Influence of Biological Cell Geometry on Reaction and Diffusion Simulation

Mathematical modeling of reaction-diffusion system in a biological cellis an important and difficult task, especially when the chemical compoundsare lipophilic. The difficulty level increases, when we take into account theheterogeneity of the cell, and the variation of cellular architecture. Mathematicalmodeling of reaction-diffusion systems in spherical cell geometryhas earlier been performed by us. In the present paper, we have workedwith non-spherical cell geometry, because the cellular geometry can play animportant role for drug diffusion in the cell. Homogenization techniques,which were earlier applied in the case of a spherical cell model, have beenused for the numerical treatment of the model. This technique considerablyreduces the complexity of the model. To further reduce the complexity ofthe model, a simplified model was also developed. The key idea of this simplifiedmodel has been advocated in Virtual Cell, where PDEs are used forthe extracellular domain, cytoplasm and nucleus, whereas the plasma andnuclear membranes have been taken away, and replaced by membrane flux,using Fick’s Law of diffusion. The numerical results of the non-sphericalcell model have been compared with the results of the spherical cell model,where the numerical results of spherical cell model have already been validatedagainst in vitro cell experimental results. From the numerical results,we conclude that the plasma and nuclear membranes can be protective reservoirsof significance. The numerical results of the simplified model werecompared against the numerical results of our detailed model, revealing theimportance of detailed modeling of membranes in our model.QC 20120418