Under nitrogen-poor conditions, multicellular cyanobacteria such as Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 undergo a process of differentiation, forming nearly regular, developmental patterns of individual nitrogen-fixing cells, called heterocysts, interspersed between intervals of vegetative cells that carry out photosynthesis. Developmental pattern formation is mediated by morphogen species that can act as activators and inhibitors, some of which can diffuse along filaments. We survey the limitations of the classical, deterministic Turing mechanism that has been often invoked to explain pattern formation in these systems, and then, focusing on a simpler system governed by birth-death processes, we illustrate pedagogically a recently proposed paradigm that provides a much more robust description of pattern formation: stochastic Turing patterns. We emphasize the essential role that cell-to-cell differences in molecular numbers—caused by inevitable fluctuations in gene expression—play, the so called demographic noise, in seeding the formation of stochastic Turing patterns over a much larger region of parameter space, compared to their deterministic counterparts.

Noise–Seeded Developmental Pattern Formation in Filamentous Cyanobacteria / Arbel-Goren, Rinat; Di Patti, Francesca; Fanelli, Duccio; Stavans, Joel. - In: LIFE. - ISSN 2075-1729. - STAMPA. - 8:(2018), pp. 58-70. [10.3390/life8040058]

Noise–Seeded Developmental Pattern Formation in Filamentous Cyanobacteria

Di Patti, Francesca;Fanelli, Duccio;
2018

Abstract

Under nitrogen-poor conditions, multicellular cyanobacteria such as Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 undergo a process of differentiation, forming nearly regular, developmental patterns of individual nitrogen-fixing cells, called heterocysts, interspersed between intervals of vegetative cells that carry out photosynthesis. Developmental pattern formation is mediated by morphogen species that can act as activators and inhibitors, some of which can diffuse along filaments. We survey the limitations of the classical, deterministic Turing mechanism that has been often invoked to explain pattern formation in these systems, and then, focusing on a simpler system governed by birth-death processes, we illustrate pedagogically a recently proposed paradigm that provides a much more robust description of pattern formation: stochastic Turing patterns. We emphasize the essential role that cell-to-cell differences in molecular numbers—caused by inevitable fluctuations in gene expression—play, the so called demographic noise, in seeding the formation of stochastic Turing patterns over a much larger region of parameter space, compared to their deterministic counterparts.
2018
8
58
70
Arbel-Goren, Rinat; Di Patti, Francesca; Fanelli, Duccio; Stavans, Joel
File in questo prodotto:
Non ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.

I documenti in FLORE sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificatore per citare o creare un link a questa risorsa: https://hdl.handle.net/2158/1141964
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 5
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? 6
social impact