Discovering tissue dynamics one cell at a time

• Book ID: 101725888
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 61 KB
• Volume: 97
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0006-3592
• DOI: 10.1002/bit.21552

✦ Synopsis

Agent-based simulation is receiving increasing attention as a means to decipher the effects of diversity on net system performance by modeling individuals, rather than bulk characteristics. Schuler and Jassby have developed and applied this approach to a biological wastewater treatment process, enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR), which relies on several different microbial storage products. Previous work by the authors has shown that these systems were likely to produce bacteria with diverse ''states,'' whose net activities are lower than predicted based on their bulk characteristics. In this article, the effects of distributed states on endogenous decay of microbial storage products in EBPR systems were explored, with the result that decay likely plays a greater role in performance than previously considered, thus system design to minimize distributed states with respect to decay should improve performance.