Progress in plasmodial differentiation improves regularity of oscillating contractions in Physarum polycephalum.

Based on the knowledge about subcellular morphogenetic processes in the acellular slime mold Physarum polycephalum, we hypothesized that during differentiation of undifferentiated endoplasm to the highly differentiated complex structure of the contractile apparatus of this organism, the regularity of oscillating contractions must improve. We measured the endogenous contraction automaticity starting from the de novo generation within minutes after sampling small portions of undifferentiated endoplasm. The standard deviation of the normalized period duration of these samples was compared to the respective values of radial contractions of differentiated protoplasmic plasmodial strands.