Inward rotating spiral waves in glycolysis.

We report on the first observation of inward rotating spiral waves (antispirals) in a biochemical reaction-diffusion system. Experiments are performed with extracts from yeast cells in an open spatial reactor. By increasing the protein concentration of the extract we observe a transition from outward to inward propagating waves of glycolytic activity. Numerical simulations with an allosteric model for the phosphofructokinase can reproduce these inward propagating waves over a wide range of parameters if the octameric structure of yeast phosphofructokinase is taken into account. Copyright 2010 Biophysical Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.