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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 6, 2026

Reconstitution of Cell-cycle Oscillations in Microemulsions of Cell-free Xenopus Egg Extracts

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Published on: September 27, 2018

How Does the Xenopus laevis Embryonic Cell Cycle Avoid Spatial Chaos?

Lendert Gelens¹, Kerwyn Casey Huang², James E Ferrell³

¹Department of Chemical and Systems Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305-5174, USA; Applied Physics Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), 1050 Brussels, Belgium.

|July 28, 2015

Summary

Experiments on Xenopus laevis cell cycles found no evidence of chaos, even when altering calcium wave speed. Modeling suggests short pulse durations are needed for spatial chaos, which is likely avoided in this system.

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Area of Science:

Biochemistry
Developmental Biology
Chaos Theory

Background:

Theoretical models predict biochemical oscillators can exhibit chaos in large volumes.
The Xenopus laevis cell cycle oscillator was hypothesized to operate near a chaotic regime.

Purpose of the Study:

To experimentally test the hypothesis of chaotic behavior in the Xenopus laevis cell cycle.
To investigate the conditions required for spatial chaos in biochemical oscillators through modeling.

Main Methods:

Experimental manipulation of the post-fertilization calcium wave speed in Xenopus laevis eggs.
Computational modeling to analyze the prerequisites for spatial chaos in oscillatory reaction dynamics.

Main Results:

Altering calcium wave speed did not disrupt normal cell division or tadpole development.
Modeling indicated that short pulse durations in oscillatory dynamics are necessary for spatial chaos.
The mitotic exit in Xenopus laevis appears sufficiently slow to prevent chaos.

Conclusions:

The Xenopus laevis cell cycle does not operate in a chaotic regime under tested conditions.
Spatial chaos in biochemical oscillators is contingent on rapid oscillatory dynamics.
Chaos can be a detrimental factor in biological systems (e.g., cardiac arrhythmias) or a beneficial one (e.g., mollusk shell pigmentation).