Pattern Formation with a Compartmental Lateral Inhibition System

We propose a compartmental lateral inhibition system that generates contrasting patterns of gene expression between neighboring compartments. The system consists of a set of compartments interconnected by channels. Each compartment contains a colony of cells that produce diffusible molecules to be detected by the neighboring colony, and each cell is equipped with an inhibitory circuit that reduces its production when the detected signal is stronger. We develop a technique to analyze the steady-state patterns emerging from this lateral inhibition system and apply it to a specific implementation. The analysis shows that the proposed system indeed exhibits contrasting patterns within realistic parameter ranges.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Modelling polarity-driven laminar patterns in bilayer tissues with mixed signalling mechanisms

Recent advances in high-resolution experimental methods have highlighted the significance of cell signal pathway crosstalk and localised signalling activity in the development and disease of numerous biological systems. The investigation of multiple signal pathways often introduces different methods of cell-cell communication, i.e. contact-based or diffusive signalling, which generates both a spatial and temporal dependence on cell behaviours. Motivated by cellular mechanisms that control cell-fate decisions in developing bilayer tissues, we use dynamical systems coupled with multilayer graphs to analyse the role of signalling polarity and pathway crosstalk in fine-grain pattern formation of protein activity. Specifically, we study how multilayer graph edge structures and weights influence the layer-wise (laminar) patterning of cells in bilayer structures, which are commonly found in glandular tissues. We present sufficient conditions for existence, uniqueness and instability of homogeneous cell states in the large-scale spatially discrete dynamical system. Using methods of pattern templating by graph partitioning to generate quotient systems in combination with concepts from monotone dynamical systems, we exploit the extensive dimensionality reduction to provide existence conditions for the polarity required to induce fine-grain laminar patterns with multiple spatially dependent intracellular components. We then explore the spectral links between the quotient and large-scale dynamical systems to extend the laminar patterning criteria from existence to convergence for sufficiently large amounts of cellular polarity in the large-scale dynamical system, independent of spatial dimension and number of cells in the tissue