Comparison of Numerical Methods for Analysis of the Diffusion of Soluble Proteins Through Sensory Cilia

A recent paper in the Journal of General Physiology disproved the hypothesis that the ciliary axoneme and the basal bodies of cilia impose selective barriers to the movement of proteins into and out of the the cilium using a combination of numerical modeling and observation with confocal and multiphoton microscopy. We compare the accuracy and computational efficiency of the numerical method used in the paper, known as the method of lines, to another method, known as sinc collocation, and discuss the possible use of other methods for improving the algorithm.