Event

Turing instabilities in reaction diffusion systems describe potential mechanisms for pattern formation in qualitative models of microbiological processes. A recent direction of research has been to incorporate bulk-membrane coupling (BMC) into these models which introduces a process of attachment and detachment to and from the cell membrane. In these models chemical species can therefore undergo periods of bulk- and membrane-bound diffusion in addition to prescribed kinetics. Linear stability analysis and numerical simulations have revealed that differences between membrane and cytosol diffusivities can trigger Turing-like pattern-forming instabilities in BMC models. We further investigate the role of bulk-membrane coupling by analyzing its effect in a singularly perturbed model where the diffusivity of one membrane-bound species is asymptotically small. In this context, localized solutions are known to exist and can be approximated using asymptotic methods. Additionally, the linear stability and long time dynamics of these localized solutions leads to novel non-local eigenvalue problems and differential-algebraic systems. In this talk we will outline this asymptotic framework and highlight the role of bulk-membrane coupling in the stability properties of localized solutions.