Simulation Analysis of Lateral Propagation Mechanism of EGF Signaling on Cell Surface

Newly developed microscopic technology has recently made it possible to directly visualize lateral signaling events in a single cell in which the local stimulation of EGFR with EGF yields global phosphorylation of EGFR on the whole cell membrane. The putative feedback mechanism of receptor phosphorylation by ligand-free phosphorylated receptors has been proposed to explain the events. A computational model of the reaction-diffusion system (RD model) on the cell surface is constructed in order to examine the feasibility of this putative feedback mechanism. The simulation analysis reveals that the feedback mechanism in the RD model reproduces the observed lateral signal propagation for the parameter values within the physiologically available range.