Optimal Segregation of Proteins: Phase Transitions and Symmetry Breaking
- Creators
- Lin, Jie
- Min, Jiseon
- Amir, Ariel
Abstract
Asymmetric segregation of key proteins at cell division—be it a beneficial or deleterious protein—is ubiquitous in unicellular organisms and often considered as an evolved trait to increase fitness in a stressed environment. Here, we provide a general framework to describe the evolutionary origin of this asymmetric segregation. We compute the population fitness as a function of the protein segregation asymmetry a, and show that the value of a which optimizes the population growth manifests a phase transition between symmetric and asymmetric partitioning phases. Surprisingly, the nature of phase transition is different for the case of beneficial proteins as opposed to deleterious proteins: a smooth (second order) transition from purely symmetric to asymmetric segregation is found in the former, while a sharp transition occurs in the latter. Our study elucidates the optimization problem faced by evolution in the context of protein segregation, and motivates further investigation of asymmetric protein segregation in biological systems.
Additional Information
© 2019 American Physical Society. Received 30 April 2018; published 13 February 2019. We thank Yohai Bar-Sinai, Miguel Coelho, Michael Moshe, and Andrew Murray for useful discussions. A. A. thanks the A. P. Sloan foundation, the Milton Fund, the Volkswagen Foundation and Harvard Dean's Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship for their support. J. L. was supported by the George F. Carrier fellowship and the National Science Foundation through the Harvard Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (DMR-1420570). J. M. was funded by Monticello Foundation Internship and the Robert and Delpha Noland Summer Internships.Attached Files
Published - PhysRevLett.122.068101.pdf
Submitted - 1804.09195.pdf
Supplemental Material - SI_13.pdf
Files
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 92968
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190219-100913179
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- Milton Fund
- Volkswagen Foundation
- Harvard University
- DMR-1420570
- NSF
- Monticello Foundation
- Created
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2019-02-19Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field