Figure 1

Schematic illustration of the ant algorithm. (A) Selection of a shorter path between a nest and a food source by natural ants. The ants travel between the nest and food through trail #1 and trail #2. Initially, ants are distributed equally on both trails (top). Since trail #1 is shorter than trail #2, trail #1 becomes their favorite pathway with a higher pheromone concentration (bottom). (B) Modeling gene expression using artificial ants. In an artificial nucleus consisting of two transcription-factor binding motifs involved in the regulatory model, ants are initially located in a random fashion (top). These two motifs are treated like a food source, and two ant colonies are formed after cycles of pheromone deposition and evaporation (bottom).