The Factory of Life: How the CNRS Breeds Millions of Blobs for Schools

What happens when your research subject becomes a national celebrity? For Audrey Dussutour and her team at the CNRS, the success of the “blob” meant their quiet laboratory had to transform overnight into a high-throughput industrial breeding facility.

To support the 15,000 volunteers of the general public and the 350,000 students involved in the official school programs, the lab had to figure out how to mass-produce, stabilize, and ship 60,000 living samples of Physarum polycephalum. This is the story of the “Blob Factory.”

Scaling the Unscalable

In a typical experiment, a scientist might manage 10 to 20 Petri dishes. For the “Mon Blob à la maison” project, the team had to scale that by a factor of a thousand.

• The Morning Routine: Every morning, the team (led by Dussutour, Celine, and Emily) spent hours feeding hundreds of simultaneous cultures.
• The Diet: The operation required several kilograms of oat flakes every single day. A single mature “industrial” culture could consume half a cup of oats in hours.
• The Harvest: Over an eight-month period, the team meticulously prepared over 60,000 individual samples, ensuring each one was genetically identical and healthy.

The Shipping Paradox: Why You Can’t Mail an “Awake” Blob

A common question from students is: “Why did my blob arrive on a piece of paper instead of in a jar of jelly?”

The answer is a matter of containment. Slime molds are the ultimate escape artists. If the CNRS had mailed active (“plasmodial”) blobs, the organisms would have explored the inside of the envelopes, crawled into the sorting machines, and potentially escaped into the postal system. Furthermore, an active blob consumes its oxygen and food rapidly; it would likely starve or suffocate before delivery.

The Sclerotia Solution: Life on Pause

The key to the global distribution of the blob is a biological state called sclerotia.

• The Transition: To prepare a sample for shipping, the lab team places a living blob on a filter paper and dries it in a specialized oven at exactly 30°C.
• The Result: The blob’s liquid cytoplasm hardens into a dense, dry, orange crust. In this state, the “life” is on pause.
• Stability and Stamina: Once turned into sclerotia, the sample is flat, lightweight, and incredibly stable. It can be mailed in a standard envelope and can remain viable for years without food or water.

Reviving the Army

For the 350,000 students receiving these kits, the first “miracle” of the protocol is the resurrection. By adding a single drop of water to the sclerotia, the dry crust rehydrates. Within minutes, the internal shuttle streaming begins, and within hours, the blob is once again crawling toward its first meal.

This logistical feat didn’t just provide a fun science kit; it proved that with the right biological handling, we can distribute the wonders of complex, living research to every classroom in the world.

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Received your official kit? Learn the fastest way to wake up your sample in our Sclerotia Revival Guide.

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Origin and E-E-A-T

• Source: CNRS Report “Mon Blob à la maison” / Audrey Dussutour interview on logistics.
• Key Concept: Mass-rearing of Physarum polycephalum and Sclerotization.
• Institutional Credit: CRCA-CNRS / University of Paul Sabatier (Toulouse).