Department of Mathematics

Indian Institute of Science

Bangalore 560 012

 

SEMINAR

 

Speaker

:

Prof. Gerald Warnecke
Affiliation : Magdeburg, Germany

Subject Area

:

Mathematics

 

Venue

:

Lecture Hall - I, Dept of Mathematics

 

Time

:

4.00 pm

 

Date  

:

May 21,2007 (Monday)

Title

:

Adaptive Numerical Solution of Intracellular Calcium Dynamics
Abstract : Calcium waves are an important means of intrcellular signaling.
Intracellular calcium release at the endoplasmatic reticulum is a prime
example of the role of stochastic effects in cellular systems. Realistic
models consist of deterministic systems of reaction-diffusion equations in
three dimensional space coupled to stochastic transitions of calcium
channels at the domain boundary. The resulting dynamics has multiple time
and space scales, which complicates computer simulations. In this talk we
focus on the PDE aspect of the numerical computations. We use adaptive
linear finite elements to efficiently resolve the extreme spatial
gradients of concentration variables close to a channel. Further, parallel
computing is needed for realistic simulations. We describe the algorithmic
approach and we demonstrate its efficiency by computational examples. Our
single channel model matches experimental data by Mak et al. (PNAS 95,
1998) and results in intriguing dynamics if calcium is used as a carrier.
Random openings of the channel accumulate in bursts of calcium blips that
may prove central for the understanding of cellular calcium dynamics. We
plan to extend our computations to more realistic domain geometries and to
use local time stepping methods.

Contact: +91 (80) 2293 2711, +91 (80) 2293 2625
E-mail: chairman.math[at]iisc[dot]ac[dot]in