Toward organogenesis of artificial creatures

Abstract

This paper presents a new model for the development of artificial creatures from a single cell. The model aims at providing a more biologically plausible abstraction of the morphogenesis and the specialization process, which the organogenesis follows. It is built upon three main elements: a cellular physics simulation, a simplified cell cycle using an evolved artificial gene regulatory network and a cell specialization mechanism quantifying the ability to perform different functions. As a proof-of-concept, we present a small experiment where the morphology of a multicellular organism is guided by cell weaknesses and efficiency at performing different functions under environmental stress.

The Role of Criticality of Gene Regulatory Networks in Morphogenesis

“…G ENE regulatory networks (GRNs) have been an interesting topic from modeling to applications in artificial life and engineering research [1]- [8]. Especially, as a framework to study morphogenesis during developmental processes, many GRN-based morphogenetic systems to form nontrivial morphogenetic patterns or shapes in 2D or 3D space have been actively developed [9]- [15]. However, the relationship between microscopic properties of intracellular GRNs and macroscopic properties of morphogenetic systems have not been fully explored yet.…”