An L‐systems approach to the modelling of fungal growth

Abstract

A parametric L‐system is developed to model the growth and structure of the fungus Aspergillus nidulans. The model uses biological understanding of the flow of nutrients through the fungus to control the simulation of growth, with L‐systems productions being dependent on the levels of nutrients, stored as parameters, in various parts of the model. This produces a structural model that is consistent with previous observations of the natural fungus. Visual interpretation of the L‐systems string uses a turtle graphics method. When stochastic rules are implemented to model specific features of Aspergillus nidulans, the simulation is convincing both visually and structurally. Other potential applications for the method are suggested.

A look at the visual modeling of plants using L-systems

“…L-systems were introduced as a formalism for modeling and simulating the development of simple multicellular organisms, such as filamentous bacteria and algae [57]. In this spirit, Tunbridge and Jones recently applied a context-sensitive parametric L-system to model the development of the fungus Aspergillus nidulans [ 117]. In 1974, Frijters and Lindenmayer proposed L-systems for modeling the structures found in higher plants, in particular compound inflorescences [21][22][23][24].…”

Modelling and visualizing morphology in the fungus Alternaria

“…Early work (Tunbridge & Jones 1995) used a parametric Lindenmayer-system model (Lindenmayer 1968(Lindenmayer , 1975 to simulate growth of 2D colonies of the fungus Aspergillus nidulans, using biological understanding of the flow of nutrients through the fungus. Other works have used differential equations to explain pattern formation in fungal colony growth (Lopez & Jensen 2002;Grimm et al 2005;Moore et al 2005).…”

Simulating colonial growth of fungi with the Neighbour-Sensing model of hyphal growth

“…The parameters were based on experimental data and the resultant simulations generated realistic images by visual inspection. Tunbridge & Jones (1995) produced an elegant stochastic parametric L-system to simulate growth of Aspergillus nidulans built on a mechanistic explanation of the underlying cellular processes originally put forward by Prosser & Trinci (1979). In this contextsensitive parametric L-system, tip growth is dependent on vesicle supply from subapical segments.…”