On electrical gates on fungal colony

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential of fungal colonies, modeled as resistive and capacitive networks, to implement basic Boolean logic gates, advancing unconventional computing with living biological substrates.

Contribution

It demonstrates that Boolean logic gates can be realized using the electrical properties of fungal colonies modeled as RC networks based on their geometrical structure.

Findings

{ extsc{and}} gate implementation possible in RC networks

{ extsc{or}} gate implementation feasible in fungal RC networks

{ extsc{and-not}} gate realizable in biological fungal structures

Abstract

Mycelium networks are promising substrates for designing unconventional computing devices providing rich topologies and geometries where signals propagate and interact. Fulfilling our long-term objectives of prototyping electrical analog computers from living mycelium networks, including networks hybridised with nanoparticles, we explore the possibility of implementing Boolean logical gates based on electrical properties of fungal colonies. We converted a 3D image-data stack of \emph{Aspergillus niger} fungal colony to an Euclidean graph and modelled the colony as resistive and capacitive (RC) networks, where electrical parameters of edges were functions of the edges' lengths. We found that {\sc and}, {\sc or} and {\sc and-not} gates are implementable in RC networks derived from the geometrical structure of the real fungal colony.