Related papers: Precision and reproducibility of macroscopic devel…
How morphogenesis depends on cell properties is an active direction of research. Here, we focus on mechanical models of growing plant tissues, where microscopic (sub)cellular structure is taken into account. In order to establish links…
Models of bacterial growth tend to be `irreversible', allowing for the number of bacteria in a colony to increase but not to decrease. By contrast, models of molecular self-assembly are usually `reversible', allowing for addition and…
The two-parent reproduction model of Derrida and Peliti is simulated on a rugged fitness landscape. Fixed fitness values for each possible genotype are assigned randomly, with all fit individuals having the same probability of reproduction.…
We have generalized our ``unified'' model of evolutionary ecology by taking into account the possible movements of the organisms from one ``patch'' to another within the same eco-system. We model the spatial extension of the eco-system…
Turnover of regulatory sequence and function is an important part of molecular evolution. But what are the modes of sequence evolution leading to rapid formation and loss of regulatory sites? Here, we show that a large fraction of…
Intersecting branes provide a useful mechanism to construct particle physics models from string theory with a wide variety of desirable characteristics. The landscape of such models can be enormous, and navigating towards regions which are…
Cell growth in size is a complex process coordinated by intrinsic and environmental signals. In a recent work [Tzur et al., Science, 2009, 325:167-171], size distributions in an exponentially growing population of mammalian cells were used…
Biological systems are promising substrates for computation because they naturally process environmental information through complex internal dynamics. In this study, we investigate whether bacterial metabolic models can act as physical…
Orphans are genes restricted to a single phylogenetic lineage and emerge at high rates. While this predicts an accumulation of genes, the gene number has remained remarkably constant through evolution. This paradox has not yet been…
Flow-matching generative models are increasingly used to simulate cell responses to biological perturbations. However, the design space for building such models is large and underexplored. We systematically analyse the design space of flow…
Life forms exhibit such a degree of exquisite organization that it seems impossible that they could have developed out of a process of trial and error, as intimated by the theory of Darwinian evolution. In this general public paper I…
Mitosis in the early syncytial Drosophila embryo is highly correlated in space and time, as manifested in mitotic wavefronts that propagate across the embryo. In this paper we investigate the idea that the embryo can be considered a…
The flexibility of biological propulsors such as wings and fins is believed to contribute to the higher performance of flying and swimming animals compared with their engineered peers. Flexibility seems to follow a universal design rule…
How are granular details of stochastic growth and division of individual cells reflected in smooth deterministic growth of population numbers? We provide an integrated, multiscale perspective of microbial growth dynamics by formulating a…
Spatial systems with heterogeneities are ubiquitous in nature, from precipitation, temperature and soil gradients controlling vegetation growth to morphogen gradients controlling gene expression in embryos. Such systems, generally described…
We extend the notions of multipole and subsystem symmetries to more general {\it spatially modulated} symmetries. We uncover two instances with exponential and (quasi)-periodic modulations, and provide simple microscopic models in one, two…
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…
Many biological networks grow by elongation of filaments that can branch and fuse -- typical examples include fungal mycelium or slime mold. These networks must simultaneously perform multiple tasks such as transport, exploration, and…
We probe the natural complex structures in the transparent insect wings by a simple, non-invasive, real time optical technique using both monochromatic and broadband femtosecond lasers. A stable, reproducible and novel diffraction pattern…
We propose a two-scale model to resolve essential features of developmental tissue deformations. The model couples individual cellular behavior to the mechanics at tissue scale. This is realized by a multiphase-field model addressing the…