A Mechanochemical Coupled Model to Understand Budding Behavior in Aging Yeast
Professor Weitao Chen
Department of Mathematics
UC Riverside
ABSTRACT
Cell polarization, in which a uniform distribution of substances becomes asymmetric due to internal or external stimuli, is a fundamental process underlying cell mobility and cell division. Budding yeast provides a good system to study how biochemical signals and mechanical properties coordinate with each other to achieve stable cell polarization and give rise to certain morphological change in a single cell. Recent experimental data suggests yeast budding develops into two trajectories with different bud shapes as mother cells become old. We first developed a 2D model to simulate biochemical signals on a shape-changing cell and investigated strategies for robust yeast mating. Then we extended and coupled this biochemical signaling model with a 3D subcellular element model to take into account cell mechanics, which was applied to investigate how the interaction between biochemical signals and mechanical properties affects the cell polarization and budding initiation. This 3D mechanochemical model was also applied to predict mechanisms underlying different bud shape formation due to cellular aging.
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