Modelling Spatial Interactions in the Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Symbiosis using the Calculus of Wrapped Compartments

TL;DR

This paper models the spatial interactions in arbuscular mycorrhiza symbiosis using the Calculus of Wrapped Compartments, enabling analysis of fungal colonization of plant roots without explicit spatial geometry.

Contribution

It extends previous work by applying CWC to model spatial properties of fungal colonization, using compartment labelling to simulate surface topology.

Findings

Effective modeling of spatial interactions using compartment labels

Simulation of fungal hyphae spreading in soil

Analysis of different spatial scenarios in symbiosis

Abstract

Arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) is the most wide-spread plant-fungus symbiosis on earth. Investigating this kind of symbiosis is considered one of the most promising ways to develop methods to nurture plants in more natural manners, avoiding the complex chemical productions used nowadays to produce artificial fertilizers. In previous work we used the Calculus of Wrapped Compartments (CWC) to investigate different phases of the AM symbiosis. In this paper, we continue this line of research by modelling the colonisation of the plant root cells by the fungal hyphae spreading in the soil. This study requires the description of some spatial interaction. Although CWC has no explicit feature modelling a spatial geometry, the compartment labelling feature can be effectively exploited to define a discrete surface topology outlining the relevant sectors which determine the spatial properties of the system under consideration. Different situations and interesting spatial properties can be modelled and analysed in such a lightweight framework (which has not an explicit notion of geometry with coordinates and spatial metrics), thus exploiting the existing CWC simulation tool.