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The distinct social behavior of Myxobacteria gives rise to a variety of
emerging patterns such as standing wave oscillations of the cell density
(rippling). Recently it was proposed that the underlying pattern formation
mechanism is based on local interaction instead of chemotaxis. According
to this, intercellular signaling mediated by oriented collisions between
cells results in cell reversal. By means of an individual-based cellular
automaton (CA) model we test various hypotheses on the individual cell
behavior (refractory period, internal cycles, cooperativity) for their
efficiency to reproduce the collective multicellular phenomena.
Simulation results are supported by mean-field analysis of the CA. A
coupled-map lattice and a continuum description are investigated.
Refs.: U.Boerner, A.Deutsch, H.Reichenbach and M.Baer, PRL 89, 078101(2002) U.Boerner and M.Baer, Annalen der Physik 13, 432(2004) |