Numerical study of IP₃-dependent Ca²⁺ spiral waves in Xenopus oocytes

¹  Department of Physics and Institute of Biophysics, Huazhong Normal University - Wuhan 430079, China
²  College of Science, China University of Mining and Technology - Xuzhou 221008, China
³  Department of Physics, Lanzhou University of Technology - Lanzhou 730050 China

Corresponding authors: tjuns1979@yahoo.com.cn jiay@phy.ccnu.edu.cn

Received: 16 May 2008
Accepted: 29 July 2008

Abstract

Based on a spatial extended Tang-Othmer Ca²⁺ model, intracellular Ca²⁺ spiral waves in Xenopus oocytes are numerically studied. Results show that the spiral dynamics depends on the concentration of the messenger molecule inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate(IP₃). Varying the IP₃ concentration, the spiral dynamics undergoes transitions from rigidly rotating spiral waves to meandering ones, even the spiral waves cannot exist in the system for large or little enough IP₃ concentration. Understanding the dependence of spiral dynamics on IP₃ concentration provides us theoretical clue to control the spiral waves through changing the IP₃ concentration in experiments.