Fig. 4: Computational agent-based model of CEMA.

a Cartoon example of healthy and teratogen-influenced development. Left, an ECA, a 1D array of 0's and 1's, has an initial configuration of 40% 0's (white) and 60% 1's (black). ECA follows the GKL update rule, solving the majority problem by converging to all 1's. Right, an ECA that has noise induced by teratogens, which does not successfully solve the majority problem. b A cartoon example of inter-embryonic signaling from time t to time t + 1. Embryos signal their current health (red) at time t and supportive signals (black) at the next timestep to their neighbors and nearest neighbors. Embryos that have not been exposed to the teratogen cannot participate. c Data from the simulation shows that inter-embryonic signaling, CEMA, aids in development in the presence of noise (blue line). Without this communication, development fails in the presence of noise (red line). When half of a cohort is comprised of untreated embryos, they do not participate, and therefore the effect is lower (orange line). Each experiment included the number of embryos equal to the total embryos indicated on the x-axis and each experiment was repeated 50 times. The bars on the graph are 95% confidence intervals and the center represents the mean. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.