Related papers: An Adaptive Threshold in Mammalian Neocortical Evo…
A central goal of evolutionary biology is to explain the origins and distribution of diversity across life. Beyond species or genetic diversity, we also observe diversity in the circuits (genetic or otherwise) underlying complex functional…
Neurons integrate synaptic inputs and convert them to action potential output at electrically distant locations. The computational power of a neuron is hence enhanced by subcellular compartmentalization and nonlinear synaptic integration,…
The current theory of evolution is almost the one Darwin and Wallace proposed two centuries ago and the following discoveries e.g., Mendelian genetics and neutral mutation theory have not made significant modifications. The current…
Ecological and evolutionary dynamics have been historically regarded as unfolding at broadly separated timescales. However, these two types of processes are nowadays well documented to much more tightly than traditionally assumed,…
Constraints in embryonic development are thought to bias the direction of evolution by making some changes less likely, and others more likely, depending on their consequences on ontogeny. Here, we characterize the constraints acting on…
Background: We have previously demonstrated that cortical folding across mammalian species follows a universal scaling law that can be derived from a simple theoretical model. The same scaling law has also been shown to hold across brains…
The evolutionary origins of structural features in reconstructed gene-regulatory networks (GRNs) remain poorly understood, especially given the random aspects of gene expression. Here, we extend a classical model of GRN evolution to allow a…
Dendrites are branched neuronal processes that receive input signals from other neurons or the outside world [1]. To maintain connectivity as the organism grows, dendrites must also continue to grow. For example, the dendrites in the…
Abnormal cortical folding patterns may be related to neurodevelopmental disorders such as lissencephaly and polymicrogyria. In this context, computational modeling is a powerful tool to provide a better understanding of the early brain…
In biological evolution complex neural structures grow from a handful of cellular ingredients. As genomes in nature are bounded in size, this complexity is achieved by a growth process where cells communicate locally to decide whether to…
Neural networks show a progressive increase in complexity during the time course of evolution. From diffuse nerve nets in Cnidaria to modular, hierarchical systems in macaque and humans, there is a gradual shift from simple processes…
Gene expression is inherently noisy, posing a challenge to understanding how precise and reproducible patterns of gene expression emerge in mammals. We investigate this phenomenon using gastruloids, an in vitro model for early mammalian…
Predicting evolution of expanding populations is critical to control biological threats such as invasive species and cancer metastasis. Expansion is primarily driven by reproduction and dispersal, but nature abounds with examples of…
An increasing number of dissident voices claim that the standard neo-Darwinian view of genes as 'leaders' and phenotypes as 'followers' during the process of adaptive evolution should be turned on its head. This idea is older than the…
Like a rocket being propelled into space, evolution has engineered flies to launch into adulthood via multiple stages. Flies develop and deploy two distinct bodies, linked by the transformative process of metamorphosis. The fly larva is a…
Chromosomal rearrangements, which shuffle DNA throughout the genome, are an important source of divergence across taxa. Using a paired-end read approach with Illumina sequence data for archaic humans, I identify changes in genome structure…
Representing and reasoning about physical space is fundamental to animal survival, and the mammalian lineage expresses a wealth of specialized neural representations that encode space. Grid cells, whose discovery earned a Nobel prize, are a…
We develop a Fokker-Planck theory of tissue growth with three types of cells (symmetrically dividing, asymmetrically dividing and non-dividing) as main agents to study the growth dynamics of human cerebral organoids. Fitting the theory to…
The expansion of a population into new habitat is a transient process that leaves its footprints in the genetic composition of the expanding population. How the structure of the environment shapes the population front and the evolutionary…
As the cover of embryos and adult organisms, epithelial tissues are subjected to substantial mechanical forces in tissue morphogenesis. However, the finite deformation behaviors of epithelial tissues remain largely unexplored. This study…