E. coli locate their division midplane through the oscillation of "Min"
proteins from end to end of the 2 micron bacterium, with a period of 1-2
minutes. We show how a reaction-diffusion system can describe this
phenomenon. Since there are only on the order of one thousand copies of
each protein inside the bacterium, stochastic effects can be significant.
We have modeled stochastic effects in this reaction-diffusion system.
Surprisingly, we find that fluctuations can significantly enlarge the
oscillating parameter space. We also find that bacteria express sufficient
copies of proteins to minimize division errors.
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