Localized Signaling Compartments in 2-D Coupled by a Bulk Diffusion Field: Quorum Sensing and Synchronous Oscillations in the Well-Mixed Limit

TL;DR

This paper models how localized signaling compartments communicate via a diffusive extracellular field, leading to collective oscillations and quorum sensing, analyzed through asymptotic reduction and bifurcation studies.

Contribution

It introduces a reduced ODE model for coupled signaling compartments in 2D, revealing mechanisms of oscillation and synchronization driven by bulk diffusion and cell density.

Findings

Oscillatory instabilities are triggered by global coupling.

Cell population density controls synchronization and quenching of oscillations.

Quorum sensing behavior emerges as the number of cells exceeds a threshold.

Abstract

We analyze oscillatory instabilities for a coupled PDE-ODE system modeling the communication between localized spatially segregated dynamically active signaling compartments that are coupled through a passive extracellular bulk diffusion field in a bounded 2-D domain. Each signaling compartment is assumed to secrete a chemical into the extracellular medium (bulk region) and it can also sense the concentration of this chemical in the region around its boundary. This feedback from the bulk region, resulting from the entire collection of cells, in turn modifies the intracellular dynamics within each cell. In the limit where the signaling compartments are circular disks with a small common radius $\epsilon \ll 1$ and where the bulk diffusivity is asymptotically large, a matched asymptotic analysis is used to reduce the dimensionless PDE-ODE system into a nonlinear ODE system with global coupling. For Sel'kov reaction kinetics, this ODE system for the intracellular dynamics and the spatial average of the bulk diffusion field is then used to investigate oscillatory instabilities in the dynamics of the cells that are triggered due to the global coupling. In particular, numerical bifurcation software on the ODEs is used to study the overall effect of coupling defective cells (cells that behave differently from the remaining cells) to a group of identical cells. Moreover, when the number of cells is large, the Kuramoto order parameter is computed to predict the degree of phase synchronization of the intracellular dynamics. Quorum sensing behavior, characterized by the onset of collective behavior in the intracellular dynamics as the number of cells increases above a threshold, is also studied. Our analysis shows that the cell population density plays a dual role of triggering and then quenching synchronous oscillations in the intracellular dynamics.