Light filter that would allow to keep cultures in normal light conditions

[Christian Diwo]

Hello everyone,

I did not start cultivating physarum yet, but my cultures will arrive soon and I am about to set up my lab.

I was wondering if anybody knows about experiments done with light filters enclosing dishes or containers that would allow to keep cultures in normal light environment, so you could watch it any time?

[Heather Barnett]

I know of experiments done under yellow light and red light, but also under low level white light, i.e. adjustable LED. It can tolerate some light, it just prefers it dark. If there's too much light, it's likely to form fruiting bodies, and then no more creeping plasmodium...

[Christian Diwo]

Thanks for the fast reply Heather! So do you know the outcome of those experiments with red or yellow light? Any paper on that?

[Frank May]

I've never tried this before, but what if you did try black light?

- Frank May

[ian]

They really hate UV or anything down the blue end of the spectrum.

They can't see their own colour so you could use it for lighting, the three pigments that make physarum yellow are soluble in alcohol and acetone so you could actually grow up a batch of slime and use it to make a filter..

[François-Joseph Deminiere]

Hi,

Did you try diffrent led color? I'm interested too !

[Jasmin Marker]

I know this is an old post , but has anybody done anymore experiments? I came across this paper where they found that blue light fragments the slimemold.

When a plasmodium is illuminated by ultraviolet or blue monochromatic light it breaks up into many equally sized fragments (each fragment contains around eight nuclei) [22]. The fragmentation is tran- sient and after some time the fragments merge back into a fully functional plasmodium.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4139.pdf

I am interested in keeping it under red light for an exhibition where I am also working with bioluminescent things.

[Dr Jason bell]

We are about to start several experiments with light. I will keep this updated, the other experiment might require help of people here. We would like to sequence population genomes, collecting some wild specimens has thrown up some unusual results.