We analyse the results of our experimental laboratory approximation of motorways networks with slime mould Physarum polycephalum. Motorway networks of fourteen geographical areas are considered: Australia, Africa, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Iberia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, The Netherlands, UK, USA. For each geographical entity we represented major urban areas by oat flakes and ino...

The MBCs of nafcillin, vancomycin, gentamicin and daptomycin (LY146032) were determined for three clinical isolates of coagulase-negative staphylococci grown in suspension and adherent to biomaterials. Strains studied were the slime-producing strain Staphylococcus epidermidis RP-12 (ATCC 35983), S. hyicus SE-360, and the non-slime-producing strain S. hominis SP-2 (ATCC 35982). All three strains...

A total of 187 isolates from several clinical specimens were identified to species level as 129 Staphylococcus aureus strains and 58 coagulase-negative staphylococci (CNS) strains by the API Staph System (Biomerieux). Slime production was detected both by the conventional Christensen's method as well as by the Congo red agar method. Seventy-two strains of staphylococci isolates (38.5%) were fou...

Physiological races of a fungal phytopathogen represent biotypes capable of attacking certain varieties of a susceptible host-species. Attempts to distinguish physiological races by other criteria have not yet been successful. On the other hand, strains of bacterial pathogens may often be identified using bacterial viruses (bacteriophage). Attempts to demonstrate a virus of a true fungus have n...

Previous work has shown the percentage of encapsulated bacteria increased when cattle were placed on a feed-lot bloat type diet (Jacobson et al., 1957) and a recent investigation has shown Streptococcus bovis and Peptostreptococcus elsdenii increases in numbers as the onset of bloat symptoms occurred in cases of feed-lot bloat (Gutierrez et al., 1959). Slime produced by ruminal microorganisms i...

This paper introduces a novel application of bionic engineering: a bionic musical instrument using Physarum polycephalum. Physarum polycephalum is a huge single cell with thousands of nuclei, which behaves like a giant amoeba. During its foraging behavior this plasmodium produces electrical activity corresponding to different physiological states. We developed a method to render sounds from suc...

Planaria are soft-bodied, bilateral flatworms of the phylum Platyhelminthes. They are covered in cilia and use ciliary-gliding to traverse the substratum while hunting. Their body surface is covered in a layer of viscous slime primarily derived from specialised secretory granules known as rhabdites. The slime must somehow stay associated with the surface of the animal in aqueous environments wh...

Some Staphylococcus aureus strains, identified as causative agents of mastitis in cattle, exhibit the ability of producing a viscous extracellular polysaccharide layer (slime), which is nowadays considered to be a virulence factor, as it promotes bacterial adhesion onto the mammary epithelial cells and protects bacteria from opsonization and phagocytosis. Some strains of this genus are believed...

The plasmodium phase of Physarum polycephalum is a champion amongst living creatures used in laboratory prototypes of future and emergent computing architectures. A wide range of problems from computational geometry and logic can be solved by this cellular slime mold. A typical way to perform a computation with the slime mold is to represent a problem’s data as a spatial configuration of nutrie...

After sta~ation, amoebae of the cellular slime molds secrete acrasin [l] by which they attract each other and form an aggregate that differentiates into stalk cells and spores. In a favourable environment spores germinate yielding amoebae which feed on bacteria and m~tiply. Vegetative amoebae are also sensitive to chemotactic stimuli [4,6], which differ from acrasins. They are attracted to bact...