Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam, 14476 Potsdam, Germany.
Department of Chemical and Biological Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
Cells. 2020 Jun 23;9(6):1533. doi: 10.3390/cells9061533.
During the last decade, intracellular actin waves have attracted much attention due to their essential role in various cellular functions, ranging from motility to cytokinesis. Experimental methods have advanced significantly and can capture the dynamics of actin waves over a large range of spatio-temporal scales. However, the corresponding coarse-grained theory mostly avoids the full complexity of this multi-scale phenomenon. In this perspective, we focus on a minimal continuum model of activator-inhibitor type and highlight the qualitative role of mass conservation, which is typically overlooked. Specifically, our interest is to connect between the mathematical mechanisms of pattern formation in the presence of a large-scale mode, due to mass conservation, and distinct behaviors of actin waves.
在过去的十年中，细胞内肌动蛋白波因其在各种细胞功能中的重要作用而引起了广泛关注，这些功能范围从运动到胞质分裂。实验方法已经有了显著的进步，可以在大的时空尺度范围内捕捉肌动蛋白波的动力学。然而，相应的粗粒化理论大多避免了这种多尺度现象的全部复杂性。在这个视角下，我们专注于激活剂-抑制剂类型的最小连续体模型，并强调质量守恒的定性作用，这通常被忽视。具体来说，我们的兴趣在于连接由于质量守恒而导致的大尺度模式下的图案形成的数学机制，以及肌动蛋白波的不同行为。
