Talk:Physarum polycephalum

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Dubious fact

removed from article: "It is also believed that the P. polycephalum is the first eukaryotic cell to have organelles such as mitochondria and ribosomal features." This implies this organism is the last common eukaryotic ancestor; a fact which I do not believe is true. 82.25.75.94 (talk) 11:52, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, not logged in, that comment was by me. - Zephyris _Talk 11:52, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

False info

I am a 7th grader, and even I know that Physarum polycephalum is not protozoa, it is a funguslike protist.but i true think it s just simply mould to be honest 69.141.253.224 00:48, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a 7th grader to and I know that all slime molds are fungi. They are in the Fungi Kingdom.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.245.83.18 (talk) 20:25, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Adamatzky references should be peer-reviewed and not arXiv pre-prints

References to pre-prints of Andrew Adamatzky hosted at http://www.arXiv.org/ keep getting added here (in some cases, by the author himself). An encyclopedia should only reference peer-reviewed articles (or books that are recognized by experts to be reputable), and it should probably only state claims as scientific "fact" if those claims have been verified by multiple investigators and have had time for adequate scrutiny. At the moment, it appears like this page is turning into an advertisement for Adamatzky's work, bypassing the normal peer-review process. I am going to try to patch some of these problems now, but I have a feeling they will creep back in later. —TedPavlic (talk/contrib/@) 17:15, 24 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On that note, the Adamanzky and Jones paper on road simulation was not the seminal paper on the subject. The Tokyo paper was received for publication in June of 2009. The AJ paper was received for at arXiv in November of 2009 and submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal in December of 2009. Pre-print publication at arXiv is nearly immediate; the peer-review process takes time, and so comparing publication and self-published dates is like comparing apples and oranges. —TedPavlic (talk/contrib/@) 19:58, 24 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why do "Steiner minimum trees" and other efficient layouts emerge from P.p.'s activity? Is there a benefit for P.p. to develop these layouts? --Abdull (talk) 21:48, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My guess would be that they are optimal in the sense that they provide maximum connectivity with a minimum of matter. Rp (talk) 21:08, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I actually do experiments with Physarum. The slime mould does not (reliably) produce networks that resemble Steiner Trees. When you do the experiment with a couple of oat flakes, like 6 or so, you get something looking roughly like the Steiner tree maybe 20% of the time. Some mathematical models of Physarum can be shown to converge to Steiner trees, but that only means that they don't model Physarum correctly. --188.97.44.140 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 09:37, 25 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Where

to find 'em? Gde oni vodatsa? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.64.7.130 (talk) 18:11, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

720

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/17/europe/france-new-organism-zoo-intl-scli-scn-hnk/index.html

CNN is reporting that Paris Zoological Park is putting one of these on display. The article relates that the species has not two but 720 sexes. Might that be addressed here? PurpleChez (talk) 18:45, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

CBS News as well reporting on the same story: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-blob-paris-zoo-debuts-mysterious-self-healing-blob-nearly-720-sexes

This detail about a single species having "nearly 720 sexes" sounds rather suspicious and click-baity. Perhaps someone with actual scientific knowledge on this subject could elaborate. I get the impression this slime mold doesn't have a fixed set of sex chromosomes, so perhaps they are calling every slight variation in chromosomes they observe a different "sex." --2605:E000:2748:6F00:412D:AEBC:DD8F:91EA (talk) 22:18, 19 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

They are referring to mating types. According to Moriyama & Kawano, P. polycephalum does indeed have "more than 700 mating types" (see introduction, here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10265-009-0298-5 ) Yes, the CBS article is kind of "click baity," but that's because it's really not very unusual for an organism to have large numbers of mating types. The fungus Schizophyllum commune has over 23,000! Deuterostome (Talk) 18:22, 20 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

gastronomy

I saw in a blacklisted article online that some people have eaten this. But it wasn't cited. So I came to trusty wikipedia for more information. There's a lot of information here! But nothing on whether humans eat it. Seems like something that is worth a mention. Eat it, don't eat it, nobody has done studies yet, something! Lots of love to all you protozoa researchers out there~ 2601:645:100:8380:0:0:0:F2C1 (talk) 03:43, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]