Related papers: Can entropy save bacteria?
Using data from contact maps of the DNA-polymer of $E. Coli$ (at kilobase pair resolution) as an input to our model, we introduce cross-links between monomers in a bead-spring model of a ring polymer at very specific points along the chain.…
Cell polarization underlies many cellular processes, such as differentiation, migration, and budding. Many living cells, such as budding yeast and fission yeast, use cytoskeletal structures to actively transport proteins to one location on…
We discuss a realistic scenario, accounting for the existence of sub-micrometric protein domains in cell membranes. At the biological level, such membrane domains have been shown to be specialized, in order to perform a determined…
Many organisms form colonies for a transient period of time to withstand environmental pressure. Bacterial biofilms are a prototypical example of such behavior. Despite significant interest across disciplines, physical mechanisms governing…
Bacteria in bulk fluids swim collectively and display fascinating emergent dynamics. Although bacterial collective swimming in three-dimensional (3D) geometries has been well studied, its counterpart in confined two-dimensional (2D)…
Natural bacterial habitats are often complex fluids with viscoelastic and anisotropic responses to stress; for example, they can take the form of liquid crystals (LCs), with elongated microscopic constituents that collectively align while…
Biomolecular condensates are liquid- or gel-like droplets of proteins and nucleic acids formed at least in part through liquid-liquid phase separation. Condensates enable diverse functions of cells and the pathogens that infect them,…
Navigation of microorganisms is controlled by internal processes ultimately sensitive to mechanical or chemical signaling encountered along the path. In many natural environments, such as porous soils or physiological ducts, motile species…
Genome wide comparisons between enteric bacteria yield large sets of conserved putative regulatory sites on a gene by gene basis that need to be clustered into regulons. Using the assumption that regulatory sites can be represented as…
Organisms across all domains of life regulate the size of their cells. However, the means by which this is done is poorly understood. We study two abstracted "molecular" models for size regulation: inhibitor dilution and initiator…
Inspired by recent experiments on the effects of cytosolic crowders on the organization of bacterial chromosomes, we consider a "feather-boa" type model chromosome in the presence of non-additive crowders, encapsulated within a cylindrical…
We investigate a mechanism for the polar localization of proteins in bacteria. We focus on the MinCD/DivIVA system regulating division site placement in the rod-shaped bacterium Bacillus subtilis. Our model relies on a combination of…
Increasing evidence suggests that chromosome folding and genetic expression are intimately connected. For example, the co-expression of a large number of genes can benefit from their spatial co-localization in the cellular space.…
The principles that govern the organization of genomes, which are needed for a deeper understanding of how chromosomes are packaged and function in eukaryotic cells, could be deciphered if the three-dimensional (3D) structures are known.…
Motile bacteria can migrate along chemical gradients in a process known as chemotaxis. When exposed to uniform environmental stress, Escherichia coli cells coordinate their chemotactic responses to form millimeter-sized condensates…
We construct a simple model of a proto-cell that simulates a stochastic dynamics of abstract chemicals on a two-dimensional lattice. We assume that chemicals catalyze their reproduction through interaction with each other, and that between…
Herein it is shown that in order to study the statistical properties of DNA sequences in bacterial chromosomes it suffices to consider only one half of the chromosome because they are similar to its corresponding complementary sequence in…
A fundamental task in human chromosome analysis is chromosome segmentation. Segmentation plays an important role in chromosome karyotyping. The first step in segmentation is to remove intrusive objects such as stain debris and other noises.…
Centrifugation is a widespread laboratory technique used to separate mixtures into fractions characterized by a specific size, weight or density. We demonstrate that centrifugation can be also used to separate swimming cells having…
Cells operate in part by compartmentalizing chemical reactions. For example, recent work has shown that chromatin, the material that contains the cell's genome, can auto-regulate its structure by utilizing reaction products (proteins, RNA)…