Improving the understanding of cytoneme-mediated morphogen gradients by in silico modeling
Fig 6
In silico study of different cytoneme presumptions and their predicted impact on gradient features.
Reference case in red, simulations after modifying a feature in blue and experimental data in green. X) Left. Morphogen distribution along receiving cells for different cases, normalized to the maximum value of the reference case, showing the expected variability per cell row (error bars). Right. Study of the number of contacts in the first row of receiving cells x0, normalized to the average value of the reference case. Top, violin plots of 2000 simulations per case. Bottom, green-color-coded matrix of p-values for the violin distributions. X’) Coefficient of variation per case in the first row of receiving cells x0 (left). Green-color-coded matrix of p-values for violin distributions (right). X´´) Distribution of contacts normalized to their maximum value to compare changes in gradient shape along receiving cells (left). Coefficient of the normalized distributions to study the scaling along receiving cells (right). (A) Simulations for different cytoneme signaling type (type 3 in red and type1-2 in blue). (B) Simulations for different contact functions (type ψ(μ) in red and type ψ(μ,x) in blue). (C) Simulations of the hypothetical case of multiple contacts between cytonemes along the overlapping surface (single contact in blue, multiple contacts in red). (D) Simulations for different probability of contact (μ = 40% to 80% each 20% in blue, μ = 100% in red).