On stochastic spatial patterns and neuronal polarity

Abstract

Polarization refers to asymmetric changes in cellular organization that occur in response toexternal or internal signals. Although neurons can spontaneously establish and maintain asymmetric dis-tributions of signaling molecules on the plasma membrane, it is not clear how intrinsic noise affects neuronalpolarization. In this work we present a stochastic model based on endocytosis, exocytosis and lateral dif-fusion, to study the effects of low number of molecules (high noise intensity), on neuronal polarization.Numerical results were obtained by solving the master equation using Gillespie’s algorithm. Our modelsuggests that the formation of a single pole of molecular asymmetry is very robust to noise; furthermore,in the presence of noise, neuronal polarization could occur even with reduced feedback strength.