Steady State AHL Gradient Approximation

In the reaction-diffusion model we have formalized the gradient establishment and we solved the resulting partial differential equation numerically. Now, the aim is to derive a suitable analytical approximation for a single mine colony.

Kolmogorov-Petrovsky-Piskounov Equation

A reaction–diffusion equation concerning the concentration of a single molecule in one spatial dimension is known as the Kolmogorov-Petrovsky-Piskounov Equation. In our case, the equation for AHL has the following general structure:

\begin{align} \frac{\partial AHL(x,t)}{\partial t} = Diff(AHL(x,t),x) + R(AHL(x,t)) \end{align}

We were interested in the AHL gradient that can be established by a single colony ( located at $x = 0$) on an agar plate, ending up with a less general form of the reaction-diffusion model for AHL:

\begin{align} \frac{\partial AHL}{\partial t} = C_{agar} \cdot D_{AHL} \frac{\partial^2 AHL}{\partial x^2} - d_{AHL,e} \cdot [AHL] \end{align}

As boundary condition, we considered that the concentration at the mine colony stays constant, i.e. we are assuming cells are at the steady state:

\begin{align} [AHL](x=0,t) = [AHL]_{MineCell,ss} = \frac{\alpha_{AHL} \cdot [LuxI]_{ss}} {d_{AHL,i}+\eta \cdot \left(1-\frac{\eta_{ext}}{d_{AHL,e}+\eta_{ext}}\right)} \end{align}

Solution at the steady state

To solve the KPP equation for the steady state, we set to zero the time derivative:

\begin{align} \frac{\partial AHL}{\partial t} = C_{agar} \cdot D_{AHL} \frac{\partial^2 AHL}{\partial x^2} - d_{AHL,e} \cdot [AHL] = 0 \end{align} \begin{align} \frac{\partial^2 AHL}{\partial x^2} = \frac{d_{AHL,e}} {C_{agar} \cdot D_{AHL}} \cdot [AHL] \end{align}

This ordinary differential equation can be solved, integrating wrt. to x twice:

\begin{align} [AHL] = [AHL]_{MineCell,ss} \cdot e^{-\sqrt{\frac{d_{AHL,e}} {C_{agar} \cdot D_{AHL}}} \cdot x} \end{align}

Comparison with numerical solution

Figure 1: Analytical approximation and numerical solution

Search for an optimal promoter mutant

For the case of 2 neighbouring mines, we need to introduce a second promoter with a different sensitivity towards the complex LuxR/AHL. Experimentally the problem was addressed by constructing a library of promoter mutants. From the model we wanted to evaluate the mutants in order to predict which one could be the best.

In order to reduce the calculations, the current model with 6 species can be simplified to 3 species. Basically, proteins that are constitutively produced and linearly degraded can be assumed to be constants, which is the case for LuxI and LuxR. Regarding the complex LuxR/AHL, we can express production of the output proteins controlled by AHL. Thus, we have senders cells producing AHL and receiver cells processing the signal producing two colour outputs.

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