title: Structural-diversity-enhanced cellular ability to detect subthreshold extracellular signals.
abstract: We study the influence of the structural diversity of cells on subthreshold agonist signals in coupled hepatocytes systems. The variance of the cellular structural parameter sigma is employed to characterize the structural diversity. It is found that structural diversity enhances the cellular ability to detect extracellular weak signals through intracellular Ca2+ oscillations and the regularity of Ca2+ spikes undergoes a maximum with a variation of sigma, indicating the occurrence of structural-diversity-induced coherence resonance. Furthermore, the effects of the level of subthreshold stimulus and junctional coupling strength on the behavior of Ca2+ dynamics are also considered. Analysis indicates that these phenomena have inherent relevance to both the bifurcation feature of a single cell and intercellular interaction through junctional coupling. Our findings may exhibit that structural diversity plays a constructive role in biological systems.
authors.affiliation: College of Physics and Electronic Information, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu, Anhui 241000, China.
authors.forename: Hanshuang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Jiqian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Jianqing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001703:Biophysics / Q000379:methods; D002118:Calcium / Q000378:metabolism; D020013:Calcium Signaling; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D004721:Endoplasmic Reticulum / Q000378:metabolism; D022781:Hepatocytes / Q000378:metabolism*; D006801:Humans; D008099:Liver / Q000378:metabolism; D008954:Models, Biological; D008956:Models, Chemical; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009991:Oscillometry; D015398:Signal Transduction
chemical_list: D002118:Calcium