A 2D Stochastic Lattice Model Describing the Self-Assembly of Synaptic Membrane Protein Domains

The regulation of neurotransmitter receptor domains on the postsynaptic membrane plays an important rule in signal transduction across synapses. Inspired by the interactions between glycine receptors and gephyrin scaffolds, we present a stochastic lattice reaction-diffusion model explaining receptor domain formation. Using reaction and diffusion rates consistent with experimental observations, our model reproduces the receptor/scaffold copy numbers and domain areas observed in nanoscopy experiments. The Turing instability in our model intuitively explains the pattern formation observed, without assuming the existence of patterns a priori. The present work is an extension of previous work where the same model is only studied in 1D.