Fractal Cell Volume Regulation

H. ARIEL ALVAREZ; C. MANUEL CARLEVARO ; PABLO J. SCHWARZBAUM ; OSVALDO CHARA

Buenos Aires

Congreso; Latin American Conference on Mathematical Modeling of Biological Systems; 2015

Sociedad Argentina de Biofísica - Centro Latinoamericano de Formación Interdisciplinaria

Cellular volume is tightly regulated in the animal kingdom: cell exposure to a hypotonic or hypertonic media induces an osmotic cell change followed by a cell volume regulatory response, known as RegulatoryVolume Decrease (RVD) or Regulatory Volume Increase (RVI) process, respectively. It has been proposed that this regulatory response would be based on the existence of a mechanical sensor by which the cellwould continuously monitor its volume. It has been conceived that this mechanical sensor could be associated with membrane-located mechano-sensitive ion channels, cytosolic molecular crowding or even thecytosqueleton. We developed a mathematical model assuming a mechanical sensor of fractal dimension which contemplates these mechanisms. The model is composed by a system of ordinary differentialequations (ODEs) describing the dynamics of cell volume and intracellular solute content and constituting a generalization of previous models1. By constraining the model with experimental information of typicalconditions of RVD and RVI assays, the model is able to qualitatively and quantitatively reproduce the phenomenology of the regulatory response. Furthermore, the model predicts a not yet observed oscillatorybehavior which can be explained by stability analysis.