Diffusivity Estimation for Activator-Inhibitor Models: Theory and Application to Intracellular Dynamics of the Actin Cytoskeleton

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework for estimating diffusivity in activator-inhibitor models of intracellular signaling, specifically applied to actin cytoskeleton dynamics in Dictyostelium discoideum.

Contribution

It extends parameter estimation methods for stochastic reaction-diffusion systems to jointly estimate diffusivity and reaction parameters in biological models.

Findings

Theoretical extension for joint diffusivity and reaction parameter estimation.

Application to intracellular actin dynamics in Dictyostelium.

Improved understanding of signaling component diffusivity.

Abstract

A theory for diffusivity estimation for spatially extended activator-inhibitor dynamics modelling the evolution of intracellular signaling networks is developed in the mathematical framework of stochastic reaction-diffusion systems. In order to account for model uncertainties, we extend the results for parameter estimation for semilinear stochastic partial differential equations, as developed in [PS20], to the problem of joint estimation of diffusivity and parametrized reaction terms. Our theoretical findings are applied to the estimation of effective diffusivity of signaling components contributing to intracellular dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton in the model organism Dictyostelium discoideum.