Berlin 2018 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 44: Pattern Formation I

DY 44.6: Talk

Wednesday, March 14, 2018, 12:00–12:15, BH-N 334

Mass-conserved Excitable Waves in the interior of Giant Amoeboid Cells — •Francesc Font¹, Sven Flemming¹, Carsten Beta², and Sergio Alonso² — ¹Department of Physics, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain — ²Institute of Physics and Astronomy, Universität Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

Spiral waves and complex patterns have been observed in the interior of Dictyostelium discoideum cells. The amoebas have typically around 10 µm length, and the waves are on the similar scale than the cell size. Recent experiments have shown that a set of similar Dictyostelium discoideum cells can fuse into a single, larger cell when exposed to repeated electric pulses. The relatively large size of the resulting cell permits a clearer observation of the wave dynamics and pattern formation within the cell domain. For a systematic characterization of the internal waves, we present a mathematical model of pattern formation in the amoeboid interior that combines noisy excitable kinetics with a mass-conservation constrain, together with a dynamic phase field for the cell shape. We will conclude by comparing numerical simulations of our model to experiments with giant amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum.