Robustness analysis of spatiotemporal models in the presence of extrinsic fluctuations
For researchers studying cellular oscillators, this work provides a robustness analysis of a specific model, but the findings are incremental and domain-specific.
The paper analyzes the robustness of MinD protein oscillations to extrinsic noise, finding that small parameter perturbations cause small changes in frequency and amplitude, though sensitivity varies across time-scales.
We analyze the governing partial differential equations of a model of pole-to-pole oscillations of the MinD protein in a bacterial cell. The sensitivity to extrinsic noise in the parameters of the model is explored. Our analysis shows that overall, the oscillations are robust to extrinsic perturbations in the sense that small perturbations in reaction coefficients result in small differences in the frequency and in the amplitude. However, a combination of analysis and simulation also reveals that the oscillations are more sensitive to some extrinsic time-scales than to others.