Modelling of Yeast Mating Reveals Robustness Strategies for Cell-Cell Interactions
Fig 6
(A) Bar1 helps a-cell distinguish closer α-cell. Two α-cells and one a-cell were positioned approximately at the vertices of a triangle with one of the two α-cells slightly closer to the a-cell than the other. We tested whether a Bar1+ or a bar1Δ a-cell could distinguish between the two α-cells in simulations performed in the absence of noise. The Bar1+ cell projected toward the closer α-cell, whereas the bar1Δ cell projected toward the middle between the two α-cells. (B) Mating competition simulations in which two a-cells compete for a single α-cell. In these three-cell simulations, one a-cell is Bar1+ and the other is bar1Δ. In 20/20 simulations, the Bar1+ cell mated with the α-cell, and two sample simulations are shown. At the top are snapshots with the projections in contact. In the middle are the α-factor profiles from the two simulations, which show how the high concentration of α-factor in the absence of Bar1 precludes gradient detection. At the bottom is the α-factor distribution along the cross-section between the α-cell and a-cell. In both cases, the steeper gradient is observed with the Bar1+ a-cell.