VIDEO. Audrey Dussutour reveals her experiences on the blob

“In reality, the blob is not like us. There are no girls or boys since there are 720 sexual types. You know, like us, we have X and Y as chromosomes, he has 720 possibilities.” The blob is a single-celled being found in nature. It is particularly important for wild plants, since it excretes minerals necessary for their life. But it is also the subject of experiments within the CNRS in Toulouse. Audrey Dussutour is research director and blob specialist. In her laboratory, she demonstrates to what extent this organism pushes the limits of our knowledge.

“It will also allow us to make enormous progress in knowledge”

“So, the last experience is Antonin who is Corsican and who wanted to see how the blob managed to solve a problem with the motorway network in Corsica”, explains the scientist. “And so we can see the routes that the blob has chosen to connect the different Corsican cities. So, this experience, it shows that the blob optimizes its networks and therefore will always make networks that are inexpensive, efficient and if we cut a route, it can always take an alternative route inside.

Yet the blob has no brain or nervous system to think. “The blob, inside its cell, it has a venous network, and this venous network, it is optimized to transport the nutrients, the gases in this giant cell. And what the scientists did was compare this network to current rail networks. And they showed that this cell was able to optimize better than us. Because ultimately, it is a cell which, for 1 billion years, has been optimizing its own distribution network”, explains Audrey Dussutour. “It’s fun and cool to study the blob, but it will also allow us to advance our knowledge enormously.”