Robustness analysis of spatiotemporal models in the presence of extrinsic fluctuations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how spatiotemporal models of bacterial protein oscillations respond to external fluctuations, finding that oscillations are generally robust but sensitive to specific extrinsic time-scales.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the robustness of MinD protein oscillations to extrinsic noise in a PDE-based model, highlighting sensitivity to certain time-scales.

Findings

Oscillations are robust to small extrinsic parameter perturbations.

Sensitivity varies with different extrinsic time-scales.

Small changes in reaction coefficients minimally affect oscillation frequency and amplitude.

Abstract

We analyze the governing partial differential equations of a model of pole-to-pole oscillations of the MinD protein in a bacterial cell. The sensitivity to extrinsic noise in the parameters of the model is explored. Our analysis shows that overall, the oscillations are robust to extrinsic perturbations in the sense that small perturbations in reaction coefficients result in small differences in the frequency and in the amplitude. However, a combination of analysis and simulation also reveals that the oscillations are more sensitive to some extrinsic time-scales than to others.