Micro-organismsPosted by David Sumpter Fri, January 22, 2010 13:17:57 Atsushi Tero, Toshi Nakagaki and their colleagues have published a nice new paper about slime moulds solving optimisation problems. This time they have shown how they can design transport networks just as well as, if not better than, humans.
I was particularly struck by some work by Kent Hill from UCLA on extremely coordinated collective behavior in African Trypanosomes. These parasites are responsible for sleeping sickness. They have a paper in press in PLoS Pathogens so I won't say more for now, but it's one to look out for. The degree of coordination is quite remarkable and provides new concepts for the development and pathogenesis of parasitic protozoa. Of course the immune response to such parasites is collective itself, and that too is poorly understood.
