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Models of Protocells Undergoing Asymmetrical Division
Version 1
: Received: 1 February 2024 / Approved: 1 February 2024 / Online: 2 February 2024 (07:30:31 CET)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Villani, M.; Alboresi, E.; Serra, R. Models of Protocells Undergoing Asymmetrical Division. Entropy 2024, 26, 281, doi:10.3390/e26040281. Villani, M.; Alboresi, E.; Serra, R. Models of Protocells Undergoing Asymmetrical Division. Entropy 2024, 26, 281, doi:10.3390/e26040281.
Abstract
The conditions which allow sustained growth of a protocell population are investigated in the case of asymmetrical division. The results are compared to those of previous studies concerning models of symmetrical division, where synchronization (between duplication of the genetic material and fission of the lipid container) was found under a variety of different assumptions about the kinetic equations and about the place where molecular replication takes place. Such synchronization allows a sustained proliferation of the protocell population. In the asymmetrical case there can be no true synchronization, since the time to duplication may depend upon the initial size, but we introduce a notion of homogeneous growth which actually allows sustained reproduction of a population of protocells. We first analyze Surface Reaction Models, defined in the text, and we show that in many cases they undergo homogeneous growth under the same kinetic laws which lead to synchronization in the symmetrical case. This is the case also for Internal Reaction Models (IRMs), which however require a deeper understanding of what homogeneous growth actually means, as discussed below.
Keywords
protocell; synchronization; asymmetric replication; populations; models; sustained reproduction
Subject
Computer Science and Mathematics, Mathematical and Computational Biology
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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