Intracellular clocks and delay-dependent structure of periodic solutions

Synchronized timings of cellular processes such as metabolic activity, differentiation, division, or cell death result in observation of functional macroscopic tissue-patterns, frequently periodic in time and/or space. Primary regulation is intracellular, originates in adaptive control of gene expression, and can be reproduced by dynamics of simple, delay negative feedback model. We analyze impact of model parameters including nonlinearities or transport/processing delay on stability, bifurcation direction, periodic solutions, and global attractor structure and dimension. Discussed are dynamic classes of transcription regulators, generic 'cellular clock' systems, and their mutual (in)dependence.