Self-organized energetic model for collective activity on animal tissue

Abstract

We construct a self-organized critical (SOC) model to explain spontaneous collective activity in animal tissue without the necessity of a muscular or a central control nervous system. Our prototype model is an epithelial cuboid tissue formed by a single layer of cells as the internal digestive cavity of primitive animals. The tissue is composed by cells that absorb nutrients and store energy, with probability [Formula: see text], to participate in a collective tissue activity. Each cell can be in two states: at high energy and able to became active or at low metabolic energy and remain at rest. Any cell can spontaneously, with a very low probability, spark a collective activity across its neighbors that share a minimal energy. Cells participating in tissue activity consume all their energy. A power-law relation [Formula: see text] for the probability of having a collective activity with [Formula: see text] cells is observed. By construction this model is analogue to the forest fire SOC model. Our approach produces naturally a critical state for the activity in animal tissue, besides it explains self-sustained activity in a living animal tissue without feedback control.