A Functional Model of Cell Genome
Alessandro Fontana, Walter Steven Fraccaro · The MIT Press eBooks · 2004
This paper is concerned with a model of the cell genome called Artificial Genome, that tries to model some aspects of the cell cycle, in particular those related to gene expression, cell differentiation and cell growth. The functioning of the model during interphase and mitosis is explained in detail through an example, that shows how the four functional categories of the Artificial Genome (Functions, Code, Data and Buffer) interact to determine the phenotype. The capacity of the model of generating phenotypical patterns, represented as 2-dimensional shapes, is explored through a simulation, that evolves in 9 cycles a cell to become a small face made up of 132 cells. Finally some parlallels between the Artificial Genome and the natural one are discussed.