Journal article

+ 1 other files

Extending the mathematical palette for developmental pattern formation: piebaldism

  • Dougoud, Michaël Department of Mathematics, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Mazza, Christian Department of Mathematics, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Schwaller, Beat Anatomy, Section of Medicine, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Pecze, László Anatomy, Section of Medicine, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
Show more…
    01.05.2019
Published in:
  • Bulletin of Mathematical Biology. - 2019, vol. 81, no. 5, p. 1461–1478
English Here, we present a theoretical investigation with potential insights on developmental mechanisms. Three biological factors, consisting of two diffusing factors and a cell- autonomous immobile transcription factor are combined with different feedback mechanisms. This results in four different situations or fur patterns. Two of them reproduce classical Turing patterns: (1) regularly spaced spots, (2) labyrinth patterns or straight lines with an initial slope in the activation of the transcription factor. The third situation does not lead to patterns, but results in different homogeneous color tones. Finally, the fourth one sheds new light on the possible mechanisms leading to the formation of piebald patterns exemplified by the random patterns on the fur of some cows’ strains and Dalmatian dogs. Piebaldism is usually manifested as white areas of fur, hair, or skin due to the absence of pigment-producing cells in those regions. The distribution of the white and colored zones does not reflect the classical Turing patterns. We demonstrate that these piebald patterns are of transient nature, developing from random initial conditions and relying on a system’s bistability. We show numerically that the presence of a cell-autonomous factor not only expands the range of reaction diffusion parameters in which a pattern may arise, but also extends the pattern-forming abilities of the reaction–diffusion equations.
Faculty
Faculté des sciences et de médecine
Department
Département de Mathématiques, Département de Médecine
Language
  • English
Classification
Mathematics
License
License undefined
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/307635
Other files

Statistics

Document views: 53 File downloads:
  • maz_emp.pdf: 105
  • maz_emp_sm.pdf: 59