A Bistable Model of Cell Polarity

Overview

Journal PLoS One

Specialties General Medicine
Science

Date 2012 Mar 3

PMID 22383986

Citations 14

Authors

Matteo Semplice

Andrea Veglio

Giovanni Naldi

Guido Serini

Andrea Gamba

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Ultrasensitivity, as described by Goldbeter and Koshland, has been considered for a long time as a way to realize bistable switches in biological systems. It is not as well recognized that when ultrasensitivity and reinforcing feedback loops are present in a spatially distributed system such as the cell plasmamembrane, they may induce bistability and spatial separation of the system into distinct signaling phases. Here we suggest that bistability of ultrasensitive signaling pathways in a diffusive environment provides a basic mechanism to realize cell membrane polarity. Cell membrane polarization is a fundamental process implicated in several basic biological phenomena, such as differentiation, proliferation, migration and morphogenesis of unicellular and multicellular organisms. We describe a simple, solvable model of cell membrane polarization based on the coupling of membrane diffusion with bistable enzymatic dynamics. The model can reproduce a broad range of symmetry-breaking events, such as those observed in eukaryotic directional sensing, the apico-basal polarization of epithelium cells, the polarization of budding and mating yeast, and the formation of Ras nanoclusters in several cell types.

Citing Articles

Cluster Assembly Dynamics Drive Fidelity of Planar Cell Polarity Polarization.

Nissen S, Weiner A, Suyama K, Bosch P, Yu M, Song S bioRxiv. 2024; .

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Sensing the shape of a cell with reaction diffusion and energy minimization.

Singh A, Leadbetter T, Camley B Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022; 119(31):e2121302119.

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A computational model of mutual antagonism in the mechano-signaling network of RhoA and nitric oxide.

Surendran A, Dewey Jr C, Low B, Tucker-Kellogg L BMC Mol Cell Biol. 2021; 22(Suppl 1):47.

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Physics of compartmentalization: How phase separation and signaling shape membrane and organelle identity.

Floris E, Piras A, DallAsta L, Gamba A, Hirsch E, Campa C Comput Struct Biotechnol J. 2021; 19:3225-3233.

PMID: 34141141 PMC: 8190439. DOI: 10.1016/j.csbj.2021.05.029.

Using Phosphatidylinositol Phosphorylation as Markers for Hyperglycemic Related Breast Cancer.

Devanathan N, Jones S, Kaur G, Kimble-Hill A Int J Mol Sci. 2020; 21(7).

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