arXiv subjects

Alan Gibbons

Publications and source records attributed to Alan Gibbons.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2009

Wave propagation in filamental cellular automata

Motivated by questions in biology and distributed computing, we investigate the behaviour of particular cellular automata, modelled as one-dimensional arrays of identical finite automata. We investigate what sort of self-stabilising cooperative behaviour these can induce in terms of waves of cellular state changes along a filament of cells. We discover what the minimum requirements are, in terms of numbers of states and the range of communication between automata, to observe this for individual filaments. We also discover that populations of growing filaments may have useful features that the individual filament does not have, and we give the results of numerical simulations.

cs.FL↗

arXiv2005

Bacterial self-organisation and computation

In this article we highlight chemotaxis (cellular movement) as a rich source of potential engineering applications and computational models, highlighting current research and possible future work. We first give a brief description of the biological mechanism, before describing recent work on modelling it in silico. We then propose a methodology for extending existing models and their possible application as a fundamental tool in engineering cellular pattern formation. We discuss possible engineering applications of human-defined cell patterns, as well as the potential for using abstract models of chemotaxis for generalised computation, before concluding with a brief discussion of future challenges and opportunities in this field.

q-bio.CB↗