论文标题
细胞间信号的最优性：直接运输与扩散
Optimality of intercellular signaling: direct transport versus diffusion
论文作者
论文摘要
细胞间信号传导在生物体发育中具有重要作用，但并非所有通信都使用相同的机制发生。在这里，我们通过两种规范机制分析了细胞间信号传导的能效：信号分子的扩散和通过信号细胞突起介导的直接转运。我们表明，可以通过突出的最佳速率来确定直接运输的有效接触形成，这取决于有关目标单元位置的信息的可用性。最佳投影率还取决于信号分子如何沿突出传输，特别是接触形成和分子合成的能量成本之比。另外，我们比较了各种模型参数下两种信号机制的效率。我们发现，在运输大量信号分子时，直接传输比扩散相比。有大量的信号分子，这两种机制的效率相同。当细胞之间的距离远时，临界数很小，这有助于解释为什么在远程细胞通信中观察到基于突出的机制。
Intercellular signaling has an important role in organism development, but not all communication occurs using the same mechanism. Here, we analyze the energy efficiency of intercellular signaling by two canonical mechanisms: diffusion of signaling molecules and direct transport mediated by signaling cellular protrusions. We show that efficient contact formation for direct transport can be established by an optimal rate of projecting protrusions, which depends on the availability of information about the location of the target cell. The optimal projection rate also depends on how signaling molecules are transported along the protrusion, in particular the ratio of the energy cost for contact formation and molecule synthesis. Also, we compare the efficiency of the two signaling mechanisms, under various model parameters. We find that the direct transport is favored over the diffusion when transporting a large amount of signaling molecules. There is a critical number of signaling molecules at which the efficiency of the two mechanisms are the same. The critical number is small when the distance between cells is far, which helps explain why protrusion-based mechanisms are observed in long-range cellular communications.
