Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Rombouts, Jan
• Vandervelde, Alexandra
• Gelens, Lendert
• Nie, Qing

Titel

Delay models for the early embryonic cell cycle oscillator

Ist Teil von

• PloS one, 2018-03, Vol.13 (3), p.e0194769-e0194769

Ort / Verlag

United States: Public Library of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Time delays are known to play a crucial role in generating biological oscillations. The early embryonic cell cycle in the frog Xenopus laevis is one such example. Although various mathematical models of this oscillating system exist, it is not clear how to best model the required time delay. Here, we study a simple cell cycle model that produces oscillations due to the presence of an ultrasensitive, time-delayed negative feedback loop. We implement the time delay in three qualitatively different ways, using a fixed time delay, a distribution of time delays, and a delay that is state-dependent. We analyze the dynamics in all cases, and we use experimental observations to interpret our results and put constraints on unknown parameters. In doing so, we find that different implementations of the time delay can have a large impact on the resulting oscillations.