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Author: Kurths, J. Ă— Subject: article Ă— Subject: controlled study Ă—

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    Analysing dynamical behavior of cellular networks via stochastic bifurcations
    (San Francisco, CA : Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2011) Zakharova, A.; Kurths, J.; Vadivasova, T.; Koseska, A.
    The dynamical structure of genetic networks determines the occurrence of various biological mechanisms, such as cellular differentiation. However, the question of how cellular diversity evolves in relation to the inherent stochasticity and intercellular communication remains still to be understood. Here, we define a concept of stochastic bifurcations suitable to investigate the dynamical structure of genetic networks, and show that under stochastic influence, the expression of given proteins of interest is defined via the probability distribution of the phase variable, representing one of the genes constituting the system. Moreover, we show that under changing stochastic conditions, the probabilities of expressing certain concentration values are different, leading to different functionality of the cells, and thus to differentiation of the cells in the various types.
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    Timing cellular decision making under noise via cell-cell communication
    (San Francisco, CA : Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2009) Koseska, A.; Zaikin, A.; Kurths, J.; GarcĂ­a-Ojalvo, J.
    Many cellular processes require decision making mechanisms, which must act reliably even in the unavoidable presence of substantial amounts of noise. However, the multistable genetic switches that underlie most decision-making processes are dominated by fluctuations that can induce random jumps between alternative cellular states. Here we show, via theoretical modeling of a population of noise-driven bistable genetic switches, that reliable timing of decision-making processes can be accomplished for large enough population sizes, as long as cells are globally coupled by chemical means. In the light of these results, we conjecture that cell proliferation, in the presence of cell-cell communication, could provide a mechanism for reliable decision making in the presence of noise, by triggering cellular transitions only when the whole cell population reaches a certain size. In other words, the summation performed by the cell population would average out the noise and reduce its detrimental impact.