Noise–Seeded Developmental Pattern Formation in Filamentous Cyanobacteria

Life

Francesca Di Patti¹  Joel Stavans²  Rinat Arbel-Goren²  Duccio Fanelli³ 

[1] Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per la Scienza e Tecnologia dei Materiali, Dip. di Chimica, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Via della Lastruccia 3-13, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Firenze, Italy;Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel;Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Firenze, via G. Sansone 1, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Firenze, Italy;

关键词: filamentous cyanobacteria;    developmental pattern formation;    demographic noise;    stochastic Turing patterns;   

DOI  :  10.3390/life8040058

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

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.

【 授权许可】

Unknown