A method to investigate the diffusion properties of nuclear calcium

Gillian Queisser*, Gabriel Wittum

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Modeling biophysical processes in general requires knowledge about underlying biological parameters. The quality of simulation results is strongly influenced by the accuracy of these parameters, hence the identification of parameter values that the model includes is a major part of simulating biophysical processes. In many cases, secondary data can be gathered by experimental setups, which are exploitable by mathematical inverse modeling techniques. Here we describe a method for parameter identification of diffusion properties of calcium in the nuclei of rat hippocampal neurons. The method is based on a Gauss-Newton method for solving a least-squares minimization problem and was formulated in such a way that it is ideally implementable in the simulation platform uG. Making use of independently published space- and time-dependent calcium imaging data, generated from laser-assisted calcium uncaging experiments, here we could identify the diffusion properties of nuclear calcium and were able to validate a previously published model that describes nuclear calcium dynamics as a diffusion process.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)211-216
Number of pages6
JournalBiological Cybernetics
Volume105
Issue number3-4
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2011
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • 3D modeling
  • Calcium diffusion
  • Calcium uncaging
  • Hippocampal neurons
  • Inverse model
  • Nuclear morphology
  • Parameter estimation

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Biotechnology
  • General Computer Science

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