28 research outputs found
Optimization Aspects of Carcinogenesis
Any process in which competing solutions replicate with errors and numbers of
their copies depend on their respective fitnesses is the evolutionary
optimization process. As during carcinogenesis mutated genomes replicate
according to their respective qualities, carcinogenesis obviously qualifies as
the evolutionary optimization process and conforms to common mathematical
basis. The optimization view accents statistical nature of carcinogenesis
proposing that during it the crucial role is actually played by the allocation
of trials. Optimal allocation of trials requires reliable schemas' fitnesses
estimations which necessitate appropriate, fitness landscape dependent,
statistics of population. In the spirit of the applied conceptual framework,
features which are known to decrease efficiency of any evolutionary
optimization procedure (or inhibit it completely) are anticipated as
"therapies" and reviewed. Strict adherence to the evolutionary optimization
framework leads us to some counterintuitive implications which are, however, in
agreement with recent experimental findings, such as sometimes observed more
aggressive and malignant growth of therapy surviving cancer cells
Inverse Geometric Approach to the Simulation of the Circular Growth. The Case of Multicellular Tumor Spheroids
We demonstrate the power of the genetic algorithms to construct the cellular
automata model simulating the growth of 2-dimensional close-to-circular
clusters revealing the desired properties, such as the growth rate and, at the
same time, the fractal behavior of their contours. The possible application of
the approach in the field of tumor modeling is outlined