2020 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
On the Role of Mechanical Interactions in Cellular Systems
| Project/Area Number |
19F19705
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| Research Institution | Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University |
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Principal Investigator |
フリード エリオット 沖縄科学技術大学院大学, 数理力学と材料科学ユニット, 教授 (70735761)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
KWIECINSKI JAMES 沖縄科学技術大学院大学, 数理力学と材料科学ユニット, 外国人特別研究員
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-10-11 – 2022-03-31
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| Keywords | Mathematical model / cellular systems / protein interaction / immune system / macromolecules / B-cell |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Financial Year 2020 was another successful year for Dr. James Kwiecinski, despite the ongoing difficulties posed by the continuing Covid-19 pandemic. From the previous report, he can now confirm that the theoretical paper "Interactions of anisotropic inclusions on a fluid membrane" and "Relaxation of viscoelastic tumblers with application to 1I/2017 ('Oumuamua) and 4179 Toutatis" were accepted for publication in the SIAM Journal of Applied Mathematics and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society respectively, the latter being an important sole author work revolutionizing the theory of deformation rotating bodies. He has since submitted another sole authored work entitled "A mechanical model for inclusion-tether assembly: Interaction law and aggregate shapes" to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A - the first theoretical and numerical work describing B-cell antigen assembly on disease presenting cells, correcting and encompassing seemingly contradictory results found by experimental teams - and is finishing up a third sole author work entitled "Membrane-mediated interactions of anisotropic inclusions on curved and periodic geometries" which is intended to be a sequel and subsequent generalization of his earlier SIAM work. He has also developed mathematical models describing asymmetric sex selection with a fellow JSPS Scholar, Dr. Simon Hellemans, and is waiting for the latter to finish compiling data to which the model can be fit. The subsequent work is intended for submission to Nature Communications.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
The publication of Dr. Kwiecinski's theory for protein interaction on approximately flat fluid membranes has provided an important foundational step for two further papers. The first paper details the mechanical interactions between isotropic inclusions with molecular tethers, applicable to the operation of the immune system, which shows that equilibria separations can be ensured by minimizing the strains of the embedded tethers. Furthermore, it proves the kinds of assembled shapes that these elements are expected to form and shows that experimentalists have found these exact patterns in vitro, further verifying the soundness of the new and novel theory presented. With its eventual acceptance into an international peer-reviewed journal, the theory can be applied to other B-cell-antigen systems and other interactive systems involving embedded proteins and molecules.
The second paper details the protein interaction on curved and periodic fluid membrane geometries. Much of the machinery developed in the foundational paper carries over, but must be generalized to incorporate a wider variety of possible fluid membrane shapes, the simplest of which is cylindrical. The effect of the principal curvatures and the periodicity on the mechanical interactions of the proteins is analogous to a "background field" which forces even a single embedded protein to adopt a preferred orientation with respect to the axis of the cylinder. The work is a stepping stone to an eventual generalization detailing membrane-shaping proteins and their assembly on any geometry.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Dr. Kwiecinski's plan for the rest of his tenure is to finalize the second research paper detailed in Section #8 and to investigate further molecular-tether systems, including the extension of his interaction theory for larger-scale computations.
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Research Products
(2 results)
