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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 22: Physics of Cells I
BP 22.2: Vortrag
Mittwoch, 16. März 2011, 15:30–15:45, ZEU 250
A common mechanism connects diverse reaction-diffusion models of cellular symmetry breaking — •Ernesto M. Nicola1, Philipp Khuc Trong2,3, Nathan W. Goehring2, and Stephan W. Grill2,3 — 1IFISC, Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems (CSIC-UIB), Campus Universitat Illes Balears, E-07122 Palma de Mallorca, Spain. — 2Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Pfotenhauerstrasse 108, 01307 Dresden, Germany. — 3Max-Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Noethnitzer Strasse 38, 01187 Dresden, Germany.
Polarity, the asymmetry in shape present in many cells, is a common feature of many different cell types and is a important mechanism to achieve functional specialization. The initial establishment of cell polarity can be considered as a symmetry-breaking process and has attracted much attention during the last years.
We study a minimal mathematical model for polarization in mass-conserved systems. We find that the symmetry-breaking mechanism leading to cell polarization is similar to a Turing instability and typically divides the system in two regions as observed in experiments. We also find that the topology of the bifurcations present in the parameter-space of our minimal model is equivalent to the parameter-spaces of a number of more realistic mass-conserved reaction-diffusion models proposed in the literature. This equivalence suggests that the conservation of mass, a rapid cytoplasmic diffusion and bistability are sufficient and necessary conditions to generate cell polarity.