title: Strong-coupling dynamics of a multicellular chemotactic system.
abstract: Chemical signaling is one of the ubiquitous mechanisms by which intercellular communication takes place at the microscopic level, particularly via chemotaxis. Such multicellular systems are popularly studied using continuum, mean-field equations. In this Letter we study a stochastic model of chemotactic signaling. The Langevin formalism of the model makes it amenable to calculation via nonperturbative analysis, which enables a quantification of the effect of fluctuations on both the weak and the strongly coupled biological dynamics. In particular, we show that the (i) self-localization due to autochemotaxis is impossible. (ii) When aggregation occurs, the aggregate performs a random walk with a renormalized diffusion coefficient D(R) proportiuonal to epsilon-2N-3. (iii) The stochastic model exhibits sharp transitions in cell motile behavior for negative chemotaxis, behavior that has no parallel in the mean-field Keller-Segel equations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85284, USA. rgrima@indiana.edu
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Grima
mesh_terms: D002450:Cell Communication / Q000502:physiology*; D002633:Chemotaxis / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000502:physiology; D013269:Stochastic Processes