Dynamics and pattern formation in a cancer network with diffusion

Abstract Diffusion is ubiquitous inside cells, and it is capable of inducing spontaneous pattern formation in reaction–diffusion systems on a spatially homogeneous domain. In this paper, we investigate the dynamics of a diffusive cancer network regulated by microRNA and obtain the condition that the network undergoes a Hopf bifurcation and a Turing pattern bifurcation. In addition, we also develop the amplitude equation of the network model by using Taylor series expansion, multi-scaling and further expansion in powers of a small parameter. As a result of these analyses, we obtain the explicit condition on how the dynamics of the diffusive cancer network evolve. These results reveal that this system has rich dynamics, such as spotted stripe and hexagon patterns. The bifurcation diagram helps us understand the biological mechanism in the cancer network. Finally, numerical simulations confirm our analytical results.