An artificial lizard regrows its tail (and more): Regeneration of 3-dimensional structures with hundreds of thousands of artificial cells

Abstract

Biological multicellular structures can not only self-generate from a single cell but also self-regenerate after damage. In this paper we investigate self-regeneration in a model of artificial development, Epigenetic Tracking. 3-dimensional cellular structures grown using our model reach a size and a level of complexity unmatched by other models in the field, thanks to several features of Epigenetic Tracking. One of these features is that only a small fraction of cells in the body, called drivers, orchestrate development. In this paper we use the mechanim for the generation of drivers based on the diffusion of morphogens as a foundation of several new mechanisms in Epigenetic Tracking, and show that these mechanisms allow for self-regeneration after removal of arbitrarily large portions of the multicellular body.