A preliminary assessment of three strategies for the agent-based modeling of bacterial conjugation

Abstract

Bacterial conjugation is a cell-cell communication by which neighbor cells transmit circular DNA strands called plasmids. The transmission of these plasmids has been traditionally modeled using differential equations. Recently agentbased systems with spatial resolution have emerged as a promising tool that we use in this work to assess three different schemes for modeling the bacterial conjugation. The three schemes differ basically in which point of cell cycle the conjugation ismost prone to happen. One alternative is to allow a conjugative event occurs as soon a suitable recipient is found, the second alternative is to make conjugation equally like to happen throughout the cell cycle and finally, the third one technique to assume that conjugation is more likely to occur in a specific point late in the cell cycle.