Related papers: Across and beyond the cell are peptide strings

To maintain homeostasis, living cells process information with networks of interacting molecules. Traditional models for cellular information processing have focused on networks of chemical reactions between molecules. Here, we describe how…

Drug resistance and metastasis - the major complications in cancer - both entail adaptation of cancer cells to stress, whether a drug or a lethal new environment. Intriguingly, these adaptive processes share similar features that cannot be…

Life is a complex biological phenomenon represented by numerous chemical, physical and biological processes performed by a biothermodynamic system/cell/organism. Both living organisms and inanimate objects are subject to aging, a biological…

The origin of life on Earth via the spontaneous emergence of a protocell prior to Darwinian evolution remains a fundamental open question in physics and chemistry. Here, we develop a conceptual framework based on information theory and…

The complexity of many biological, social and technological systems stems from the richness of the interactions among their units. Over the past decades, a great variety of complex systems has been successfully described as networks whose…

Empirical studies of graphs have contributed enormously to our understanding of complex systems. Known today as network science, what was originally a theoretical study of graphs has grown into a more scientific exploration of communities…

Motile cilia are a striking example of functional cellular organelle, conserved across all the eukaryotic species. Motile cilia allow swimming of cells and small organisms and transport of liquids across epithelial tissues. Whilst the…

Branching in vascular networks and in overall organismic form is one of the most common and ancient features of multicellular plants, fungi, and animals. By combining machine-learning techniques with new theory that relates vascular form to…

Living cells are soft bodies of a characteristic form, but endowed with a capacity for a steady turnover of their structures. Both of these material properties, i.e. recovery of the shape after an external stress has been imposed and…

A number of biological processes, such as embryo development, cancer metastasis or wound healing, rely on cells moving in concert. The mechanisms leading to the emergence of coordinated motion remain however largely unexplored. Although…

Biological molecules, like all active matter, use free energy to generate force and motion which drive them out of thermal equilibrium, and undergo inherent dynamic interconversion between metastable free energy states separated by levels…

Due to recent advances in synthetic biology and artificial life, the origin of life is currently a hot topic of research. We review the literature and argue that the two traditionally competing "replicator-first" and "metabolism-first"…

Cell deformability is an essential determinant for tissue-scale mechanical nature, such as fluidity and rigidity, and is thus crucial for understanding tissue homeostasis and stable developmental processes. However, numerical simulations…

Cell biologists study in parallel the morphology of cells with the regulation mechanisms that modify this morphology. Such studies are complicated by the inherent heterogeneity present in the cell population. It remains difficult to define…

The present view of biological phenomena is based on a biochemical paradigm that development of living organisms is defined by information stored in a molecular form as some genetic code. However, new discoveries indicate that biological…

The conditions under which biological cells switch from a static to a motile state are fundamental to the understanding of many healthy and pathological processes. In this paper, we show that even in the presence of a fully symmetric…

This essay presents a critical evaluation of the concepts of string theory and its impact on particle physics. The point of departure is a historical review of four decades of ST within the broader context of six decades of failed attempts…

Continuum elasticity is a powerful tool applicable in a broad range of physical systems and phenomena. Yet, understanding how and on what scales material disorder may lead to the breakdown of continuum elasticity is not fully understood. We…

The pathway is a biological term that refers to a series of interactions between molecules in a cell that causes a certain product or a change in the cell. Pathway analysis is a powerful method for gene expression analysis. Through pathway…

Biological systems, from cells to organisms, must respond to the ever changing environment in order to survive and function. This is not a simple task given the often random nature of the signals they receive, as well as the intrinsically…