Cell Behavior
Morphogenesis is the ensemble of processes that determines form, shape and patterns in organisms. Based on a reaction-diffusion theoretical setting and some prototype reaction schemes, we make a review of the models and experiments that…
We studied the effects of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) density on tumor growth dynamics, both on the sub- and the multi-cellular level using our previously developed model. This algorithm simulates the growth of a brain tumor…
We investigate noise-induced pattern formation in a model of cancer growth based on Michaelis-Menten kinetics, subject to additive and multiplicative noises. We analyse stability properties of the system and discuss the role of diffusion…
We develop a formalism that describes the bending and twisting of axoneme-like filament bundles. We obtain general formulas to determine the relative sliding between any arbitrary filaments in a bundle subjected to unconstrained…
The Gompertz law of dependence of human mortality rate on age is derived from a simple model of death as a result of the exponentially rare escape of abnormal cells from immunological response.
During embryonic development, a spatial pattern is formed in which proportions are established precisely. As an early pattern formation step in Drosophila embryos, an anterior-posterior gradient of Bicoid (Bcd) induces hunchback (hb)…
Experimental evidence indicates that human brain cancer cells proliferate or migrate, yet do not display both phenotypes at the same time. Here, we present a novel computational model simulating this cellular decision-process leading up to…
A macroscopic model of the tumor Gompertzian growth is proposed. The new approach is based on the energetic balance among the different cell activities, described by methods of statistical mechanics and related to the growth inhibitor…
In this paper we consider a continuous-time anisotropic swarm model with an attraction/repulsion function and study its aggregation properties. It is shown that the swarm members will aggregate and eventually form a cohesive cluster of…
Cancer is viewed as a multistep process whereby a normal cell is transformed into a cancer cell through the acquisition of mutations. We reduce the complexities of cancer progression to a simple set of underlying rules that govern the…
Viral kinetics have been extensively studied in the past through the use of spatially homogeneous ordinary differential equations describing the time evolution of the diseased state. However, spatial characteristics such as localized…
The problem of the onset and growth of solid tumour in homogeneous tissue is regarded using an approach based on local interaction between the tumoral and the sane tissue cells. The characteristic sizes and growth rates of spherical…
Dynamics maintaining diversity of cell types in a multi-cellular system are studied in relationship with the plasticity of cellular states. By adopting a simple theoretical framework for intra-cellular chemical reaction dynamics with…
The immune system protects the body against health-threatening entities, known as antigens, through very complex interactions involving the antigens and the system's own entities. One remarkable feature resulting from such interactions is…
The immune system is a real-time example of an evolving system that navigates the essentially infinite complexity of protein sequence space. How this system responds to disease and vaccination is discussed. Of particular focus is the case…
We investigate the final stage of cytokinesis in two types of amoeba, pointing out the existence of biphasic furrow contraction. The first phase is characterized by a constant contraction rate, is better studied, and seems universal to a…
The evolution of multicellular organisms from monocellular ancestors represents one of the greatest advances of the history of life. The assembly of such multicellular organisms requires signalling and response between cells: over millions…
Objectives: In this study, we quantify the growth variability of tumour cell clones from a human leukemia cell line. Materials and methods: We have used microplate spectrophotometry to measure the growth kinetics of hundreds of individual…