A Predictive Model for Yeast Cell Polarization in Pheromone Gradients

Budding yeast cells exist in two mating types, a and α, which use peptide pheromones to communicate with each other during mating. Mating depends on the ability of cells to polarize up pheromone gradients, but cells also respond to spatially uniform fields of pheromone by polarizing along a single a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLoS computational biology 2016-04, Vol.12 (4), p.e1004795-e1004795
Main Authors: Muller, Nicolas, Piel, Matthieu, Calvez, Vincent, Voituriez, Raphaël, Gonçalves-Sá, Joana, Guo, Chin-Lin, Jiang, Xingyu, Murray, Andrew, Meunier, Nicolas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavior
Bioinformatics
Biology and Life Sciences
Cell division
Cell interactions
Cell Polarity - physiology
Computational Biology
Computer Science
Experiments
Gene expression
Kinases
Mathematical models
Models, Biological
Observations
Peptides
Pheromones
Pheromones - physiology
Physiological aspects
Proteins
Quorum Sensing - physiology
Research and Analysis Methods
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Saccharomyces cerevisiae - physiology
Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins - physiology
Signal Transduction
Yeast
Yeasts (Fungi)
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Summary:Budding yeast cells exist in two mating types, a and α, which use peptide pheromones to communicate with each other during mating. Mating depends on the ability of cells to polarize up pheromone gradients, but cells also respond to spatially uniform fields of pheromone by polarizing along a single axis. We used quantitative measurements of the response of a cells to α-factor to produce a predictive model of yeast polarization towards a pheromone gradient. We found that cells make a sharp transition between budding cycles and mating induced polarization and that they detect pheromone gradients accurately only over a narrow range of pheromone concentrations corresponding to this transition. We fit all the parameters of the mathematical model by using quantitative data on spontaneous polarization in uniform pheromone concentration. Once these parameters have been computed, and without any further fit, our model quantitatively predicts the yeast cell response to pheromone gradient providing an important step toward understanding how cells communicate with each other.
ISSN:1553-7358
1553-734X
1553-7358
DOI:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004795