Conference Proceedings
Effect of local population uncertainty on cooperation in bacteria
A Noel, Y Fang, N Yang, D Makrakis, AW Eckford
IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory - Proceedings | IEEE | Published : 2018
Abstract
Bacteria populations rely on mechanisms such as quorum sensing to coordinate complex tasks that cannot be achieved by a single bacterium. Quorum sensing is used to measure the local bacteria population density, and it controls cooperation by ensuring that a bacterium only commits the resources for cooperation when it expects its neighbors to reciprocate. This paper proposes a simple model for sharing a resource in a bacterial environment, where knowledge of the population influences each bacterium's behavior. Game theory is used to model the behavioral dynamics, where the net payoff (i.e., utility) for each bacterium is a function of its current behavior and that of the other bacteria. The g..
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