Istituto di Analisi dei Sistemi ed Informatica Antonio Ruberti - CNR, Rome, Italy.
J Theor Biol. 2012 Sep 21;309:121-33. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2012.06.017. Epub 2012 Jun 23.
Physarum polycephalum is a slime mold that is apparently able to solve shortest path problems. A mathematical model has been proposed by Tero et al. (Journal of Theoretical Biology, 244, 2007, pp. 553-564) to describe the feedback mechanism used by the slime mold to adapt its tubular channels while foraging two food sources s(0) and s(1). We prove that, under this model, the mass of the mold will eventually converge to the shortest s(0)-s(1) path of the network that the mold lies on, independently of the structure of the network or of the initial mass distribution. This matches the experimental observations by Tero et al. and can be seen as an example of a "natural algorithm", that is, an algorithm developed by evolution over millions of years.
多头绒泡菌是一种黏菌，显然能够解决最短路径问题。特罗等人（《理论生物学杂志》，244，2007 年，第 553-564 页）提出了一个数学模型来描述黏菌在寻找两个食物源 s(0) 和 s(1) 时用于适应管状通道的反馈机制。我们证明，在这个模型下，黏菌的质量最终将收敛到黏菌所在网络的最短 s(0)-s(1)路径，而与网络的结构或初始质量分布无关。这与特罗等人的实验观察结果相符，可以看作是“自然算法”的一个例子，即经过数百万年进化而来的算法。
