Dynamically active compartments coupled by a stochastically gated gap junction
File(s)partitionR1.pdf (728.27 KB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Bressloff, Paul C
Lawley, Sean D
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
We analyze a one-dimensional PDE-ODE system representing the diffusion of signaling molecules between two cells coupled by a stochastically gated gap junction. We assume that signaling molecules diffuse within the cytoplasm of each cell and then either bind to some active region of the cell’s membrane (treated as a well-mixed compartment) or pass through the gap junction to the interior of the other cell. We treat the gap junction as a randomly fluctuating gate that switches between an open and a closed state according to a two-state Markov process. This means that the resulting PDE-ODE is stochastic due to the presence of a randomly switching boundary in the interior of the domain. It is assumed that each membrane compartment acts as a conditional oscillator, that is, it sits below a supercritical Hopf bifurcation. In the ungated case (gap junction always open), the system supports diffusion-induced oscillations, in which the concentration of signaling molecules within the two compartments is either in-phase or anti-phase. The presence of a reflection symmetry (for identical cells) means that the stochastic gate only affects the existence of anti-phase oscillations. In particular, there exist parameter choices where the gated system supports oscillations, but the ungated system does not, and vice versa. The existence of oscillations is investigated by solving a spectral problem obtained by averaging over realizations of the stochastic gate.
Date Issued
2017-10
Date Acceptance
2017-03-06
Citation
Journal of Nonlinear Science, 2017, 27 (5), pp.1487-1512
ISSN
0938-8974
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Start Page
1487
End Page
1512
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Nonlinear Science
Volume
27
Issue
5
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2017 Springer-Verlag. This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review (when applicable) and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00332-017-9374-5
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00332-017-9374-5
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2017-03-14