Simulated Yeast with Mobile Polarity Sites Is More Sensitive to Pheromone Gradients

Cell polarity is the asymmetric distribution of cellular components and molecules. It is crucially important for effective cell motility and other directional functions. However, practically all types of cells were exposed in a large amount of molecular noise which interfered cell polarity, leading the cells to polarize in the wrong direction. Interestingly, though exposed in molecular noise, yeast cells can usually find and polarize in the direction of extracellular pheromone gradients during mating. This study investigated how yeast cells decoded the extracellular pheromone gradient to polarize in the right direction despite the noise. With particle-based simulations, we found that when exposed to a shallow signal gradient, the simulated yeast with mobile polarity sites interpreted the direction of the signal more accurately than the one with static polarity sites. Therefore, the highly dynamic polarity sites could help yeast cells to decode the extracellular pheromone gradient against molecular noise. Future studies will focus on adding more complex signaling pathways to the simulated yeast models to further investigate the effect of mobile polarity sites on yeast polarity establishment.Bachelor of Scienc