Traveling Waves Emerging in a Diffusive Moving Filament System

2014

Starting from a minimal model for the actin cytoskeleton of motile cells we derive a spatially one dimensional model describing populations of right and left moving filaments with intrinsic velocity, diffusion and mutual alignment. For this model we derive traveling wave solutions whose speed and shape depend on the model parameters and the type of alignment. We discuss possible wave profiles obtained from analytical investigations as well as waves emerging in numerical simulations. In particular, we will explicitly comment on the observed wave speeds and how they are related to the model parameters. Moreover, some particularly interesting patterns being composed of several wave profiles ar…