Limit-cycle oscillations and stable patterns in repressor lattices

Abstract

As a model for cell-to-cell communication in biological tissues, we construct repressor lattices by repeating a regulatory three-node motif on a hexagonal structure. Local interactions can be unidirectional, where a node either represses or activates a neighbor that does not communicate backwards. Alternatively, they can be bidirectional where two neighboring nodes communicate with each other. In the unidirectional case, we perform stability analyses for the transitions from stationary to oscillating states in lattices with different regulatory units. In the bidirectional case, we investigate transitions from oscillating states to ordered patterns generated by local switches. Finally, we show how such stable patterns in two-dimensional lattices can be generalized to three-dimensional systems.