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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 1: Dynamic Processes and Pattern Formation
BP 1.5: Vortrag
Montag, 23. März 2009, 11:45–12:00, HÜL 186
Anti-spiral waves in glycolysis: How molecular enzyme properties determine the resulting spatio-temporal patterns — •Ronny Straube1 and Ernesto M. Nicola2 — 1MPI for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems, Sandtorstr. 1, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany — 2MPI for Physics of Complex Systems, Noethnitzer Str. 38, 01187 Dresden, Germany
Spiral waves are probably the most common structure arising in pattern forming systems. Much less common are so called anti-spirals where, in contrast to “normal” spirals, the wave fronts propagate inwardly, i.e. towards the spiral core. Since their first discovery in chemical model systems [1,2] anti-spirals have now been generated in glycolysis using an extract of yeast cells (unpublished results), which represents a biological model system for the energy metabolism. Here, we explore theoretically the conditions for the occurrence of anti-spirals in two well-known glycolytic model systems: The Goldbeter model and the Selkov model. Interestingly, anti-spirals can only emerge in the Goldbeter model provided that the enzyme cooperativity, as measured by the number of enzyme subunits, is sufficiently large. This is in agreement with the observation that under physiological conditions the glycolytic enzyme phosphofructokinase is predominantly found in a tetrameric or octameric conformation.
[1] V. K. Vanag, I. R. Epstein. Science 294, 835-837 (2001).
[2] X. Shao et.al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 198304 (2008).