Related papers: Accuracy of direct gradient sensing by single cell…
Chemotactic cells of eukaryotic organisms are able to accurately sense shallow chemical concentration gradients using cell-surface receptors. This sensing ability is remarkable as cells must be able to spatially resolve small fractional…
Many eukaryotic cells are able to sense chemical gradients by directly measuring spatial concentration differences. The precision of such gradient sensing is limited by fluctuations in the binding of diffusing particles to specific…
Eukaryotic cells perform chemotaxis by determining the direction of chemical gradients based on stochastic sensing of concentrations at the cell surface. To examine the efficiency of this process, previous studies have investigated the…
Biological cells estimate concentration gradients of signaling molecules with a precision that is limited not only by sensing noise, but additionally by the cell's own stochastic motion. We ask for the theoretical limits of gradient…
Accurate gradient sensing is crucial for efficient chemotaxis in noisy environments, but the relationship between cell shape deformations and sensing accuracy is not well understood. Using a theoretical framework based on maximum likelihood…
Cells are constantly exposed to diverse stimuli-chemical, mechanical, or electrical-that guide their movement. In physiological conditions, these signals often overlap, as seen during infections, where neutrophils and dendritic cells…
Most sensory cells use cross-membrane chemoreceptors to detect chemical signals in the environment. The biochemical properties and spatial organization of chemoreceptors play important roles in achieving and maintaining sensitivity and…
This work reports on two results. At first we revisit the Berg and Purcell calculation that provides a lower bound to the error in concentration measurement by cells, by considering the realistic case when the cell starts measuring the…
Biological cells are able to accurately sense chemicals with receptors at their surfaces, allowing cells to move towards sources of attractant and away from sources of repellent. The accuracy of sensing chemical concentration is ultimately…
Eukaryotic cells generally sense chemical gradients using the binding of chemical ligands to membrane receptors. In order to perform chemotaxis effectively in different environments, cells need to adapt to different concentrations. We…
Experimental evidence lends support to the conjecture that the ability of chains of cells to sense the gradient of an external chemical concentration could rely on cell-to-cell communication. This is the basis for the gradient sensing…
Biological cells are often found to sense their chemical environment near the single-molecule detection limit. Surprisingly, this precision is higher than simple estimates of the fundamental physical limit, hinting towards active sensing…
Spatial gradients of diffusible signalling molecules play crucial roles in controlling diverse cellular behaviour such as cell differentiation, tissue patterning and chemotaxis. In this paper, we report the design and testing of a…
Chemotaxis of the bacterium Escherichia coli is well understood in shallow chemical gradients, but its swimming behavior remains difficult to interpret in steep gradients. By focusing on single-cell trajectories from simulations, we…
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…
During the past century, biologists and mathematicians investigated two mechanisms underlying bacteria motion: the run phase during which bacteria move in straight lines and the tumble phase in which they change their orientation. When…
When a single cell senses a chemical gradient and chemotaxes, stochastic receptor-ligand binding can be a fundamental limit to the cell's accuracy. For clusters of cells responding to gradients, however, there is a critical difference: even…
Collective cell responses to exogenous cues depend on cell-cell interactions. In principle, these can result in enhanced sensitivity to weak and noisy stimuli. However, this has not yet been shown experimentally, and, little is known about…
Density-driven segregations, extensively studied in a simple rotating drum, are enriched with a wide range of underlying physics. Diverse symmetrical segregation patterns formed by mixing two types of dry mono-sized grains have been…
In contexts ranging from embryonic development to bacterial ecology, cell populations migrate chemotactically along self-generated chemical gradients, often forming a propagating front. Here, we theoretically show that the stability of such…