dc.contributor.advisor Baeumer, Boris dc.contributor.advisor Athens, Josie dc.contributor.advisor Frauendiener, Joerg dc.contributor.author Jalilzadeh, Aidin dc.date.available 2015-06-29T03:22:34Z dc.date.copyright 2015 dc.identifier.citation Jalilzadeh, A. (2015). Effect of chemokine superdiffusion on leucocyte chemotaxis (Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy). University of Otago. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10523/5749 en dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10523/5749 dc.description.abstract Chemotaxis is the major cytotaxic mechanism that leads the movement of phagocytes in the tissue towards the harmful agents. Loss of phagocytes ability to track and respond to danger signals can lead to chronic infections, sepsis or even death. This thesis examines the consequences of anomalous diffusion of chemokines on the chemotaxis of phagocytes in the event of acute inflammatory responses. The main driver of any chemotactic system is the corresponding chemo-attractant, which is the role given to chemokines. Allowing anomalous (fractional) diffusion with the tail index of $0<\alpha<2$, leads to the front propagation rate proportional to $t^{1/\alpha}$: faster than the traditional Gaussian spread ($t^{1/2}$). Moreover, fractional chemokine concentration profiles obey power laws, which results in slower tail decays leading to heavy tails; whereas in the Gaussian scenario tail decays are exponential and rapid. Changing the morphology of chemokine profile over the domain will affect all other entities that depend on chemokine concentration: the likes of tactic motility, sensitivity and velocity. Our study aims at understanding the influences of chemokine gradient field variations on phagocyte chemotaxis and hence on the acute inflammatory response. We show various circumstances in which normally diffusing chemokines fail to recruit adequate phagocytes and more importantly this behaviour stays the same even if the source of chemokine production is multiplied by several orders of magnitude. Another challenge is to insure the presence of an optimum number of phagocytes in the tissue, which is governed by a timely initiation of infiltration. Overall, we observe differences in the outcomes of the inflammatory responses of the two different diffusion schemes. The consideration of fractional diffusion enables us to give new interpretation of how signals spread in the heterogeneous tissues and why in some cases the traditional Gaussian mechanism may fall short. dc.format.mimetype application/pdf dc.language.iso en dc.publisher University of Otago dc.rights All items in OUR Archive are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. dc.subject Chemotaxis dc.subject Mathematical Modelling dc.subject Immune Response dc.subject Modelling Acute Inflammation dc.subject Anomalous Diffusion dc.subject Fractional Reaction-Diffusion dc.title Effect of chemokine superdiffusion on leucocyte chemotaxis dc.type Thesis dc.date.updated 2015-06-29T01:24:10Z dc.language.rfc3066 en thesis.degree.discipline Mathematics & Statistics thesis.degree.name Doctor of Philosophy thesis.degree.grantor University of Otago thesis.degree.level Doctoral otago.openaccess Open