Related papers: Toward robust phase-locking in Melibe swim central…
The cell cortex, a thin film of active material assembled below the cell membrane, plays a key role in cellular symmetry breaking processes such as cell polarity establishment and cell division. Here, we present a minimal model of the…
There has been a strong push recently to examine biological scale simulations of neuromorphic algorithms to achieve stronger inference capabilities. This paper presents a set of piecewise linear spiking neuron models, which can reproduce…
Gene regulatory network of lambda phage is one the best studied model systems in molecular biology. More 50 years of experimental study has provided a tremendous amount of data at all levels: physics, chemistry, DNA, protein, and function.…
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…
Many active fluid systems encountered in biology are set in total geometric confinement. Cytoplasmic streaming in plant cells is a prominent and ubiquitous example, in which cargo-carrying molecular motors move along polymer filaments and…
Suspensions of unicellular microswimmers such as flagellated bacteria or motile algae exhibit spontaneous density heterogeneities at large enough concentrations. Based on the relative location of the biological actuation appendages i.e.…
The present habilitation thesis in theoretical biological physics addresses two central dynamical processes in cells and organisms: (i) active motility and motility control and (ii) self-organized pattern formation. The unifying theme is…
All higher order central nervous systems exhibit spontaneous neural activity, though the purpose and mechanistic origin of such activity remains poorly understood. We explore the ignition and spread of collective spontaneous…
Precise temporal coordination of gene expression is crucial for many developmental processes. One central question in developmental biology is how such coordinated expression patterns are robustly controlled. During embryonic development of…
We propose a unified mechanism that reproduces the sequence of dynamical transitions observed during somitogenesis, the process of body segmentation during embryonic development, that is invariant across all vertebrate species. This is…
Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) control cellular function and decision making during tissue development and homeostasis. Mathematical tools based on dynamical systems theory are often used to model these networks, but the size and…
During the formation of a thrombus, the architecture of the growing platelet aggregate is heterogeneous, with areas of dense and loosely packed platelets. The surface of activated platelets facilitate biochemical coagulation reactions that…
Computational models of the respiratory central pattern generator (rCPG) are usually based on biologically-plausible Hodgkin Huxley neuron models. Such models require numerous parameters and thus are prone to overfitting. The HH approach is…
Swimmers and self-propelled particles are physical models for the collective behaviour and motility of a wide variety of living systems, such as bacteria colonies, bird flocks and fish schools. Such artificial active materials are amenable…
Bump attractors are wandering localised patterns observed in in vivo experiments of spatially-extended neurobiological networks. They are important for the brain's navigational system and specific memory tasks. A bump attractor is…
Hydrodynamic interactions driven by particle activity are ubiquitous in active colloidal systems. Although these interactions are strongly influenced by the interfacial actuation mechanism and geometry of the swimming particles, theoretical…
Inspired by spiking neural feedback, we propose a spiking controller for efficient locomotion in a soft robotic crawler. Its bistability, akin to neural fast positive feedback, combined with a sensorimotor slow negative feedback loop,…
Dynamical balance of excitation and inhibition is usually invoked to explain the irregular low firing activity observed in the cortex. We propose a robust nonlinear balancing mechanism for a random network of spiking neurons, which works…
Active colloidal microswimmers serve as archetypical active fluid systems, and as models for biological swimmers. Here, by studying in detail their velocity traces, we find robust power-law intermittency with system-dependent exponential…
Concentrated suspensions of swimming microorganisms and other forms of active matter are known to display complex, self-organized spatio-temporal patterns on scales large compared to those of the individual motile units. Despite intensive…