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

Zebrafish*
Cell Surface Extensions*
Animals
Diffusion

PubMed

35467525 Full text @ Elife

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.

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