Stochastic model for chemotactic cell response dynamics (2015)

Undergraduates: Emily Riederer, David Clancy

Faculty Advisor: Wait-Tong (Louis) Fan
Department: Mathematical Decision Science

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Chemotaxis is the process of the movement of an organism or system of organisms in response to a chemical stimulus. This general process has numerous applications in diverse systems such as the movement of slime molds, the growth of cancer cells, and communication in ant colonies. Chemotactic systems have been described on a macroscopic level, considering the movement of the entire organism/chemical system as a whole, with partial differential equations by use of the Kellar-Segal model. To understand the specifics of chemotactic movement on the microscopic level, understanding the movement of each individual organism in the system, we investigate the use of a system of a partial differential equation (heat equation) to describe the movement of the chemical messenger and stochastic differential equations describing the random movement of each organism in the system.