Ratio control in a cascade model of cell differentiation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a reaction-diffusion model with Turing instability for cell differentiation, demonstrating how size ratios of cell types can be controlled by system parameters and extended to hierarchical cascade structures.

Contribution

It develops a novel reaction-diffusion framework with global feedback for controlling cell type ratios and extends it to hierarchical cascade models.

Findings

Size ratios of cell types are controllable via system parameters.

Hierarchical spatial structures emerge from the cascade model.

The model exhibits Turing instability under certain conditions.

Abstract

We propose a kind of reaction-diffusion equations for cell differentiation, which exhibits the Turing instability. If the diffusivity of some variables is set to be infinity, we get coupled competitive reaction-diffusion equations with a global feedback term. The size ratio of each cell type is controlled by a system parameter in the model. Finally, we extend the model to a cascade model of cell differentiation. A hierarchical spatial structure appears as a result of the cell differentiation. The size ratio of each cell type is also controlled by the system parameter.