In the widely studied slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum, starvation initiates a complex process of aggregation and cell differentiation. Several features are typically exhibited during the aggregation stage, when cells are chemotactically sensitive to cAMP, including streams of cells aggregating towards a center and either target or spiral patterns of moving cells. In this talk I will describe a model which treats the cells as discrete entities in a continuum background of cAMP. Model simulations which reproduce the typical phenomena and shed light on the different patterns observed will be discussed.

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1998-1999 Mathematics in Biology