by Tatsuo Shibata

From: RIKEN Quantitative Biology Center
Hosted by: Fumio Motegi & Sasha Bershadsky
Location: Level 5 T-Lab Building Seminar Room
Time: 4pm – 5pm
Date: 17th May 2016

The plasma membrane is the central place that perceives and maintains signals from its surroundings, and processes them to organize cellular behaviors. The phosphoinositide metabolism takes place on the plasma membrane and controls many cell biological processes. The distribution of phosphoinositide components can sometimes undergo spontaneous symmetry breaking and exhibit non-uniformity in space and time even in the absence of external asymmetries. The spatiotemporal non-uniform behaviors give rise to self-organization of excitability, oscillation, traveling waves and stationary spots.  Previous reports have suggested that kinases and phosphatases for phosphoinositide components play pivotal roles on the symmetry breaking. Such an intrinsic self-organization leads to the emergence of parameter that can be specified by external signals, such as the migration direction controlled by the external chemical gradient.