Fig. 7.

Intracellular reaction-diffusion dynamics enable shape sensing. a Schematic of the signaling pathway with an ERM-centered positive feedback loop that induces shape-based subcellular localization of proteins in podocytes. b (Top) Simulation results for nephrin localization in 3-D podocytes with peripheral processes of different widths. PDE-based dynamical models confirm the experimentally observed width-dependent localization of nephrin due to spatially heterogeneous focal adhesion assembly. (Bottom) Correlation between experimental localization of slit diaphragm proteins nephrin, podocin, and neph1 and the computational predictions. c The effect of experimentally measured molecular attributes of integrin β₃ on generation and maintenance of localization phenotype was tested by removing individual molecular properties of integrin β₃ and replacing them with those of integrin β₁