A Morphogenetic Cellular Automaton

How are cell proliferation and cell migration controlled to generate an embryo (and, subsequently, a fetus) with organized tissues and organs? Growth factors are crucial signaling molecules that can diffuse over a long distance to target cells and induce cell proliferation, differentiation and migration. However, the mechanisms used to regulate growth factors and morphogenic events are not well known. In this paper, we develop a mathematical model based on biological evidence of correlations between neural cell proliferation and the distribution of extracellular matrix (ECM) structures called fractones. It is hypothesized that fractone distribution may coordinate the timing and location of neural cell proliferation, thereby guiding morphogenesis, at several stages of early brain development. We propose to develop a controlled cellular automaton for simulating the complex behavior of growth factors diffusing in a perturbed manner due to the presence of fractones. This automaton will then interact with an automaton that defines rules for mitosis and exploited the interaction to control cell proliferation.