Center for Complex Biological Systems, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, United States.
Center for Mathematical Biology, Department of Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States.
Elife. 2022 Apr 25;11:e75690. doi: 10.7554/eLife.75690.
In addition to diffusive signals, cells in tissue also communicate via long, thin cellular protrusions, such as airinemes in zebrafish. Before establishing communication, cellular protrusions must find their target cell. Here, we demonstrate that the shapes of airinemes in zebrafish are consistent with a finite persistent random walk model. The probability of contacting the target cell is maximized for a balance between ballistic search (straight) and diffusive search (highly curved, random). We find that the curvature of airinemes in zebrafish, extracted from live-cell microscopy, is approximately the same value as the optimum in the simple persistent random walk model. We also explore the ability of the target cell to infer direction of the airineme's source, finding that there is a theoretical trade-off between search optimality and directional information. This provides a framework to characterize the shape, and performance objectives, of non-canonical cellular protrusions in general.
除了扩散信号外，组织中的细胞还通过长而细的细胞突起进行长距离通讯，如斑马鱼中的纤毛。在建立通讯之前，细胞突起必须找到其靶细胞。在这里，我们证明了斑马鱼中纤毛的形状符合有限持续随机游动模型。在弹道搜索（直线）和扩散搜索（高度弯曲、随机）之间取得平衡时，接触靶细胞的概率最大。我们发现，从活细胞显微镜中提取的斑马鱼中纤毛的曲率与简单持续随机游动模型中的最优值大致相同。我们还探索了靶细胞推断纤毛源方向的能力，发现搜索最优性和方向信息之间存在理论上的权衡。这为一般非典型细胞突起的形状和性能目标提供了一个框架。
