Related papers: Increased accuracy of ligand sensing by receptor d…
Lateral diffusion of molecules on surfaces plays a very important role in various biological processes, including lipid transport across the cell membrane, synaptic transmission and other phenomena such as exo- and endocytosis, signal…
The precision of concentration sensing is improved when cells communicate. Here we derive the physical limits to concentration sensing for cells that communicate over short distances by directly exchanging small molecules (juxtacrine…
Targeted drug delivery relies on two physical processes: the selective binding of a therapeutic particle to receptors on a specific cell membrane, followed by transport of the particle across the membrane. In this article, we address some…
Spectral efficiency of low-density spreading non-orthogonal multiple access channels in the presence of fading is derived for linear detection with independent decoding as well as optimum decoding. The large system limit, where both 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…
Diffusive motion of regulatory enzymes on biopolymers with eventual capture at a reaction site is a common feature in cell biology. Using a lattice gas model we study the impact of diffusion and capture for a microtubule polymerase and a…
The lateral diffusion and trapping of neurotransmitter receptors within the postsynaptic membrane of a neuron plays a key role in determining synaptic strength and plasticity. Trapping is mediated by the reversible binding of receptors to…
Most sensory cells use surface receptors to detect environmental stimuli and initiate downstream signaling. Cooperative interactions among sensory receptors is known to play a crucial role in enhancing the sensitivity of biochemical…
From nutrient uptake, to chemoreception, to synaptic transmission, many systems in cell biology depend on molecules diffusing and binding to membrane receptors. Mathematical analysis of such systems often neglects the fact that receptors…
Particles diffusing near interfaces face anisotropic resistance to motion due to hydrodynamic interactions. While this has been extensively studied near \textit{hard} interfaces since the works of Lorentz and Brenner, our understanding of…
Aptamer-based sensing of small molecules such as dopamine and serotonin in the brain, requires characterization of the specific aptamer sequences in solutions mimicking the in vivo environment with physiological ionic concentrations. In…
Brain metabolites, such as N-acetylaspartate or myo-inositol, are constantly probing their local cellular environment under the effect of diffusion. Diffusion-weighted NMR spectroscopy therefore presents unparalleled potential to yield…
Intracellular signaling often arises from ligand-induced oligomerization of cell surface receptors. This oligomerization or clustering process is fundamentally a cooperative behavior between near-neighbor receptor molecules; the properties…
Berg and Purcell [Biophys. J. 20, 193 (1977)] calculated how the accuracy of concentration sensing by single-celled organisms is limited by noise from the small number of counted molecules. Here we generalize their results to the sensing of…
Nanoparticles with multiple ligands have been proposed for use in nanomedicine. The multiple targeting ligands on each nanoparticle can bind to several locations on a cell surface facilitating both drug targeting and uptake. Experiments…
We present a new multiscale method to study the N-Methyl-D-Aspartate (NMDA) neuroreceptor starting from the reconstruction of its crystallographic structure. Thanks to the combination of homology modelling, Molecular Dynamics and Lattice…
Cell membranes interact via anchored receptor and ligand molecules. Central questions on cell adhesion concern the binding affinity of these membrane-anchored molecules, the mechanisms leading to the receptor-ligand domains observed during…
We consider nanonodes randomly distributed in a circular area and characterize the received signal strength when a pair of these nodes employ molecular communication. Two communication methods are investigated, namely free diffusion and…
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…
Living cells often need to measure chemical concentrations that vary in time. To this end, they deploy many resources, e.g. receptors, downstream signaling molecules, time and energy. Here, we present a theory for the optimal design of a…