Development of Morphogen Gradients with Spatially Varying Degradation Rates

Abstract

Successful biological development via spatial and temporal regulations of cell differentiation relies on action of multiple signaling molecules that are known as morphogens. It is now well established that biological signaling molecules create non-uniform concentration profiles, called morphogen gradients, that activate different genes, leading to patterning in the developing organisms. The current view of the formation of morphogen gradients is that it is a result of complex reaction-diffusion processes that include production, diffusion and degradation of signaling molecules. Recent studies also suggest that the degradation of morphogens is a critically important step in the whole process. We develop a theoretical model that allows us to investigate the role of a spatially varying degradation in the formation of morphogen gradients.Our analysis show that the spatial inhomogeneities in degradation might strongly influence the dynamics of formation of signaling profiles. Physical-chemical mechanisms of the underlying processes are discussed.2

The multifaceted roles of perlecan in fibrosis

“…Perlecan is involved in the generation of chemotactic growth factor and morphogen gradients which recruit cells to sites of ECM remodeling, primarily through interactions of the cytokines with its HS chains [66][67][68][69][70] but also including interactions of growth factors with its protein core [45]. Numerous cytokines including CC chemokine ligand (CCL) -2, -3 and -5 and CXCL-1, -8 (also known as interleukin (IL)-8), -9 and -10 and -12 (also known as stromal cell derived factor 1α) bind HS/heparin [71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78] and their gradients in tissues are likely to be affected by the structure of the perlecan HS chains.…”

Power of stochastic kinetic models: From biological signaling and antibiotic activities to T cell activation and cancer initiation dynamics

“…These expressions simply reflect the conservation of the probability of finding the morphogen at the given location. At large times, when , the system reaches the steady‐state conditions, and these equations can be easily solved, 17,27 producing an exponentially decaying concentration profile, with …”