# Forest structure in epigenetic landscapes

## TL;DR

This paper introduces Epigenetic Forests, a novel tool for analyzing genetic regulatory networks to understand morphogenesis, demonstrated through modeling Arabidopsis flower development and accurately recovering its architecture.

## Contribution

The paper presents Epigenetic Forests as a new method to study GRN structure and dynamics, providing insights into morphogenesis and cell fate determination.

## Key findings

- Successfully modeled Arabidopsis flower development
- Recovered flower architecture using genetic algorithm
- Provided new insights into GRN structure during morphogenesis

## Abstract

Morphogenesis is the biological process that causes the emergence and changes of patterns (tissues and organs) in living organisms. It is a robust, self-organising mechanism, governed by Genetic Regulatory Networks (GRN), that hasn't been thoroughly understood. In this work we propose Epigenetic Forests as a tool to study morphogenesis and to extract valuable information from GRN. Our method unfolds the richness and structure within the GRN. As a case study, we analyze the GRN during cell fate determination during the early stages of development of the flower Arabidopsis thaliana and its spatial dynamics. By using a genetic algorithm we optimize cell differentiation in our model and correctly recover the architecture of the flower.