegetative phase: plasmodium (consists of networks of protoplasmic veins, and many nuclei)
  • sclerotium (hardened multinucleated tissue)
  • sporangia

References