{"id":106591,"date":"2020-05-05T18:48:02","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T01:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/towards-fungal-computer"},"modified":"2020-05-05T18:48:02","modified_gmt":"2020-05-06T01:48:02","slug":"towards-fungal-computer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/towards-fungal-computer","title":{"rendered":"Towards fungal computer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/towards-fungal-computer.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Circa 2018<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>We propose that fungi Basidiomycetes can be used as computing devices: information is represented by spikes of electrical activity, a computation is implemented in a mycelium network and an interface is realized via fruit bodies. In a series of scoping experiments, we demonstrate that electrical activity recorded on fruits might act as a reliable indicator of the fungi\u2019s response to thermal and chemical stimulation. A stimulation of a fruit is reflected in changes of electrical activity of other fruits of a cluster, i.e. there is distant information transfer between fungal fruit bodies. In an automaton model of a fungal computer, we show how to implement computation with fungi and demonstrate that a structure of logical functions computed is determined by mycelium geometry.<\/p>\n<p>The fungi are the largest, widely distributed and oldest group of living organisms [1]. The smallest fungi are microscopic single cells. The largest mycelium belongs to Armillaria bulbosa, which occupies 15 hectares and weights 10 tons [2], and the largest fruit body belongs to Fomitiporia ellipsoidea, which at 20 years old is 11 m long, 80 cm wide, 5 cm thick and has an estimated weight of nearly half-a-ton [3]. During the last decade, we produced nearly 40 prototypes of sensing and computing devices from the slime mould Physarum polycephalum [4], including the shortest path finders, computational geometry processors, hybrid electronic devices, see the compilation of the latest results in [5].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Circa 2018 We propose that fungi Basidiomycetes can be used as computing devices: information is represented by spikes of electrical activity, a computation is implemented in a mycelium network and an interface is realized via fruit bodies. In a series of scoping experiments, we demonstrate that electrical activity recorded on fruits might act as a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1523],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-computing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}