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Team:McGill/Modeling
From 2009.igem.org
Introduction
Many models examining intercellular signaling do not take into account the separation distances of the signaling bodies. We use a partial differential equation (PDE) based model to gain insight into spatially heterogeneous activation-inhibition intercellular signaling.
Two types of signaling molecules exist: activating and inhibiting. Each molecule is synthesized by a unique strain of cells and affects the synthesis rate of the other strain.
Figure 1 – Activation-inhibition intercellular signaling – Activating molecule (A) synthesized and diffuses to increase synthesis of inhibiting molecule (B) in secondary strain. Inhibiting molecule also diffuses back to initial cell and decreases synthesis of activating molecule.
This is modeled using the following system of PDEs:
