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Vesicle transport and growth dynamics in Aspergillus niger : Microscale modeling of secretory vesicle flow and centerline extraction from confocal fluorescent data
Author(s) -
Kunz Philipp J.,
Barthel Lars,
Meyer Vera,
King Rudibert
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
biotechnology and bioengineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.136
H-Index - 189
eISSN - 1097-0290
pISSN - 0006-3592
DOI - 10.1002/bit.27452
Subject(s) - microscale chemistry , vesicle , discretization , biological system , secretory vesicle , confocal , biophysics , hypha , confocal microscopy , vesicular transport protein , chemistry , diffusion , aspergillus niger , mechanics , biology , physics , microbiology and biotechnology , biochemistry , optics , botany , mathematics , thermodynamics , mathematical analysis , mathematics education , membrane
In this paper, we present a mathematical model to describe filamentous fungal growth based on intracellular secretory vesicles (SVs), which transport cell wall components to the hyphal tip. Vesicular transport inside elongating hyphae is modeled as an advection–diffusion–reaction equation with a moving boundary, transformed into fixed coordinates, and discretized using a high‐order weighted essentially nonoscillatory discretization scheme. The model describes the production and the consumption of SVs with kinetic functions. Simulations are subsequently compared against distributions of SVs visualized by enhanced green fluorescent protein in young Aspergillus niger hyphae after germination. Intensity profile data are obtained using an algorithm scripted in ImageJ that extracts mean intensity distributions from 3D time‐lapse confocal measurement data. Simulated length growth is in good agreement with the experimental data. Our simulations further show that a decrease of effective vesicle transport velocity towards the tip can explain the observed tip accumulation of SVs.