Stability of membrane bound reactions
We present a novel approach to the dynamics of reactions of diffusing chemical species with species fixed in space e.g. by binding to a membrane. The non-diffusing reaction partners are clustered in areas with a diameter smaller than the diffusion length of the diffusing partner. The activated fraction o...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
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American Physical Society
2004
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/998/ |
| Summary: | We present a novel approach to the dynamics of reactions of diffusing chemical species with species fixed in space e.g. by binding to a membrane. The non-diffusing reaction partners are clustered in areas with a diameter smaller than the diffusion length of the diffusing partner. The activated fraction of the fixed species determines the size of an active sub-region of the cluster. Linear stability analysis reveals that diffusion is one of the ma jor determinants of the stability of the dynamics. We illustrate the model concept with Ca²⁺ dynamics in living cells, which has release channels as fixed reaction partners. Our results suggest that spatial and temporal structures in intracellular Ca²⁺ dynamics are caused by fluctuations due to the small number of channels per cluster. |
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