Finite volume simulation of two dimensional calcium dynamics in a hepatocyte cell involving buffers and fluxes

Abstract

The liver plays vital role in various activities like digestion, metabolism etc. in human body. The proper structure and functions of liver relies on its calcium homeostasis. The hepatocyte cell is a building block of liver. The calcium homeostasis in liver depends on intracellular calcium dynamics in a hepatocyte cell. The specific calcium levels are maintained for various activities in the hepatocyte cell. This calcium level depends on the processes of various influxes, effluxes and buffering mechanism. Any disturbances in these processes may lead to impaired function of the cell and cause disorder in function of liver. In this paper the mathematical model is proposed to study the effect of buffer and various fluxes like channel flux, leak and pump in a hepatocyte cell. The finite volume method for unsteady state case is implemented to obtain the solution of proposed problem in two dimensions. The effect of various physiological factors like concentration of exogenous and endogenous buffers, leak flux constant, channel conductance, pump rate, diffusion coefficient of medium on calcium concentration is demonstrated.