Regulation of kinase activity by diffusion and feedback

In living cells proteins motilities regulate the spatiotemporal dynamics of molecular pathways. We consider here a reaction–diffusion model of mutual kinase–receptor activation showing that the strength of positive feedback is controlled by the kinase diffusion coefficient. For high diffusion, the activated kinase molecules quickly leave the vicinity of the cell membrane and cannot efficiently activate the receptors. As a result, in a broad range of parameters, the cell can be activated only if the kinase diffusion coefficient is sufficiently small. Our simple model shows that change in the motility of substrates may dramatically influence the cell responses.