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Population Dynamics

Introduction

The fact that in our project we are removing members of the bacterial population, making them sporulate, but not germinate again, will clearly effect the population dynamics of the growth of B. subtilis in a competitive environment such as the soil

We needed to make sure that we do not kill off our entire population.

Thus we required a method to be able to tune our system, so that we can have a large enough percentage of metal sequestering spores to make a positive environmental impact, but also a small enough percentage, so that the population will continue to live and grow.

To achieve his aim, we needed to tinker with the delicate balance that Bacillus normal maintains between its differentiation states of spores and vegetative cells.

Novelty in this sub-project

The novel part of this sub-project is to model the dynamics of a bacterial population, on the cellular level, as well as integrating this agent based model with biochemical models. Furthermore our simulation is able to run on distributed systems, making use of a large number of computers at once.

Modelling

See Population Modelling

This section of the project is a model simulation, which describes a high level working of our complete system. It also includes detail from other models, as it uses these in its decision making processes. The model has been developed in the Java programming language, but also uses other technologies including running CellML models.

Other Presentations and Diagrams

For the population simulation we will be looking at a simplified model of a bacteria's life cycle.

A simplified normal life cycle may be:

Whereas our modified life cycle would have an additional state, where some spores cannot germinate. Notice that cells can enter the Metal Spore stage, but not exit it: