Heinrich and Rapoport's model addresses the differentiation of intracellular compartments to separate identities based on exchange of proteins via transport vesicles.
The elementary processes of vesicle budding and fusion are biassed by specific coat proteins and Snare proteins. The Heinrich model is a set of 36 ordinary differential equations describing the dynamics of two-compartments, two types of transport vesicle coats (A,B), two SNARE pairs (X,U and Y,V) and one cargo (C). The original program calculates the time dependent changes of compartment sizes and transport vesicle quantities with different coats, and of the amounts of SNAREs and cargo in compartments and vesicles, starting with initial values for these variables until a steady state is reached.
Our work extends Heinrich's model linking it to more realistic simulations of protein sorting: