A novel ergodic cellular automaton gene network model towards efficient hardware-based genome simulator

In this paper, a novel ergodic cellular automaton model of Hes1 mRNA and Hes1 protein network is presented. Detailed analyses reveal that the presented network model can reproduce a typical nonlinear bifurcation phenomenon observed in a conventional delay differential equation model of the Hes1 mRNA and Hes1 protein network. Furthermore, the presented network model is implemented by a field programmable gate array and its operation is validated by experiments. It is shown that the presented network model consumes much fewer circuit elements and much lower power compared to the delay differential equation network model. Hence the results of this paper will provide fundamental knowledge to design an efficient hardware-based gene network simulator.