Reading Room / slime mould
Growing molecular reads
Slime mould, one cell that behaves like a network.
How a single cell with no brain finds a route through a maze, and why almost nothing it does survives being taken away from it..
MATTER
06/07
start here
Slime mould, from the molecule up
Actin and myosin driving the contents back and forth, and the trail the cell leaves outside itself. Everything here is a living process, so the death test comes back empty, and that is the lesson.
Foundational · Molecular · Framework
The rest of the shelf
02
The stream that does the deciding
Actomyosin contracts, the contents shuttle one way then the other, and a route that gets used gets thicker. The behaviour everyone films, read at the protein.
MOLECULAR · response
03
The trail it will not cross
The cell leaves slime behind, then reads it when it comes back. Memory kept outside the body, and a fair test of how loosely we use the word..
MOLECULAR · more-than-human
04
What you cannot take home
The property here is a living process, so it fails the death test outright. What that rules out, and what an honest slime mould product could still be..
MOLECULAR · framework
Molecules Covered
actin
myosin
calcium ions
Glossary
Read next
The uncommon and the in-between, materials that don't sit neatly in one group yet. Meet the next on its own terms.
