Cooperative success in epithelial public goods games

Cancer cells obtain mutations which rely on the production of diffusible growth factors to confer a fitness benefit. These can be considered cooperative, and studied as public goods games within framework evolutionary game theory. The population structure, benefit function update rule all influence success cooperators. We model evolution cooperation in epithelial using Voronoi tessellation model. Unlike traditional graph theory, this allows us implement global updating, for birth death events are spatially decoupled. compare, sigmoid function, conditions favoured and/or beneficial well mixed structured populations. find that when structure is combined with more successful than if there were local updating or well-mixed. Interestingly, qualitative behaviour well-mixed remarkably similar, but latter case requires significantly lower incentives ensure cooperation.