Coupled random boolean network forming an artificial tissue

Random boolean networks (shortly, RBN) have proven useful in describing complex phenomena occurring at the unicellular level. It is therefore interesting to investigate how their dynamical behavior is affected by cell-cell interactions, which mimics those occurring in tissues in multicellular organisms. It has also been suggested that evolution may tend to adjust the parameters of the genetic network so that it operates close to a critical state, which should provide evolutionary advantage; this hypothesis has received intriguing, although not definitive support from recent findings. It is therefore particularly interesting to consider how the tissue-like organization alters the dynamical behavior of the networks close to a critical state. In this paper we define a model tissue, which is a cellular automaton each of whose cells hosts a full RBN, and we report preliminary studies of the way in which the dynamics is affected.