Fungal Automata

TL;DR

This paper models fungal hyphae as cellular automata with dynamic flow control via Woronin bodies, analyzing their complex information flow and state transition structures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cellular automaton model simulating fungal hyphal compartments with Woronin bodies acting as flow valves, exploring their rule composition and dynamic complexity.

Findings

Automata exhibit complex state transition structures.

Woronin bodies influence automaton dynamics significantly.

Local events demonstrate key automaton behaviors.

Abstract

We study a cellular automaton (CA) model of information dynamics on a single hypha of a fungal mycelium. Such a filament is divided in compartments (here also called cells) by septa. These septa are invaginations of the cell wall and their pores allow for flow of cytoplasm between compartments and hyphae. The septal pores of the fungal phylum of the Ascomycota can be closed by organelles called Woronin bodies. Septal closure is increased when the septa become older and when exposed to stress conditions. Thus, Woronin bodies act as informational flow valves. The one dimensional fungal automata is a binary state ternary neighbourhood CA, where every compartment follows one of the elementary cellular automata (ECA) rules if its pores are open and either remains in state `0' (first species of fungal automata) or its previous state (second species of fungal automata) if its pores are closed. The Woronin bodies closing the pores are also governed by ECA rules. We analyse a structure of the composition space of cell-state transition and pore-state transitions rules, complexity of fungal automata with just few Woronin bodies, and exemplify several important local events in the automaton dynamics.