Abstract
Auto/paracrine cell-to-cell communications via diffusive messengers can be coupled to a positive feedback loop in which cell stimulation by a messenger results in the production of new messengers. This yields a potential mechanism for relay transmission of the emitted message. This paper investigates the influence of noise on this mutual coupling of the cells with their environment, using numerical simulations of a stochastic minimal model. The results demonstrate that the deterministic (mean-field) approximation of this stochastic process fails short of predicting its behaviour because of the presence of strong noise-induced fluctuations. Instead, the behaviour of the model can be explained by the occurrence of a nonequilibrium phase transition, which is found to be in the universality class of directed percolation. This provides a theoretical framework to understand signal transmission in these stochastic systems.
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Berry, H. (2008). Nonequilibrium Phase Transition in Scattered Cell Communities Coupled by Auto/Paracrine-Like Signalling. In: Pollack, G.H., Chin, WC. (eds) Phase Transitions in Cell Biology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8651-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8651-9_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-8650-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-8651-9
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