Simulating a rock-scissors-paper bacterial game with a discrete cellular automaton

Abstract

This paper describes some of the results obtained after the design and implementation of a discrete cellular automata simulating the generation, degradation and diffusion of particles in a two dimensional grid where different colonies of bacteria coexist and interact. This lattice-based simulator use a random walk-based algorithm to diffuse particles in a 2D discrete lattice. As first results, we analyze and show the oscillatory dynamical behavior of 3 colonies of bacteria competing in a non-transitive relationship analogous to a Rock-Scissors-Paper game (Rock bacteria beats Scissors bacteria that beats Paper bacteria; and Paper beats Rock bacteria). The interaction and communication between bacteria is done with the quorum sensing process through the generation and diffusion of three small molecules called autoinducers. These are the first results obtained from the first version of a general simulator able to model some of the complex molecular information processing and rich communication processes in synthetic bacterial ecosystems. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.