Dynamical quorum-sensing in oscillators coupled through an external medium

作者：Schwab David J; Baetica Ania; Mehta Pankaj^*

来源：Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena , 2012, 241(21): 1782-1788.

DOI：10.1016/j.physd.2012.08.005

• Quorum sensing
• Synchronization
• Synthetic biology
• Kuramoto model

Many biological and physical systems exhibit population-density-dependent transitions to synchronized oscillations in a process often termed "dynamical quorum sensing". Synchronization frequently arises through chemical communication via signaling molecules distributed through an external medium. We study a simple theoretical model for dynamical quorum sensing: a heterogenous population of limit-cycle oscillators diffusively coupled through a common medium. We show that this model exhibits a rich phase diagram with four qualitatively distinct physical mechanisms that can lead to a loss of coherent population-level oscillations, including a novel mechanism arising from effective time-delays introduced by the external medium. We derive a single pair of analytic equations that allow us to calculate phase boundaries as a function of population density and show that the model reproduces many of the qualitative features of recent experiments on Belousov-Zhabotinsky catalytic particles as well as synthetically engineered bacteria.

• 出版日期2012-11-1