Flow-driven two-dimensional waves in colonies of Dictyostelium discoideum

Abstract

Dictyostelium discoideum (D.d.) is a valuable model organism to study self-organization and pattern formation in biology. Recently we reported flow-driven waves in experiments with uniformly distributed populations of signaling amobae, D.d., and carried out a theoretical study in a one-dimensional model. In this work, we perform two-dimensional numerical simulations using the well-known Martiel-Golbeter model to study the effect of the flow profile and intrinsic noise on the flow-driven waves. We show that, in the presence of flow, a persistence noise due to spontaneous cell firing events can lead to sustained structures that fill the whole length of the system. We also show that external periodic stimuli of cyclic adenosine monophosphate can induce 1:1 and 2:1 entrainments which are in agreement with our experimental observations.