TY - JOUR TI - Role of competition between polarity sites in establishing a unique front AU - Wu, Chi-Fang AU - Chiou, Jian-Geng AU - Minakova, Maria AU - Woods, Benjamin AU - Tsygankov, Denis AU - Zyla, Trevin R AU - Savage, Natasha S AU - Elston, Timothy C AU - Lew, Daniel J A2 - Balasubramanian, Mohan VL - 4 PY - 2015 DA - 2015/11/02 SP - e11611 C1 - eLife 2015;4:e11611 DO - 10.7554/eLife.11611 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11611 AB - Polarity establishment in many cells is thought to occur via positive feedback that reinforces even tiny asymmetries in polarity protein distribution. Cdc42 and related GTPases are activated and accumulate in a patch of the cortex that defines the front of the cell. Positive feedback enables spontaneous polarization triggered by stochastic fluctuations, but as such fluctuations can occur at multiple locations, how do cells ensure that they make only one front? In polarizing cells of the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, positive feedback can trigger growth of several Cdc42 clusters at the same time, but this multi-cluster stage rapidly evolves to a single-cluster state, which then promotes bud emergence. By manipulating polarity protein dynamics, we show that resolution of multi-cluster intermediates occurs through a greedy competition between clusters to recruit and retain polarity proteins from a shared intracellular pool. KW - Cdc42 KW - cell polarity KW - Turing model JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -