Sensitivity to Initial Conditions in an Extended Activator--Inhibitor Model for the Formation of Patterns

Despite simplicity, the synchronous cellular automaton [D.A. Young, Math. Biosci. 72, 51 (1984)] enables reconstructing basic features of patterns of skin. Our extended model allows studying the formatting of patterns and their temporal evolution also on the favourable and hostile environments. As a result, the impact of different types of an environment is accounted for the dynamics of patterns formation. The process is based on two diffusible morphogens, the short-range activator and the long-range inhibitor, produced by differentiated cells (DCs) represented as black pixels. For a neutral environment, the extended model reduces to the original one. However, even the reduced model is stat…