Cellular automata model for gene networks

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Abstract
In order to study the overall behavior of gene networks, we propose a simple cellular automata (CA) model in which each binary gene is connected to K other inputs (including itself) interacting through asymmetric short- and long-range couplings. Using numerical simulations and mean-field calculations, collective dynamical properties of this CA model were investigated. It is shown that the CA exhibits three different dynamical regimes: a frozen, a marginal, and a chaotic phase, where an initial damage vanishes, remains limited, and grows to a finite fraction of the lattice sites, respectively. The results presented are also consistent with the observed biological scaling laws for the number of differentiated cells and cell length cycles as a function of the number of genes in an organism.