Control of Spatially Heterogeneous and Time-Varying Cellular Reaction Networks: A New Summation Law

A hallmark of a plethora of intracellular signaling pathways is the spatial separation of activation and deactivation processes that potentially results in precipitous gradients of activated proteins. The classical Metabolic Control Analysis (MCA), which quantifies the influence of an individual process on a system variable as the control coefficient, cannot be applied to spatially separated protein networks. The present paper unravels the principles that govern the control over the fluxes and intermediate concentrations in spatially heterogeneous reaction networks. Our main results are two types of the control summation theorems. The first type is a non-trivial generalization of the classical theorems to systems with spatially and temporally varying concentrations. In this generalization, the process of diffusion, which enters as the result of spatial concentration gradients, plays a role similar to other processes such as chemical reactions and membrane transport. The second summation theorem is completely novel. It states that the control by the membrane transport, the diffusion control coefficient multiplied by two, and a newly introduced control coefficient associated with changes in the spatial size of a system (e.g., cell), all add up to one and zero for the control over flux and concentration. Using a simple example of a kinase/phosphatase system in a spherical cell, we speculate that unless active mechanisms of intracellular transport are involved, the threshold cell size is limited by the diffusion control, when it is beginning to exceed the spatial control coefficient significantly.Comment: 19 pages, AMS-LaTeX, 6 eps figures included with geompsfi.st

NA62 Charged Particle Hodoscope. Design and performance in 2016 run

The NA62 experiment at CERN SPS is aimed to measure the branching ratio of the ultra-rare decay $K^+\rightarrow\pi^+ \nu \bar{\nu}$ with 10\% accuracy. The experiment operates with a 75 GeV/c high intensity (750 MHz) secondary beam. A new detector, named Charged Particle Hodoscope (CHOD), designed to produce an input signal to the L0 trigger processor for events with charged particles produced in kaon decays, has been assembled, installed, integrated in NA62 Data Acquisition System (DAQ) and commissioned in 2016. During the whole 2016 run the detector has been in continuous operation. Design and performance features of the detector are presented.Comment: INSTR2017 conferenc