Turing instability and Turing-Hopf bifurcation in diffusive Schnakenberg systems with gene expression time delay

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how time delay and diffusion jointly influence pattern formation in a reaction-diffusion system, deriving conditions for various bifurcations and stability, and explaining phenomena like pattern failure due to delay.

Contribution

It establishes necessary and sufficient conditions for Turing instability, derives normal forms at Turing-Hopf bifurcation, and explores how delay and diffusion jointly affect pattern stability and formation.

Findings

Delay and diffusion jointly induce complex spatial-temporal patterns.

Changing diffusion rate alters spatial pattern frequencies.

Time delay can cause Turing instability failure, explained theoretically.

Abstract

For delayed reaction-diffusion Schnakenberg systems with Neumann boundary conditions, critical conditions for Turing instability are derived, which are necessary and sufficient. And existence conditions for Turing, Hopf and Turing-Hopf bifurcations are established. Normal forms truncated to order 3 at Turing-Hopf singularity of codimension 2, are derived. By investigating Turing-Hopf bifurcation, the parameter regions for the stability of a periodic solution, a pair of spatially inhomogeneous steady states and a pair of spatially inhomogeneous periodic solutions, are derived in $(\tau,\varepsilon)$ parameter plane ($\tau$ for time delay, $\varepsilon$ for diffusion rate). It is revealed that joint effects of diffusion and delay can lead to the occurrence of mixed spatial and temporal patterns. Moreover, it is also demonstrated that various spatially inhomogeneous patterns with different spatial frequencies can be achieved via changing the diffusion rate. And, the phenomenon that time delay may induce a failure of Turing instability observed by Gaffney and Monk (2006) are theoretically explained.