Spiral waves speed up cell cycle oscillations in the frog cytoplasm

TL;DR

This study reports the discovery of spiral waves in frog egg cytoplasm that significantly accelerate cell cycle oscillations, revealing new insights into cellular dynamics and pattern interactions.

Contribution

It is the first to observe spiral waves in cell cytoplasm and demonstrates their role in speeding up cell cycle oscillations through computational modeling.

Findings

Spiral waves observed in frog egg cytoplasm.

Spiral waves double the speed of cell cycle oscillations.

Interaction between spiral and target waves elucidated.

Abstract

Spiral waves are a well-known phenomenon in excitable media, playing critical roles in biological systems such as cardiac tissues, where they are involved in arrhythmias, and in slime molds, where they guide collective cell migration. However, their presence in the cytoplasm of cells has not been reported to date. In this study, we present the observation of spiral waves in a Xenopus laevis frog egg extract reconstituting periodic cell cycle transitions. We find that the emergence of these spiral waves accelerates the cell division cycle nearly twofold. Using two distinct computational models, we demonstrate that this behavior arises from generic principles and is driven primarily by time-scale separation in the cell cycle oscillator. Additionally, we investigate the interplay between these spiral waves and the more commonly observed target pattern waves in the frog cytoplasm, providing new insights into their dynamic interactions.