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Emergence of diversity in homogeneous coupled Boolean networks
Chris Kang1, Boris Aguilar2, Ilya Shmulevich2
1Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
Abstract:
The origin of multicellularity in metazoa is one of the fundamental questions of evolutionary biology. We have modeled the generic behaviors of gene regulatory networks in isogenic cells as stochastic nonlinear dynamical systems-coupled Boolean networks with perturbation. Model simulations under a variety of dynamical regimes suggest that the central characteristic of multicellularity, permanent spatial differentiation (diversification), indeed can arise. Additionally, we observe that diversification is more likely to occur near the critical regime of Lyapunov stability.
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