Chemotactic guidance of growth cones: A hybrid computational model

Abstract

The strategy used by axons to find the correct paths during the nervous system development is not yet completely understood. In addition, some emergent counterintuitive axonal responses were described in chemical active environments. Here, a computational model (Roccasalvo et al. Sci Rep 5:11340, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1038/srep11340) is presented to reproduce the key role of the diffusion-driven instability to form intracellular patterns during axonal pathfinding. The dependence of the pattern geometry on the diffusion constants of chemicals was studied for a simple case. In addition, a suitable non standard iterative Gierer-Meinhardt system was implemented (Roccasalvo et al. Sci Rep 5:11340, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1038/srep11340) to account for the interaction with extracellular gradients. The formation of neuritic paths was quantitatively reproduced in regular conditions, while emergent and counterintuitive phenomena, resulting from interactions between intracellular and extracellular environments, were qualitatively predicted (Roccasalvo et al. Sci Rep 5:11340, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1038/srep11340).