A model of cell surface receptor aggregation

Abstract

In this paper we construct and analyze a model of cell receptor aggregation. Experiments have shown that receptors in an aggregated state have greatly reduced mobility. We model the effects of this reduced mobility with a density dependent diffusion and study the impact of density dependent diffusion on aggregate formation in a one-dimensional domain. Critical values of receptor diffusivity and receptor activation are found and compared with numerical simulations. We find that the role of density dependant diffusion is quite limited in the formation of aggregate structures. In the case of receptor activation, the analytical results agree very well with the numerical calculations. Finally, we consider our model in higher dimensional domains. In this case our analysis is primarily numerical.