Model 1 and Model 2 captures the spatial clustering of NKG2D (DAP10) in TIRF experiments.

(A) Shows a 2D fluorescence intensity of NKG2D-DAP10-mCherry in TIRF experiments in Ref. [6] at t = 1min post stimulation by ULPB3. The above image shows a region of interest extracted from S4 Fig in Ref. [6] which is coarse-grained to match the minimum length scale (~ 0.5 μm) of spatial resolution in our model (see Materials and Methods for details). (B and C) Shows spatial distribution of NKG2D in the x-y plane in the simulation box for our agent based model (B) Model 1 and (C) Model 2 at t = 1 min post NKG2D stimulation. The parameters for the simulation are set at the best fit value from our PSO. The area of the region of interest in the image and simulation box is set to 15μm × 15μm. (D) Shows comparison between the two-point correlation function (C(r,t)/C(0,t) vs r) at t = 1 min calculated from the image in (A) (red, empty square) and configurations for Model 1 (black, empty circle) and Model 2 (blue, empty triangle) shown in (B) and (C).