Summary
Spiral waves in frog egg extracts accelerate cell cycle oscillations, reducing the period by up to two-fold. Computational models demonstrate that this behavior arises from generic principles, primarily driven by time-scale separation in the cell cycle oscillator.
Highlights
- Spiral waves emerge in frog egg extracts, influencing cell cycle oscillations.
- Spiral waves reduce the cell cycle period by up to two-fold.
- Computational models reproduce the period reduction, attributing it to time-scale separation.
- Time-scale separation is crucial for spiral wave formation and period reduction.
- Spiral waves can coexist with target patterns, but with distinct periods.
- The period reduction is a robust property of excitable systems with strong time-scale separation.
- Spiral waves may have physiological consequences, similar to their role in cardiac dynamics.
Key Insights
- Spiral waves in the cytoplasm of early Xenopus laevis embryos are driven by periodic Cdk1 activity, demonstrating the critical interplay between local oscillatory dynamics, diffusive transport, and initial conditions in shaping wave patterns.
- The period reduction with respect to time-scale separation could be due to differences in how target and spiral waves are generated and propagate through a medium, highlighting the importance of understanding wave pattern transitions.
- Spiral waves can be actively induced in the Xenopus cytoplasm by introducing controlled phase defects or geometric perturbations, allowing for in vitro studies to explore spiral wave properties in detail.
- Investigating the effects of spiral waves on multicellular organization, division timing, and embryonic robustness could provide insights into their developmental significance.
- Understanding the interactions between spiral waves and natural target patterns could reveal mechanisms governing transitions between wave types, with broader implications for excitable media and self-organizing biological systems.
- The observation of spiral waves in the cytoplasmic extract opens new avenues for investigating their functional roles in embryonic development, potentially altering early cleavage dynamics.
- Spiral waves may have implications for our understanding of embryonic development, particularly in the context of spatial chaos and its avoidance in the Xenopus laevis embryonic cell cycle.
Mindmap
Citation
Cebrián-Lacasa, D., Piñeros, L., Vanderbeke, A., Ruiz-Reynés, D., Wouters, T., Goryachev, A. B., Frolov, N., & Gelens, L. (2024). Spiral waves speed up cell cycle oscillations in the frog cytoplasm (Version 2). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2412.16094