ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Geometry-induced protein pattern formation.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 64 citations in OpenAlex.
- Signal control during tissue regeneration in adult animals.Nature reviews. Molecular cell biology · 2026Review
- Directing Min protein patterns with advective bulk flow.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Forced and spontaneous symmetry breaking in cell polarization.Nature computational science · 2022Article
- Article
- FtsZ Reorganization Facilitates Deformation of Giant Vesicles in Microfluidic Traps*.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2020Article
- Turing Patterning in Stratified Domains.Bulletin of mathematical biology · 2020Article
- Geometric cues stabilise long-axis polarisation of PAR protein patterns in C. elegans.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Division plane placement in pleomorphic archaea is dynamically coupled to cell shape.Molecular microbiology · 2019Article
- Geometric principles of second messenger dynamics in dendritic spines.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Can a Flux-Based Mechanism Explain Protein Cluster Positioning in a Three-Dimensional Cell Geometry?Biophysical journal · 2019Article
- Regulation of Pom cluster dynamics in Myxococcus xanthus.PLoS computational biology · 2018Article
- The effect of cell geometry on polarization in budding yeast.PLoS computational biology · 2018Article
- Self-organization principles of intracellular pattern formation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Review
- MinE conformational switching confers robustness on self-organized Min protein patterns.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Article
- Spatial modeling of the membrane-cytosolic interface in protein kinase signal transduction.PLoS computational biology · 2018Article
- Mechanistic insights of the Min oscillator via cell-free reconstitution and imaging.Physical biology · 2018Review
- Systems biology of cellular membranes: a convergence with biophysics.Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Systems biology and medicine · 2017Review
- Evolutionary dynamics in the fungal polarization network, a mechanistic perspective.Biophysical reviews · 2017Review
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Protein patterns are known to adapt to cell shape and serve as spatial templates that choreograph downstream processes like cell polarity or cell division. However, how can pattern-forming proteins sense and respond to the geometry of a cell, and what mechanistic principles underlie pattern formation? Current models invoke mechanisms based on dynamic instabilities arising from nonlinear interactions between proteins but neglect the influence of the spatial geometry itself. Here, we show that patterns can emerge as a direct result of adaptation to cell geometry, in the absence of dynamical instability. We present a generic reaction module that allows protein densities robustly to adapt to the symmetry of the spatial geometry. The key component is an NTPase protein that cycles between nucleotide-dependent membrane-bound and cytosolic states. For elongated cells, we find that the protein dynamics generically leads to a bipolar pattern, which vanishes as the geometry becomes spherically symmetrical. We show that such a reaction module facilitates universal adaptation to cell geometry by sensing the local ratio of membrane area to cytosolic volume. This sensing mechanism is controlled by the membrane affinities of the different states. We apply the theory to explain AtMinD bipolar patterns in [Formula: see text] EcMinDE Escherichia coli. Due to its generic nature, the mechanism could also serve as a hitherto-unrecognized spatial template in many other bacterial systems. Moreover, the robustness of the mechanism enables self-organized optimization of protein patterns by evolutionary processes. Finally, the proposed module can be used to establish geometry-sensitive protein gradients in synthetic biological systems.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.