Figure 2

Convergence plot of the network for an array of 100 cells starting from random uniformly distributed binary initial conditions, 0/black or 1/white for ntcA , hetR and patS. Each new row represents the expression levels after one random iteration starting from the state of the previous row. The system converges to one attractor where only some cells differentiate to heterocysts, represented by high values in HetR (the stable vertical lines formed in the figure). The average distance between heterocysts is approximately 10 with a transport factor D = 0.767.