Confinement regulates complex biochemical networks: initiation of blood clotting by "diffusion acting".

ABSTRACT: This study shows that environmental confinement strongly affects the activation of nonlinear reaction networks, such as blood coagulation (clotting), by small quantities of activators. Blood coagulation is sensitive to the local concentration of soluble activators, initiating only when the activators surpass a threshold concentration, and therefore is regulated by mass transport phenomena such as flow and diffusion. Here, diffusion was limited by decreasing the size of microfluidic chambers, and it was found that microparticles carrying either the classical stimulus, tissue factor, or a bacterial stimulus, Bacillus cereus, initiated coagulation of human platelet-poor plasma only when confined. A simple analytical argument and numerical model were used to describe the mechanism for this phe

SUBMITTER: Shen F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2764071 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature