PUBLICATION
Zebrafish airinemes optimize their shape between ballistic and diffusive search
- Authors
- Park, S., Kim, H., Wang, Y., Eom, D.S., Allard, J.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-220426-15
- Date
- 2022
- Source
- eLIFE 11: (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Eom, Dae Seok
- Keywords
- cell biology, physics of living systems, zebrafish
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Cell Surface Extensions*
- Diffusion
- Zebrafish*
- PubMed
- 35467525 Full text @ Elife
Citation
Park, S., Kim, H., Wang, Y., Eom, D.S., Allard, J. (2022) Zebrafish airinemes optimize their shape between ballistic and diffusive search. eLIFE. 11:.
Abstract
In addition to diffusive signals, cells in tissue also communicate via long, thin cellular protrusions, such as airinemes in zebrafish. Before establishing communication, cellular protrusions must find their target cell. Here we demonstrate that the shapes of airinemes in zebrafish are consistent with a finite persistent random walk model. The probability of contacting the target cell is maximized for a balance between ballistic search (straight) and diffusive search (highly curved, random). We find that the curvature of airinemes in zebrafish, extracted from live cell microscopy, is approximately the same value as the optimum in the simple persistent random walk model. We also explore the ability of the target cell to infer direction of the airineme's source, finding that there is a theoretical trade-off between search optimality and directional information. This provides a framework to characterize the shape, and performance objectives, of non-canonical cellular protrusions in general.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping