title: Spatial trigger waves: positive feedback gets you a long way.
abstract: Trigger waves are a recurring biological phenomenon involved in transmitting information quickly and reliably over large distances. Well-characterized examples include action potentials propagating along the axon of a neuron, calcium waves in various tissues, and mitotic waves in Xenopus eggs. Here we use the FitzHugh-Nagumo model, a simple model inspired by the action potential that is widely used in physics and theoretical biology, to examine different types of trigger waves-spatial switches, pulses, and oscillations-and to show how they arise.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Systems Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305-5174 Applied Physics Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), 1050 Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Lendert
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gelens
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Systems Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305-5174.
authors.forename: Graham A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Systems Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305-5174 james.ferrell@stanford.edu.
authors.forename: James E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Ferrell
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D002118:Calcium / Q000378:metabolism*; D004058:Diffusion; D025461:Feedback, Physiological; D008938:Mitosis; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D009865:Oocytes / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D009991:Oscillometry; D015398:Signal Transduction; D013997:Time Factors; D014982:Xenopus laevis / Q000502:physiology
chemical_list: D002118:Calcium