The Kinetic Basis of Morphogenesis

TL;DR

This paper extends a kinetic automaton model to better simulate pattern formation and morphogenesis in physical and biological systems, with potential applications in engineering and robotics.

Contribution

The paper introduces extensions to the kinon model, enhancing its complexity and tunability for simulating morphogenetic processes.

Findings

Extended kinon model can produce complex spatio-temporal patterns.

Model applicability to real biological morphogenesis demonstrated.

Potential use in morphogenetic engineering and swarm robotics discussed.

Abstract

It has been shown recently (Shalygo, 2014) that stationary and dynamic patterns can arise in the proposed one-component model of the analog (continuous state) kinetic automaton, or kinon for short, defined as a reflexive dynamical system with active transport. This paper presents extensions of the model, which increase further its complexity and tunability, and shows that the extended kinon model can produce spatio-temporal patterns pertaining not only to pattern formation but also to morphogenesis in real physical and biological systems. The possible applicability of the model to morphogenetic engineering and swarm robotics is also discussed.