  A central issue in cell biology is the physico-chemical basis of organelle
biogenesis in intracellular trafficking pathways, its most impressive
manifestation being the biogenesis of Golgi cisternae. At a basic level, such
morphologically and chemically distinct compartments should arise from an
interplay between the molecular transport and chemical maturation. Here, we
formulate analytically tractable, minimalist models, that incorporate this
interplay between transport and chemical progression in physical space, and
explore the conditions for de novo biogenesis of distinct cisternae. We propose
new quantitative measures that can discriminate between the various models of
transport in a qualitative manner- this includes measures of the dynamics in
steady state and the dynamical response to perturbations of the kind amenable
to live-cell imaging.
