Abstract

Microbial fuels cells (MFCs) are bio-electrochemical transducers that generate energy from the metabolism of electro-active microorganisms. The organism Physarum polycephalum is a slime mould, which has demonstrated many novel and interesting properties in the field of unconventional computation, such as route mapping between nutrient sources, maze solving and nutrient balancing. It is a motile, photosensitive and oxygen-consuming organism, and is known to be symbiotic with some, and antagonistic with other microbial species. In the context of artificial life, the slime mould would provide a biological mechanism (along with the microbial community) for controlling the performance and behaviour of artificial systems (MFCs, robots). In the experiments it was found that P. polycephalum did not generate significant amounts of power when inoculated in the anode. However, when P. polycephalum was introduced in the cathode of MFCs, a statistically significant difference in power output was observed.

Highlights

  • Physarum polycephalum has been the subject of numerous studies as a living agent that could be integrated into a biological computer system in the future

  • P. polycephalum has been shown to be sensitive to bright light (Ueda et al, 1988) and specific chemical cues (Costello and Adamatzky, 2013), which have been used to control the direction of plasmodium locomotion

  • The current study introduced for the first time P. polycephalum in both the anode and cathode half-cells, in order to investigate the slime-mould’s ability to either generate electricity, or affect a performance/behavioural change due to its unique responses to environmental cues

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Summary

Introduction

Physarum polycephalum has been the subject of numerous studies as a living agent that could be integrated into a biological computer system in the future. The most interesting life stage of P. polycephalum for biosensing and bioelectronic research currently focuses on the active plasmodium phase In this mode of growth, P. polycephalum is actively motile (has been observed moving up to 10 mm per hour) and will search for food sources. P. polycephalum has been shown to be sensitive to bright light (Ueda et al, 1988) and specific chemical cues (Costello and Adamatzky, 2013), which have been used to control the direction of plasmodium locomotion. These properties of P. polycephalum could be beneficial when used with microbial fuel cells and could be exploited in the future as biological switches or behavioural controllers

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