ENTROPIC PREDICTIONS FOR CELLULAR NETWORKS

Diverse cellular systems evolve to remarkably similar stationary states. We therefore have studied and simulated a purely topological model. We use a maximum-entropy argument to predict that the average number of l-sided cells adjacent to an n-sided cell, M(l)(n), will be linear in n. One consequence is the empirically observed linearity of the total number of edges of cells adjacent to an n-sided cell, known as the Aboav-Weaire law. The prevailing justification of that law is shown to be incorrect, and thus the apparently universal experimental slope of approximately 5 remains unexplained.