For those of our readers who are students that like to conduct mold experiments in their dorm or apartment refrigerators, there is vindication of your efforts in the form of an experiment run by Toshiyuki Nakagaki, a Japanese scientist. Using slime that he developed from mold cultures, Nakagaki discovered that it could "think" around corners and find its way out of a maze.
Like any other organism, the slime was attracted to the correct path out of the maze by a food source. While the actions of slime mold may not seem like a worthy subject of study, the findings of the experimentation could lead to the creation of bio-computers in the future.
What is of interest to Nakagaki in regards to the slime mold is how it organized its cells to complete a goal. In the case of his maze study, the mold was able to reproduce cells that traveled the maze to reach the food source to stay alive. An amazing feat considering that the slime mold is a single-cell organism that does not have a brain to process that kind of information. Using the survival information stored in its cell, it simply found the best route that would enable it to remain viable. This process could be vital to bio-computing, as it takes power and time for a silicon based computer to calculate the best routes to connect a network that has many end points, which ends up slowing the computer down. Slime mold based networks would find the different terminations just be growing into the best routes, negating the need for computing power.
There are other uses being researched for slime mold such as transmission of electricity and future transport system designs. It will be interesting to see how scientists can continue to leverage natural occurrences to achieve modern day tasks.