Cell Behavior
Recent experimental and theoretical studies suggest that crystallization and glass-like solidification are useful analogies for understanding cell ordering in confluent biological tissues. It remains unexplored how cellular ordering…
Maintenance of plasma IgM levels is critical for immune system function and homeostasis in humans and mice. However, the mechanisms that control homeostasis of the activated IgM-secreting B cells are unknown. After adoptive transfer into…
Unveiling the mechanisms through which the somitogenesis regulatory network exerts spatiotemporal control of the somitic patterning has required a combination of experimental and mathematical modeling strategies. Significant progress has…
In this work we address the question of how oscillations are arrested in the mouse somitogenesis clock when the determination front reaches presomitic cells. Based upon available experimental evidence we hypothesize that the mechanism…
Multipotent differentiation, where cells adopt one of several cell fates, is a determinate and orchestrated procedure that often incorporates stochastic mechanisms in order to diversify cell types. How these stochastic phenomena interact to…
We study the effect of intracellular ion diffusion on ionic currents permeating through the cell membrane. Ion flux across the cell membrane is mediated by special proteins forming specific channels. The structure of potassium channels have…
The Filament Based Lamellipodium Model (FBLM) is a two-phase two-dimensional continuum model, describing the dynamcis of two interacting families of locally parallel actin filaments (C.Schmeiser and D.Oelz, How do cells move? Mathematical…
Death ligand mediated apoptotic activation is a mode of programmed cell death that is widely used in cellular and physiological situations. Interest in studying death ligand induced apoptosis has increased due to the promising role of…
Apoptotic death pathways are frequently activated by death ligand induction and subsequent activation of the membrane proximal signaling module. Death receptors cluster upon binding to death ligands, leading to formation of a membrane…
The large scale behaviour of a population of cells that grow and interact through the concentration field of the chemicals they secrete is studied using dynamical renormalization group methods. The combination of the effective long-range…
Caspases are a family of cysteine proteases that play essential roles during apoptosis, and we presume some of them may also protect the cell from oxidative stress. We found that the absence of yeast caspase 1(Yca1)in Saccharomyces…
Wet-lab experiments, in which the dynamics within living cells are observed, are usually costly and time consuming. This is particularly true if single-cell measurements are obtained using experimental techniques such as flow-cytometry or…
The formation of new bone involves both the deposition of bone matrix, and the formation of a network of cells embedded within the bone matrix, called osteocytes. Osteocytes derive from bone-synthesising cells (osteoblasts) that become…
The acid-mediation hypothesis, that is, the hypothesis that acid produced by tumours, as a result of aerobic glycolysis, provides a mechanism for invasion, has so far been considered as a relatively closed system. The focus has mainly been…
The Influenza A virus belongs to the Orthomyxoviridae family. Influenza virus infection occurs yearly in all countries of the world. It usually kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people and causes severe illness in millions more. Over the…
Stem cells have the potential to produce lineages of non-stem cell populations (differentiated cells) via a ubiquitous hierarchal division scheme. Differentiation of a stem cell into (partially) differentiated cells can happen either…
Sensory systems have evolved to respond to input stimuli of certain statistical properties, and to reliably transmit this information through biochemical pathways. Hence, for an experimentally well-characterized sensory system, one ought to…
Despite being of vital importance to the immune system, the mechanism by which cells engulf relatively large solid particles during phagocytosis is still poorly understood. From movies of neutrophil phagocytosis of polystyrene beads, we…
Malaria is transmitted to vertebrates via a mosquito bite, during which rod-like and crescent-shaped parasites, called sporozoites, are injected into the skin of the host. Searching for a blood capillary to penetrate, sporozoites move…
Bismuth Ferrite (BFO) nanoparticles (BFO-NP) display interesting optical (nonlinear response) and magnetic properties which make them amenable for bio-oriented applications as intra- and extra membrane contrast agents. Due to the relatively…