Cellular diffusion processes in singularly perturbed domains
Paul C. Bressloff
Abstract
Abstract There are many processes in cell biology that can be modeled in terms of particles diffusing in a two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D) bounded domain $$\varOmega \subset {\mathbb {R}}^d$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>Ω</mml:mi> <mml:mo>⊂</mml:mo> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>R</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mi>d</mml:mi> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> containing a set of small subdomains or interior compartments $${\mathcal {U}}_j$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>U</mml:mi> <mml:mi>j</mml:mi> </mml:msub> </mml:math> , $$j=1,\ldots ,N$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>j</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> <mml:mo>,</mml:mo> <mml:mo>…</mml:mo> <mml:mo>,</mml:mo> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> (singularly-perturbed diffusion problems). The domain $$\varOmega $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>Ω</mml:mi> </mml:math> could represent the cell membrane, the cell cytoplasm, the cell nucleus or the extracellular volume, while an individual compartment could represent a synapse, a membrane protein cluster, a biological condensate, or a quorum sensing bacterial cell. In this review we use a combination of matched asymptotic analysis and Green’s function methods to solve a general type of singular boundary value problems (BVP) in 2D and 3D, in which an inhomogeneous Robin condition is imposed on each interior boundary $$\partial {\mathcal {U}}_j$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>∂</mml:mi> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>U</mml:mi> <mml:mi>j</mml:mi> </mml:msub> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . This allows us to incorporate a variety of previous studies of singularly perturbed diffusion problems into a single mathematical modeling framework. We mainly focus on steady-state solutions and the approach to steady-state, but also highlight some of the current challenges in dealing with time-dependent solutions and randomly switching processes.