CROSS-DISCIPLINARY PHYSICS AND RELATED AREAS OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY |
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The Dynamical Mechanisms of the Cell Cycle Size Checkpoint |
FENG Shi-Fu1, YAN Jie2, LIU Zeng-Rong3, YANG Ling1,2 |
1School of Mathematical Sciences, Soochow University, Suzhou 215006 2Center for Systems Biology, Soochow University, Suzhou 215006 3Institute of Systems Biology, Shanghai University, 99 Shangda Road, Shanghai 200444
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Cite this article: |
FENG Shi-Fu, YAN Jie, LIU Zeng-Rong et al 2012 Chin. Phys. Lett. 29 108701 |
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Abstract Cell division must be tightly coupled to cell growth in order to maintain cell size, whereas the mechanisms of how initialization of mitosis is regulated by cell size remain to be elucidated. We develop a mathematical model of the cell cycle, which incorporates cell growth to investigate the dynamical properties of the size checkpoint in embryos of Xenopus laevis. We show that the size checkpoint is naturally raised from a saddle-node bifurcation, and in a mutant case, the cell loses its size control ability due to the loss of this saddle-node point.
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Received: 26 July 2012
Published: 01 October 2012
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PACS: |
87.17.Aa
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(Modeling, computer simulation of cell processes)
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87.17.Ee
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(Growth and division)
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87.18.Mp
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(Signal transduction networks)
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Abstract
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